Finland starts much-delayed nuclear plant, brings respite to power market • Hacker News Board

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

#381

Post by nl » Sun, Mar 13, 2022, 3:41 AM UTC

chii wrote: post #367

kuhewa wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> so it doesn’t point out how uneconomical this nuclear project is. It does insofar as it matters for capital. Who wants to invest in a plant that will take at least ten years (but probably more with cost overruns in the billions) before they see a ROI? Especially when the cost per MWH from a renewable project that will be online in 2 years with less risk is already comparable if not more competitive.

but is a renewable project that matches the capabilities of a nuclear project (to the same degree of reliability and availability) really the same cost? you gotta compare like-for-like. If the solar project that takes 2 years only provide power half the time, then you need double the size to provide the same amortized level of power at night. You also need some form of storage. And that's if you don't have a spate of…

The South Australian grid is a great example of how well this approach works.

It's mostly (>60%) a mix of solar and wind power, with some gas that fills in the gaps - as well as batteries for grid stability. Still importing some coal power from interstate, but that is decreasing too.

The investment has been incremental - so much smaller amounts, with much less risk and therefor more attractive to investors.

A large part of this (since 2018) has been done by a conservative state government, who have been highly supportive of the renewable transition.

https://theconversation.com/against-the-odds-south-australia...

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

#382

Post by Gwypaas » Sun, Mar 13, 2022, 3:43 AM UTC

laurent92 wrote: post #263

orlovs wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

France chose to build in bulk of 5-15 plants, as seen in this (extremely interesting) Gantt diagram: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/24/Chrono-p...

And famously tried out negative learning by doing.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03014...

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

#383

Post by mcronce » Sun, Mar 13, 2022, 3:43 AM UTC

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'…

Do you have sufficient battery capacity to power your grid through a 90th percentile worst case scenario solar outage? 95th? 99th? How long can it go without running coal and gas?

Nuclear works when you want it to. Solar and wind work when they want to. That's a very big difference when you're producing the electricity people rely on to live their daily lives.

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

#384

Post by markvdb » Sun, Mar 13, 2022, 3:43 AM UTC

winkeltripel wrote: post #339

bluejekyll wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All of the opex is in maintenance, staffing, safety and reliability Does this include the higher security needs around nuclear facilities? I left out the construction costs, the Arkwright Summit farm, $125 million. The Solar Star project was $2 billion. This Finnish Nuclear site appears to have cost $12 billion. That makes wind look really good, and solar at least on the same order (and still safer).

There are a couple of things to consider. The solar and wind need to be overprovisioned, to feed the grid scale batteries to provide baseload. Those batteries are currently not cost effective, which is why there are very few such batteries in use. If you add in the price of battery, wind and solar look rather pricey. Without the batteries, they are helping us reduce the use of fossil fuel plants, but not helping shut…

Look at Latvia. >45% hydro, plenty of space for wind, both on shore and off shore, and hardly any of that potential realised with only 2.2% active wind energy production.

Significant public investment in wind energy announced to start construction in... 2026. That is a glacial pace in the face of an ecological and geopolitical crisis situation.

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

#385

Post by Retric » Sun, Mar 13, 2022, 3:46 AM UTC

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #376

Retric wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Grid solar is statistically significantly safer than Nuclear. Climbing on rooftops can be dangerous, but solar is much better in a dessert than on top of a roof. Nuclear takes longer, is more expensive, has lower ROI, and higher risks. Solar has a lower capacity factor, but having 1/3 the availability at 1/15th the cost is a net win. Especially as we need vastly more power in the daytime and idling Nuclear is really…

Solar works great in some countries, but Finland? I just don't see it working out there.

Yea, though apparently they get 0.3% of their electricity from solar which seems crazy to me.

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

#386

Post by Gwypaas » Sun, Mar 13, 2022, 3:46 AM UTC

acchow wrote: post #276

tuukkah wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Finland is aiming to be carbon neutral by 2035. Do you suggest that if we start planning now, we can rely on having new nuclear plants operational in 13 years? Also note that we wouldn't be buying them from Russia because of the current war, and China would be risky in the same way. There's a current project where the only offer was from Russia and that one is being suspended indefinitely right now.

13 years? Korea has built plenty of reactors in 5 years

Easier when you cheat on the documentation. Sitting on two chairs at the same time is hard.

