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

reuters.com

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

#121

Post by f_allwein »

Aachen wrote: post #96
f_allwein wrote: post #43

Handy reference on why nuclear power might not be such a good idea as some people think: https://www.wien.gv.at/english/environment/ombuds-office/arg...

When an article starts with chernobyl as example of what mistakes we're likely to make when building a new plant today, it makes me itch to just close the tab and dismiss the opinion of the person who linked it. Not sure why I even bothered digging into it, but for example one later point is also misleading: "uranium resources will be depleted by the end of this century". I think I found the source (not that they lin…

> Accidents in nuclear power plants can have disastrous implications. As in the case if Chernobyl, large areas around the site remain unusable forever

What exactly about this do you not buy?

And what is your solution for storing nuclear waste safely for hundreds of thousands of years?

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

#122

Post by Aachen »

rdsubhas wrote: post #27

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.

> 7 of these could power an entire country, 24/7

...if you continue to heat with gas, drive on petrol, fly on petroleum...

I don't want to be the party pooper but that renewable energy has to cover more than current electricity consumption does get overlooked continuously. Less by governments than by the media and general public, thankfully, but still.

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

#123

Post by Gare »

anonporridge wrote: post #79
retrac wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right. A useful sink for surplus energy could be something like surplus heat or electricity to synthesize carbon-neutral fuels. We're not likely to get large electric aircraft anytime soon.

Electric aircraft doesn't really strike me as this kind of customer. Aircraft has relatively inflexible fueling demands based on customer demand that is reserved weeks ahead of time. Bitcoin mining is commonly promoted as this kind of ideal electricity consumer. Hydrogen production could be another. However, I think more interesting for this community would be to build some kind of demand response general computing d…

> Electric aircraft doesn't really strike me as this kind of customer. Aircraft has relatively inflexible fueling demands based on customer demand that is reserved weeks ahead of time.

I think you misunderstood. The parent comment implied that excess electricity could be use to produce synthetic fuels (via carbon capture) to power conventional airplanes, ships or other machinery.

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

#124

Post by cpill »

bobthepanda wrote: post #60
Godel_unicode wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is vastly misunderstood in the (artificial) renewables vs nuclear conversation. We keep building effectively one-off complex machines, and then flushing all that knowledge down the drain by saying it cost too much and took too long. Like yes, the first one always takes longer and costs more...

The difference is that nuclear is the only one where the first one’s cost is measured in the the tens of billions. Nuclear is just too big for a privatized energy market’s participants.

what happened to the micro nuclear?

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

#125

Post by [deleted] »

T-A wrote: post #89
parksy wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> assuming everyone uses the same amount of power globally as the average person in Finland which - why shouldn't they be able to Finland's climate is an outlier: One-third of energy consumption in housing was electricity in 2018. [...] 47% of electricity was used to heat indoor areas and 36% to household appliances. The remainder of electricity was used to heat domestic water and saunas. https://www.thenomadtoday.co…

[deleted]

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

#126

Post by xupybd »

Octoth0rpe wrote: post #77
jddil wrote: 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.

You really could have added a lot of value here. Clearly you know a bit about the situation.

Please try and bring your knowledge to the table not your offense at someone else's error. I seriously think you could have a lot to offer.

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

#127

Post by Andrew_nenakhov »

rectang wrote: post #63
Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It usually goes like this: Chernobyl! Fukushima! Radiation! Waste! Death! Death!! DEATH TO ALL HUMANITY!!!

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.

Russia imperialistic ambitions would be far more modest if Europe and US wouldn't fill Putin's coffers with hundreds of billions of dollars and euros in exchange for oil and gas. You know, the things they use instead of Nuclear energy.

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

#128

Post by cipher_system »

epistasis wrote: post #69
cipher_system wrote: post #29

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…

Last one was connected in 2009 which isn't that recent but there are also not that many projects of this size. China and Russia might not be the most thrustworthy and I would rather see more more western examples but then we have to go back a couple of decades, most of which were excellent.

I agree that a gigantic shift is required and put my hopes into mass produced SMRs. It's gonna take time and money, yes, just like the shift to EVs and renewables.

Fossil fuels is still above 80% of global primary energy, nuclear 5% and renewables excluding hydro 2%.

I really don't think putting all eggs in the solar/wind basket is good. They should of course also get heavy investments but that doesn't have to exclude nuclear. We're gonna need everything we have to end the fossil era.

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

#129

Post by mrits »

cbmuser wrote: post #59
liketochill wrote: post #5

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.

Is it a possibility to ramp them back up?

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

#130

Post by freemint »

fsflover wrote: post #119
crote wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- Time. This one took over a decade and a half to build, and that's pretty normal - Cost. Literally billions of dollars, all upfront. This one was budgeted at $3B and ended up costing $10B+. - Inflexibility. Almost all of the cost is in building one, so if you aren't running it basically 100% of the time at 100% capacity you are losing money. When it comes to $/MWh, nuclear simply can't compete with fossil or renewab…

All these arguments are moot, see the research: https://whatisnuclear.com/economics.html https://whatisnuclear.com/fukushima.html ...etc.

See this nuclear positive website that doesn't have an imprint (I can find on mobile). I wouldn't bcall it research either. Summary would probably be fair.
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