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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

#201

Post by cinntaile »

sandworm101 wrote: post #84
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.

It is more than 14%. It looks like this plant, all three reactors together, might eventually cover a third of Finland's needs. But those are 2020 numbers. Increased electrification, especially EVs and moves away from gas, will probably reduce that percentage. In that context, the third reactor is only incrementally more powerful than those already running at the facility. "The Olkiluoto plant consists of two boiling…

It's 14%. The other reactors are from the 70s and that's not what he meant even though he used the word plant.

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

#202

Post by Aachen »

lazide wrote: post #191
Aachen wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds like a world of pain. Between the displaced wildlife and released carbon from all those trees, I'd be quite curious if that's even worth it.

It probably isn’t, which is why you don’t see it happen much I imagine. If the only land they have is trees, it does restrict the options quite a bit. I also forgot to mention, in most climates trees are a hassle this way, they also grow naturally, so even if you clear the land you need to go back and keep it clear every couple years. Solar has similar drawbacks but worse - you can’t just clear the trees around where…

> If the only land they have is trees, it does restrict the options quite a bit.

Just to make sure, did you see the edit of my comment above? I checked out the land cover in Finland, it is actually a fairly high percentage trees and I did some math on putting wind in the other places.

Now that I'm writing this I realized a major flaw: not looking at https://globalwindatlas.info earlier. It turns out that Finland looks about average (just eyeballing it, I can't figure out how to use this area energy yield tool, it just gives me a blank image instead of a simple number).

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

#203

Post by R0b0t1 »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #140
sandworm101 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is more than 14%. It looks like this plant, all three reactors together, might eventually cover a third of Finland's needs. But those are 2020 numbers. Increased electrification, especially EVs and moves away from gas, will probably reduce that percentage. In that context, the third reactor is only incrementally more powerful than those already running at the facility. "The Olkiluoto plant consists of two boiling…

If those EVs are mainly charging at night, where does the extra peak load come from? Or is this just a case of not being able to shut off as much NG/Hydro generation at night (since nuclear can’t really be turned on and off at will)?

It's the incentivized/induced demand problem. Build out a new freeway, suddenly it's full of traffic. Same thing for power. If you make power cheap people find more ways to use it.

This is still probably a good thing, but something to consider.

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

#204

Post by orlovs »

tuukkah wrote: post #198
lizardactivist wrote: post #145

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.

Nuclear won't solve the climate crisis as it's too slow to build.

Nuclear is slow to build as we dont have much experience to build it. More we will build it, the better we will become in it

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

#205

Post by rsynnott »

pishpash wrote: post #120
Archelaos wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much more nuclear wast does that imply per decade? How many more meltdowns per decade?

And heat-polluted waste waters? People keep pretending there are no externalities.

> And heat-polluted waste waters?

That's hardly unique to nuclear plants; in particular, coal plants typically have lower thermal efficiency.

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

#206

Post by R0b0t1 »

vanilla-almond wrote: post #178
Archelaos wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much more nuclear wast does that imply per decade? How many more meltdowns per decade?

"How much more nuclear wast does that imply per decade?" The popular YouTube channel The B1M has an interesting video on how Finland is tackling nuclear waste: Finland might have solved nuclear power's biggest problem (2021): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYpiK3W-g_0

Nuclear power's "biggest problem" has been solved for decades. You can put everything in giant metal canisters and sink it into bedrock. It's vastly more expensive than doing nothing, but now that politicians are going to be held accountable for their fuckups they'll allocate the money.

And even after all that it's still far less expensive than remediating coal output.

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

#207

Post by omginternets »

BurningFrog wrote: post #180
Archelaos wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 are the biggest safety improvements that have become mainstream since Chernobyl?

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

#208

Post by pfdietz »

pmorici wrote: post #174
Archelaos wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much more nuclear wast does that imply per decade? How many more meltdowns per decade?

Alternatives like coal give off substantially more radioactivity into the environment than a nuclear plant does under normal operations.

That's only if you ignore the radioactivity in uranium mine tailings.

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

#209

Post by rsynnott »

krono wrote: post #34
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. Any insight into the why?

To a large extent, because they're building established designs. An EPR plant (that is, the same design as this one) was completed in China in about half the time of the Finnish one, but that would have been informed by the problems in building the Finnish EPR, which was the first in the world. Another EPR, being built by EDF (a French company) in the UK is broadly on-track, and should have a much shorter time to switch-on than the Finnish one.

This isn't new; historically, the first couple of examples of any given nuclear power plant design have typically seen major overruns.

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

#210

Post by throw0101a »

tuukkah wrote: post #198
lizardactivist wrote: post #145

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.

Nuclear won't solve the climate crisis as it's too slow to build.

At the very least we should stop shutting down current nuclear power plants.

Any newly built renewable generation should be used to retire fossil fuel plants first, and once those are gone then we can consider retiring (current) nuclear.

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