Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

281–290 of 632 posts

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

#281

Post by pasiaj »

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.

Wind turbines work on average at 18-30% efficiency in Finland. The nadir efficiency is roughly at 6%. You'd need to build 1300+ 3MW wind turbines to match the average production of Olkiluoto 3, or 7000+ turbines to guarantee the same level of constant output that this plant puts out reliably.

We had this "too slow to build" -argument 15 years ago, but no other renewables have delivered. We built 67 new windmills in 2020. That number would have to be double for your argument to start being plausible in our environment.

France has 56 nuclear plants that provide roughly 73% of the energy needs of the country. ~73% of this capacity was finished between 1980 and 1990.

Modern regulation and the scarcity of new builds has made building slower, but it should be expected that Areva, the builder of Olkiluoto 3, should be able to pump out new facilities and significantly faster rate compared to the last decade.

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

#282

Post by seanmcdirmid »

pfdietz wrote: post #247
arcticbull wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like we could solve this problem for for nuclear the same way we look to solve problems for renewables: storage.

Except if I have batteries, why should I charge them with expensive nuclear energy when I can charge them with cheap renewables? The nuclear plant will be forced to compete with those renewables for this market, which will limit what it can earn with the otherwise curtailed output. This is not as bad as losing it entirely, or even paying for someone to take it, but it's still going to be a net negative for the plant'…

Nuclear has very high capital costs but fuel and operating costs (sans financing and insurance) are relatively cheap. Nuclear energy isn’t expensive if the plant is already built, so if you had to choose and the costs were already sunk, it wouldn’t matter. I guess your point is whether to build the plants in the first place rather than going with other renewables. Since hydro is pretty much tapped out, I guess that would be wind or biofuels?

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

#283

Post by bllguo »

jotm wrote: post #109
epistasis wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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".

can you flesh this out, why exactly does a larger population mean more efficient construction projects? i don't follow

seems to me other factors like economics and government structure are more important, don't think a 4x larger US would be building faster and more cheaply

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

#284

Post by kzrdude »

mikaeluman wrote: post #67

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.

How can Finland not have more hydro resources, not enough elevation difference?

In 2009 hydro power was 15% of their electricity. An old number, but it's not too bad, it's something.

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

#285

Post by Tabular-Iceberg »

omginternets wrote: post #207
BurningFrog wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

The improvements were already mainstream before Chernobyl was built. It's all about making reactors tolerant to operator error, and if something does go wrong, make sure it goes wrong slowly, so operators have lots of time to react.

The RBMK reactor is quite an elegant design. Simple plug-and-play architecture for adding and removing fuel and other assemblies while the reactor was running, perfect for things like doping silicon for semiconductors and producing plutonium for weapons. But to get this capability you have to either give up affordability or safety, and they chose to give up safety.

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

#286

Post by jollybean »

Take the exact design and duplicate it 5 more times in the country, and then build the same in Sweden, Norway 5x each. Thanks.

Be Carbon Free in 10 years and sell excess energy to neighbours.

Do it now.

Putin has taught us that politicians can actually do stuff when they are forced into an existential crisis, maybe they should do something here as well.

I don't claim to have the answers but I suggest there are many opportunities that are worth pursuing.

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

#287

Post by ekianjo »

Archelaos wrote: post #110
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…

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

Nuclear waste takes almost no space at all. meltdowns are extremely rare.

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

#289

Post by ketralnis »

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.

No one thing will solve it, it will take a constellation of lots of things. If you do nothing while you wait for the one single solution, it won't get solved at all.

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

#290

Post by lazide »

ncmncm wrote: post #264
lazide wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> many types of trees are very, very strong Now you are just making things up. The bigger and stronger trees are, the more valuable they are as timber. But there is plenty of non-forest land to use, and wind is wholly compatible with mixed use with developed farm and pasture, which is why we see that instead.

What exactly am I making up?

Timberland owners (at least in my experience owning a lot of timberland) need to time market conditions quite a bit to make a profit. If someone is lucky, an offer for the land CAN coincide with good market conditions for the specific timber they have at the state they have it, but that is far from guaranteed.

All the species I happen to have a good stock of went crazy high earlier last year, then crashed hard due to burn damage to forests in other parts of the state (from over 100% increase in margin, to negative margin) in less time than it would have taken for me to get the paperwork through the state to harvest them.

Depending on market conditions, it could be very expensive to clear, to wildly profitable to clear, but no one is going to sell it to them for less than the profit they’d make in a case like that.

Post reply on HN