181–190 of 632 posts
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How much more nuclear wast does that imply per decade? How many more meltdowns per decade?
No remotely modern reactor has melted down. Just as you wouldn't factor Amelia Earhart's plane into 2022 air safety prognoses, you shouldn't use Chernobyl reactors for nuclear safety.
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.
What's depressing is that you'd need ten of these giant power plants to power Bitcoin mining. And by the time you finally got those ten $10B plants online, Bitcoin's energy use would have ballooned to some even more absurd number, assuming we do nothing to stop the current trajectory.
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How much more nuclear wast does that imply per decade? How many more meltdowns per decade?
Everything has downsides, and it has to be compared to the alternatives. In Finland's case, the realistic alternatives are burning coal or burning Russian gas. (If the Finns dedicated a substantial chunk of their forests to this one generator, they could maybe use biomass.) Coal kills two orders of magnitude more people per GWh than nuclear--and it does that when operating nominally, not when malfunctioning--and it p…
That's a weird metric (one meltdown is quite a catastrophe) and the calculation seems suspicious too. Between Chernobile and Fukushima I don't see how this could be correct.
I do find your other points more convincing, though with some "citation needed" wrt. coal.
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Depends how much area you want to repurpose (note that it includes roads, power lines, and regular tree trimming near those power lines in addition to the turbines themselves), but I'd estimate that with current and projected Finnish population density, this would actually be a realistic option, yes. Now that I think of it, I've never anyone speak of the impact on wildlife, nor seen a wind turbine in a forest (only e…
Forests are a hassle to work in, and add a lot of extra costs. It’s often cheaper and better in many ways to clear the land first if you’re going to do wind there. 1) wind moves faster/freer the higher you are above the ground. the height of the trees moves the ‘ground’ up, without actually moving it up from a foundation or structure perspective. So you spend the money for a 300 ft tower, but only get 200ft of usable…
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> 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…
Here in Perth a good third or more of my electricity is keeping the house cool so some of that is going to average out. We don't have saunas but we do have hot water. There's going to be an obvious error of margin either side of my napkin calculations but I think the order of magnitude is in the ballpark.
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And if you manage to convince someone this is an airplane crash type of problem, they start about the finances. And they're right about it not being the cheapest option, so what can you say? They win the argument. Next time you meet the person is at a protest where they don't want a solar farm where there is now a nice forest or pasture, no 24/7 moving shadows from huge wind turbine blades and that's after they pushe…
As a rule of thumb, greenhouse gas emissions are roughly equally split between electricity production, transportation, heating, agriculture and industry, about 20% each. Transportation is electrifying rather quickly in Europe, heating at a bit slower pace. So it's a bit better than "10% of the problem" - it's about 20% now, becoming ~40% in 10-15 years, eventually lowering total emissions by ~60% probably some time a…
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With the success of anti-nuclear rhetoric, we became pretty incompetent at building these things. It's just like the space program.
What rhetoric ? Nuclear is objectively far more expensive than renewables. That's the reason it has struggled for traction.
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…
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diablo_Canyon_Power_Plant [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kori_Nuclear_Power_Plant
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.
In heating, heat pumps (geothermal and others) are growing fast (market share 16% in 2021).
Good job Finland. I respect the opinions of the environmentalists and agree with most of what they say, but until we have something more reliable that can put out power 24/7 year round, we need more new, modern nuclear plants.
It doesn't work in every country but renewables with storage can provide 24/7 power. And it's a fraction of the price of nuclear.
Renewables are usually cheaper per W, but way more expensive in real world usage (battery storage + full life cycle costs)