> In November 2012 it was discovered that over 5,000 small components used in five reactors at Yeonggwang Nuclear Power Plant had not been properly certified; eight suppliers had faked 60 warranties for the parts. Two reactors were shut down for component replacement, which was likely to cause power shortages in South Korea during the winter.[23] Reuters reported this as South Korea's worst nuclear crisis, highlighting a lack of transparency on nuclear safety and the dual roles of South Korea's nuclear regulators on supervision and promotion.[24] This incident followed the prosecution of five senior engineers for the coverup of a serious loss of power and cooling incident at Kori Nuclear Power Plant, which was subsequently graded at INES level 2.[23][25]

> In 2013, there was a scandal involving the use of counterfeit parts in nuclear plants and faked quality assurance certificates. In June 2013 Kori 2 and Shin Wolsong 1 were shut down, and Kori 1 and Shin Wolsong 2 ordered to remain offline, until safety-related control cabling with forged safety certificates is replaced.[26] Control cabling in the first APR-1400s under construction had to be replaced delaying construction by up to a year.[27] In October 2013 about 100 people were indicted for falsifying safety documents, including a former chief executive of Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power and a vice-president of Korea Electric Power Corporation.[28]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_South_Korea

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

#387

Post by nl » Sun, Mar 13, 2022, 3:48 AM UTC

winkeltripel wrote: post #339

bluejekyll wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All of the opex is in maintenance, staffing, safety and reliability Does this include the higher security needs around nuclear facilities? I left out the construction costs, the Arkwright Summit farm, $125 million. The Solar Star project was $2 billion. This Finnish Nuclear site appears to have cost $12 billion. That makes wind look really good, and solar at least on the same order (and still safer).

There are a couple of things to consider. The solar and wind need to be overprovisioned, to feed the grid scale batteries to provide baseload. Those batteries are currently not cost effective, which is why there are very few such batteries in use. If you add in the price of battery, wind and solar look rather pricey. Without the batteries, they are helping us reduce the use of fossil fuel plants, but not helping shut…

No one uses batteries for large scale (eg overnight) storage. They are used for grid stability (eg, 1/2 hour supply).

Reliability comes from solar and wind power redundancy and geographic distribution. If your collection area is over a few thousand square kilometres it is very rare for there to be no wind and no sun. Make it a few tens of thousand square kms (which modern high voltage transmission achieves) and your reliability is higher than coal.

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

#388

Post by Gwypaas » Sun, Mar 13, 2022, 3:49 AM UTC

roenxi wrote: post #248

epistasis wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no reason to assume that building the same nuclear reactor design multiple time will maintain the same cost or decrease. Even with the supposedly successful French nuclear program, costs increased over time, there was negative learning: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03014... There's huge huge risk in choosing a particular design and building even one of it, because we don't know if it…

The negative learning rate is a strong signal of interference by the regulators. More than anything else it shows how excessive safety regulations are strangled the industry. 1970s nuclear safety standards, despite it all, were still better than the energy strategy the world adopted from 1970-2020. Killing off nuclear in search of a perfect power system was a stupid strategy, and failed. The only unfortunate point of…

And Fukushima would never happened if you were smart about it. Regulations are written in blog.

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

#389

Post by liketochill » Sun, Mar 13, 2022, 4:03 AM UTC

kuhewa wrote: post #343

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…

> so it doesn’t point out how uneconomical this nuclear project is. It does insofar as it matters for capital. Who wants to invest in a plant that will take at least ten years (but probably more with cost overruns in the billions) before they see a ROI? Especially when the cost per MWH from a renewable project that will be online in 2 years with less risk is already comparable if not more competitive.

You have a great point. Who is funding the building new nuclear plants these days? I imagine it is mostly governments or government backed utilities.

I would absolutely never invest in a nuclear project but I sure am glad they are there to keep the lights on when the weather doesn’t cooperate for wind and solar.

A mix of different sources is the key to a robust grid, and nuclear is a great part of that mix.

As a side note on British Columbia site C 1000 MW a hydro dam is currently looking like it will cost 16 billion and take about 10 years to build, those numbers could easily be for a nuclear plant.

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

#390

Post by JohnBooty » Sun, Mar 13, 2022, 4:07 AM UTC

kuhewa wrote: post #343

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…

> so it doesn’t point out how uneconomical this nuclear project is. It does insofar as it matters for capital. Who wants to invest in a plant that will take at least ten years (but probably more with cost overruns in the billions) before they see a ROI? Especially when the cost per MWH from a renewable project that will be online in 2 years with less risk is already comparable if not more competitive.

    Who wants to invest in a plant that will take at least ten years

This points out one of the sad flaws of the human race and ultimately, it's probably the one that will lead to our downfall.

We're absolute crap at thinking long-term.

Look at you, talking about ten years as if it's eons. You're not wrong, of course! Capital doesn't like to invest in projects ten+ years before ROI.

But ten years is not a long time. We should be thinking about many, many things at least ten years in the future. Hell, forget ten years. We should be plotting our energy strategy with an eye to the next hundreds of years.

Of course, we won't, because we're humans and we really struggle to think past next week. And those of us in democracies have designed a system that literally punishes politicians for thinking beyond the next election cycle.