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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

#311

Post by jrockway »

RobertMiller wrote: post #115
jrockway wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 hap…

> It would probably just be "Korea" if they didn't have nukes Their first nuclear test was in 2006. Even their production of refined uranium and plutonium only began in the 80s, decades after the war came to a standstill.

Kind of a case of ignoring geopolitical debt, I guess. Anybody who wants to fix the problem today has an impossible task that was once possible.

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

#312

Post by ncmncm »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #282
pfdietz wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 w…

Operating cost of nukes is low only compared to coal and oil, and not even to gas. Compared to renewable + storage, nuke operating cost is very, very high.

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

#313

Post by nitrogen »

pfdietz wrote: post #231
nitrogen wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was already in the environment to begin with.

It was in the environment already in the same sense the uranium in coal was also in the environment already. Maybe the problem is the uranium mine tailings are safely off in some poor country, not in the US where the coal ash would be?

They're in the US: https://www.energy.gov/em/moab-uranium-mill-tailings-remedia...

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

#314

Post by ncmncm »

R0b0t1 wrote: post #203
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Much of "induced demand" will be for synthesizing hydrogen and hydrocarbons, which then compete with mined sources, absorb otherwise unused peak capacity, and provide back-up storage.

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

#315

Post by yencabulator »

nitrogen wrote: post #224
pfdietz wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

That was already in the environment to begin with.

The uranium ore was deep underground, not inhaled by nearby residents as wind blew it off the tailings pile.

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

#316

Post by korantu »

afterburner wrote: post #307
BurningFrog wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Show the numbers behind this assertion, if you have any. Reactors take 5-10 years to build.

Um, the one in this very article took 17 years.

The fact that other countries build reactors en masse in 5 years, tells us it is possible.

South Korea is good place to learn from

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

#317

Post by rdsubhas »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #61
rdsubhas wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have completely screwed up market price discovery for energy with big govt involvement and subsidies. The numbers I see everywhere are cherry picked to present a winner and loser. e.g. Depending on whose point of view you read, solar/wind prices either includes or not: subsidies, storage, land, weather, green label costs passed on to customers, interest rates, etc. Coal prices either includes or not: labor, import…

I’m hoping all these comments on HN I see that follow the pattern "I was wrong about something important, but rather than admit that, I'm going to believe that the truth is unknowable" are just the first step on someone's journey to accept an unpleasant shock to their ego. It's depressing to think there's a growing army of geeks who have given up on science, rationality and objective reality just because they got suc…

I'm not sure what identity or propaganda or bias I'm part of, so I humbly accept there may be things I don't know I don't know.

But maybe if remotely applicable, an optimistic view can be: that some of those geeks, some of the times care about seeing progress happen, rather than the means.

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

#318

Post by ncmncm »

londons_explore wrote: post #49
LatteLazy wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the average. But you'd need a few more for peak demand and a few more for when these are offline for maintenance, refuelling etc.

I suspect in today's world of maximizing capital efficiency, and being able to contract in large numbers of people, the very expensive power plant won't be offline for long for maintenance. They'll probably shut the plant down, and have 500 workers come in to replace everything that needs to be replaced, and then power it up again within a few days, and let it run for another 6 months or so. Everything will be planne…

Rushing maintenance costs more, and nuke operating cost is already radically more than renewables + storage.

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

#319

Post by gpm »

Aachen wrote: post #122
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.

And have no redunancy whatseoever, and if this is like most nuclear plants have no need to quickly spin up or down in response to load changes, and probably the math is done by averaging power usage, so only if you can somehow shift a ton of power usage away from prime time.

But it is a lot of power.

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

#320

Post by tuukkah »

pasiaj wrote: post #281
tuukkah wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 2…

> no other renewables have delivered.

These nuclear plants haven't delivered. Meanwhile, renewables have become cheap and mainstream, and their market keeps improving constantly.

> Areva, the builder of Olkiluoto 3, should be able to pump out new facilities and significantly faster rate compared to the last decade.

They should but do they? I hear it's not going so well in their new project in the UK either.

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