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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

#321

Post by bluejekyll »

What's surprising is the length of time of this project. It was started in 2000, and just completed. That's 23 years of development. These nuclear projects appear to take a significant amount of time.

By comparison, this wind turbine project near my parents was approved in 2016 and completed in 2018, providing 78 megawatts of power. Yes that's significantly less than the 1.6 gigawatts of this Finnish power plant. But, consider that in the same time period, 10 of this wind projects could be completed.

On top of that, solar projects are also much faster. Look at the Solar Star solar installation which provides .5 gigawatts of power, started in 2013 and completed in 2015. So 10 of these could have been completed in the same time as the Finnish system. No, I'm not suggesting that Solar is a good option in Finland. And yes, it would be important to work on massive battery storage systems, to make these work.

This just points out just how uneconomical nuclear power is. On top of that, with nuclear facilities coming under fire in Ukraine and Russia making (probably bluffing) threats against Finland, it really makes nuclear an unappealing option. Can someone point out why these projects are so attractive to so many people when it would appear that a combination of renewables appear to both be faster to bring on line and overall safer?

Edit: forgot the links,

Arkwright Summit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arkwright_Summit_Wind_Farm

Solar Star https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_Star

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

#322

Post by justatdotin »

Kuinox wrote: post #299
justatdotin wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

they have an EOL for a reason...

If you changed every part of a boat, does the original EOL of the boat still make sense ? Yes there are unremplacable parts in a nuclear reactor, but if it's measured to be safe to continue, then there is no reason to respect the initial EOL.

yeah it's getting a bit beyond my knowledge: maybe take your interesting ideas to the licensers and insurers

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

#323

Post by pfdietz »

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…

My point was that when you calculate the cost/kWh from a nuclear plant, if you then are going to operate than plant only 50% (say) of the time you could otherwise do so, the cost/kWh from that plant goes way up, because those high fixed costs are now amortized over only half the output.

Note that even some of the OPERATING costs of a nuclear plant are fixed. You still need about as many staff to run the plant even if you cycle it up and down.

The renewables will be wind and PV. Biomass uses too much land area, and would likely be reserved for specialty markets like chemical feedstocks and perhaps aviation fuel.

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

#324

Post by stevenwoo »

iso1631 wrote: post #68
firekvz wrote: post #48

Comming from a country where nucler power is nowhere near the radar, what is the case against nuclear power? it seems such a nobrainer for me to use

Extreme cost (money and time) to get it built Difficulties in managing waste 20 years ago I was all for nuclear, then I looked at terrible projects in Europe, like in the Finland and the UK, and realised that it's too little too late. Europe can't build nuclear, so rather than trying to fight a losing battle for another 20 years, Europe should be massively investing in what it can do (offshore wind, tidal, solar, pum…

AFAIK Finland is the only country in the world that has managed to build a long term (they're planning for something like 100000 years) nuclear waste storage facility.

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

#325

Post by thehappypm »

rhn_mk1 wrote: post #199
neoromantique wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cooling a house is more energy efficient than warming one

Isn't it the other way round?

Nope, it’s all about the temperature differential. Using a heat pump like an air conditioner is the same efficiency either direction. Usually when you’re talking about heat it’s going from (say) 20F to 70F, with AC it’s more like 90F to 70F. With heat you might even need to do like 0F to 65. AC max might be 115 to 75 which is still substantially less.

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

#326

Post by jturpin »

bluejekyll wrote: post #321

What's surprising is the length of time of this project. It was started in 2000, and just completed. That's 23 years of development. These nuclear projects appear to take a significant amount of time. By comparison, this wind turbine project near my parents was approved in 2016 and completed in 2018, providing 78 megawatts of power. Yes that's significantly less than the 1.6 gigawatts of this Finnish power plant. But…

Agreed, though solar tech has gotten a lot better and cheaper in the last 20 years, so it's not completely fair to compare. Power storage is still an issue, but this is getting better and better each year with the prices of lithium iron phosphate batteries coming way down.

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

#327

Post by standardUser »

bluejekyll wrote: post #321

What's surprising is the length of time of this project. It was started in 2000, and just completed. That's 23 years of development. These nuclear projects appear to take a significant amount of time. By comparison, this wind turbine project near my parents was approved in 2016 and completed in 2018, providing 78 megawatts of power. Yes that's significantly less than the 1.6 gigawatts of this Finnish power plant. But…

It's a lack of imagination. People look at established systems that took generations to implement and take for granted all of the developments and revelations that emerged from that generations-long effort to make that system work the way it does today. Then they look at an emerging system, like renewable energy, and see only the flaws and shortcomings, completely forgetting that a historically-massive investment of time and money is the only way to make any new system feasible on that scale.

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

#328

Post by liketochill »

bluejekyll wrote: post #321

What's surprising is the length of time of this project. It was started in 2000, and just completed. That's 23 years of development. These nuclear projects appear to take a significant amount of time. By comparison, this wind turbine project near my parents was approved in 2016 and completed in 2018, providing 78 megawatts of power. Yes that's significantly less than the 1.6 gigawatts of this Finnish power plant. But…

Without including storage and overbuilding of solar and wind to provide the same capacity factor as nuclear it is not a fair comparison, so it doesn’t point out how uneconomical this nuclear project is. The attractiveness of 1.6 GW of nuclear power is that it is carbon free, statistically the safest, it is firm energy that can be depended upon 24x7x365, and fuel costs are so trivial nobody even brings them up. All of the opex is in maintenance, staffing, safety and reliability, and that cost is low per MWH.

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

#329

Post by mjevans »

afterburner wrote: post #308
Kuinox wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you changed every part of a boat, does the original EOL of the boat still make sense ? Yes there are unremplacable parts in a nuclear reactor, but if it's measured to be safe to continue, then there is no reason to respect the initial EOL.

Corners get cut on refurbishment, for political reasons, and the facility continues to degrade while their life is too far extended. Fukushima had this issue.

Fukushima's main issue is related to attempts to 'save face'. International aid for cooling water and power (for cooling/etc) was offered, and rejected, despite the basement diesel generators being flooded by the tsunami that resulted from the earthquake. Realistically the plant was built somewhere they shouldn't have placed it, and the safety systems should have been retrofitted with additional raised systems once the risk was properly understood.

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

#330

Post by dantheman »

afterburner wrote: post #308
Kuinox wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you changed every part of a boat, does the original EOL of the boat still make sense ? Yes there are unremplacable parts in a nuclear reactor, but if it's measured to be safe to continue, then there is no reason to respect the initial EOL.

Corners get cut on refurbishment, for political reasons, and the facility continues to degrade while their life is too far extended. Fukushima had this issue.

... hit by a tidal wave.
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