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Finland starts much-delayed nuclear plant, brings respite to power market

reuters.com

101–110 of 632 posts

Re: Finland starts much-delayed nuclear plant, brings respite to power market

#101
post #59

It is only producing 100 MW of 1600 MW which they should achieve by July. Congratulations to all of the engineers there!

It’s actually been built by SIEMENS/Areva which is ironic because Germany is on the brink on shutting down all of its nuclear power plants.

Siemens dropped out of the project and constructing nuclear power plants because of how much of a failure this reactor was.

Re: Finland starts much-delayed nuclear plant, brings respite to power market

#102
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup. Energy independence is a cost that’s not factored in. (Then again, solar/wind could serve both factors well)

Where are the uranium mines?

I think Australia has plenty.

https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-pr...

Re: Finland starts much-delayed nuclear plant, brings respite to power market

#103

What I find incredible is: Once this fully ramps up, this one power plant is expected to satisfy 14% of the entire country's electricity needs. 7 of these could power an entire country, 24/7.

Due to usage fluctuations it's not quite that simple

Re: Finland starts much-delayed nuclear plant, brings respite to power market

#104
post #88
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You left out proliferation of dual-use technologies. The fewer countries with advanced nuclear capabilities, the more thinly spread the expertise necessary to build nuclear weapons. If Russia didn't have nukes, its imperialistic ambitious would be curtailed. The ability to shield conventional assaults behind a nuclear threat is destabilizing for the rules-based world order.

Is this also sarcasm? So you're saying that building this plant has increase the chance Finland will try to acquire Nuclear weapons? And Russia has nukes purely due to political and military reasons, they'd still have more than enough of them if they mostly started closing/stopped building new plants after Chernobyl.

I don't think it's sarcasm. Maybe North Korea is a better example. It would probably just be "Korea" if they didn't have nukes, but you can't exactly go in and overthrow the government when they can just wipe out all human life on the peninsula in an instant.

(People get upset at the implication that one country would take over another country, but the people of North Korea would probably not be worse off if that happened. Instead they suffer greatly because nobody can help them.)

Re: Finland starts much-delayed nuclear plant, brings respite to power market

#105

Finland has no other good source of energy. In Sweden and Norway we have hydro capacity that covers more than 50% of need. Then we can cover the rest with nuclear and a small portion of wind power. In Finland nuclear is the only option. Happy to see it come online.

Is wind not possible?

Re: Finland starts much-delayed nuclear plant, brings respite to power market

#106
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Next time start by not writing a comment that doesn't add value and is against HN rules. What in particular is wrong about their analysis?

For one, it assumes the average human consumes as much electricity as the average Finn.

The average human consumes much less energy than the average Finn. (Though that number is likely to grow as the world becomes more industrialized.)

Re: Finland starts much-delayed nuclear plant, brings respite to power market

#107
post #68
post #48

Comming from a country where nucler power is nowhere near the radar, what is the case against nuclear power? it seems such a nobrainer for me to use

Extreme cost (money and time) to get it built Difficulties in managing waste 20 years ago I was all for nuclear, then I looked at terrible projects in Europe, like in the Finland and the UK, and realised that it's too little too late. Europe can't build nuclear, so rather than trying to fight a losing battle for another 20 years, Europe should be massively investing in what it can do (offshore wind, tidal, solar, pum…

Plus proliferation of material for nuclear weapons.

Re: Finland starts much-delayed nuclear plant, brings respite to power market

#108
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup. Energy independence is a cost that’s not factored in. (Then again, solar/wind could serve both factors well)

Where are the uranium mines?

Kazakhstan (under Russia's sphere of influence) is the largest producer at 36% of the global supply (5% from Russia itself.) It can be purchased from countries like Canada (15%) or Australia (12%). The next two are Namibia and Niger, each producing 8% of the global supply.

Re: Finland starts much-delayed nuclear plant, brings respite to power market

#109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something like this. The project started in 2000, construction began in 2005 and should have been completed in 2010. Original cost was 3 billion euro but landed on over 10 billion euro. It is the first nuclear reactor in Europe for 15 years so not much working experience or available sub contractors. Apparently, China, South Korea, Japan and Russia can build at a third of the cost and time of that. If nuclear energy…

> Apparently, China, South Korea, Japan and Russia can build at a third of the cost and time of that. When did Japan last build a nuclear reactor? I don't think any time recently. South Korea used to be touted as a success at construction without massive overruns, but it turns out that it was largely a result or corruption and skimping on safety inspections: https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/s-korea-jails-nuclear-wor…

> China is seems to be successful at large scale construction projects in a way that we can not replicate in the west

Are they? Considering that their population is higher than the whole of North America + EU + Russia combined, wouldn't it be fair to compare it that way? Sure, it's one country as opposed to several, but still, the population plays a huge role in this "amazing construction at scale".

Re: Finland starts much-delayed nuclear plant, brings respite to power market

#110
post #55

What I find incredible is: Once this fully ramps up, this one power plant is expected to satisfy 14% of the entire country's electricity needs. 7 of these could power an entire country, 24/7.

By population that's one reactor of this scale per million people. To replace all other sources of electricity, 8 thousand such reactors would feed the current world's population. We'd need just shy of 500 more to keep up with population growth by 2030 - or at least 500 new reactors globally per decade. (edit - assuming everyone uses the same amount of power globally as the average person in Finland which - why shoul…

How much more nuclear wast does that imply per decade?

How many more meltdowns per decade?

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