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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

#351

Post by Ekaros »

estaseuropano wrote: post #197
Aachen wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Finland has a vast and long coast that could be used to build on or offshore farms. There are also wave hydro systems and Finland has many rivers etc that could be used. Really a choice to go nuclear. Not a necessity.

I don't think there is very viable wave energy in the sea around Finland. It is small, shallow and surrounded by land. Sure sometimes there is build ups, but in general it is not too reliable.

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

#352

Post by thematrixturtle »

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…

Olkiluoto 3 was the first-ever EPR to start construction back in 2005. It was supposed to go live in 2009, but basically everything that could have gone wrong did, which is why it was so massively delayed.

Funnily enough, the 2nd and 3rd EPRs in China both opened before this one, taking "only" 9 years from start to production. They're also the world's largest reactors now.

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

#353

Post by ilyich »

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…

Area.

To produce 1 gigawatt of power you need 1000 square kilometers of wind turbines or 300 sq km of solar elements or 3 sq km of nuclear power plants. How much land do you have in your country that you are ready to deforestate in order to build renewables?

Predictability.

Renewables depend on weather. They only work when the wind blows or the sun shines. Are you ready to be able to heat your house only when the weather forecast is good?

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

#354

Post by RF_Savage »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #147
pishpash wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

What prevents heated waste water from being used for…heat? Surely Finland uses central heating plants that pump hot water throughout the city (or maybe that’s just a Chinese/Russian thing?). What makes waste heat water less suited to heating, higher entropy?

Fear of nuclear power. People don't want water heated by it in their homes. So it is not done. It's not a purely rational thing.

The plants are also located away from cities, so utilizing the waste heat for district heating is uneconomical.

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

#355

Post by zdragnar »

stefan_ wrote: post #336
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…

While 23 years to build the thing are already bad, it now needs to operate continuously for at least some 30 years selling electricity at a price that is even today not competitive with renewables to make financial sense. Essentially, building a nuclear power plant in 2022 means you are betting we won't have workable storage for renewables by 2052.

Renewables are only competitive because you are not pricing in either storage or the cost of building and running fossil fuel plants as backups.

Add that in and the equation looks substantially different.

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

#356

Post by bluejekyll »

ilyich wrote: post #353
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…

Area. To produce 1 gigawatt of power you need 1000 square kilometers of wind turbines or 300 sq km of solar elements or 3 sq km of nuclear power plants. How much land do you have in your country that you are ready to deforestate in order to build renewables? Predictability. Renewables depend on weather. They only work when the wind blows or the sun shines. Are you ready to be able to heat your house only when the wea…

The wind farm linked above is installed in a forested area. The turbines are above the tree line, and didn't require a significant amount of deforestation. In addition to that, in CA at least, and I'm sure elsewhere, wind farms can still have farm land underneath, definitely grazing land.

On top of that, some solar installations are actually compatible with some foods, here's one article on that: https://www.dw.com/en/farmers-reap-double-benefits-with-sola...

Point being, land use doesn't need to be single purpose in your example.

In terms of the weather, this is why it important to have balanced installations and associated battery storage.

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

#357

Post by tenuousemphasis »

tuukkah wrote: post #303
tenuousemphasis wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, if we throw capital at the problem and fast track regulatory approval, I don't see why that's not possible. Do you think it's not?

You don't want to "fast track" nuclear security and this is not something you can iterate by building unsafe plants first. Even as it is, people don't want a nuclear plant in their backyard and it's a long process to find and secure a suitable location. You'd need huge amounts of capital with big risks and little profits foreseen. The track record from the latest western projects is horrible so I don't see how it wou…

>You'd need huge amounts of capital with big risks and little profits foreseen.

Ok, so nationalize it. Problem solved.

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

#358

Post by FredPret »

DasIch wrote: post #337
liketochill wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You cannot depend on nuclear 24x7x365 as we’ve been able to see in France and Germany the last few years. Hot temperatures in summer cause the temperature of the rivers to increase so much that the water cannot be used for cooling and so these plants have to be shut down. That’s only going to become worse.

That seems like a problem that can be accounted for in the initial design. I’m sure you can design a plant to be cooled down by even 99C water, and if the river is that hot we have other problems.

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

#359

Post by iamcurious »

liketochill wrote: post #328
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…

>statistically the safest

The worst case of nuclear, it is worse than the worst case of solar/wind. So even if it were rational for humanity, it might not be rational for a country.

I'm having trouble picturing how it is safer than solar though.

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

#360

Post by manicdee »

iamcurious wrote: post #359
liketochill wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>statistically the safest The worst case of nuclear, it is worse than the worst case of solar/wind. So even if it were rational for humanity, it might not be rational for a country. I'm having trouble picturing how it is safer than solar though.

The statistics wrap rooftop solar into the “solar” mix so all those DIY/fly-by-night installers who don’t use safety equipment while working at heights and end up killings themselves make solar by far the deadliest energy source in terms of deaths per MW capacity installed.
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