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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

#431

Post by ncmncm »

russnes wrote: post #426
sharkster711 wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From https://www.renewableenergyworld.com/baseload/can-geothermal... Some 42 million megawatts of energy reach the surface continually and are radiated into space as the earth cools from its initial molten state more than 4 billion years ago. No feasible amount of geothermal development could make even a small dent in this process. Furthermore, the earth’s heat budget is continually replenished by the radioactive dec…

I see. 42 million megawatts is 42,000 gigawatts. A quick google search tells me that typical power output of a nuclear power plant is around 1 gigawatt. So a single nuclear power plant would be roughly equivalent to 0.002% of earths geothermal energy radiation. It doesn't sound like much, but for something as crucial as the earth's magnetic field, I wouldn't want to reduce it one bit. I guess if the heat is radiated…

If only all problems were as trivially ignorable as this one.

The radius of the Earth is 4000 miles. A 10-mile hole is thus 1/400 of the way to the center. You may as well worry that scratching the skin of an apple might damage the seeds.

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

#432

Post by maffydub »

russnes wrote: post #426
sharkster711 wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From https://www.renewableenergyworld.com/baseload/can-geothermal... Some 42 million megawatts of energy reach the surface continually and are radiated into space as the earth cools from its initial molten state more than 4 billion years ago. No feasible amount of geothermal development could make even a small dent in this process. Furthermore, the earth’s heat budget is continually replenished by the radioactive dec…

I see. 42 million megawatts is 42,000 gigawatts. A quick google search tells me that typical power output of a nuclear power plant is around 1 gigawatt. So a single nuclear power plant would be roughly equivalent to 0.002% of earths geothermal energy radiation. It doesn't sound like much, but for something as crucial as the earth's magnetic field, I wouldn't want to reduce it one bit. I guess if the heat is radiated…

> if we start digging into the core and allowing energy to escape faster, we would effectively speed it up, right?

I don't think we're even digging through the crust - there'd still be the mantle (~100x thicker) before we got to the core.

In numbers, I believe the deepest borehole is ~12km deep... and the Earth has a radius of >6000km. We're barely scratching the surface.

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

#433

Post by tsimionescu »

krzyk wrote: post #430
sandworm101 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is more than 14%. It looks like this plant, all three reactors together, might eventually cover a third of Finland's needs. But those are 2020 numbers. Increased electrification, especially EVs and moves away from gas, will probably reduce that percentage. In that context, the third reactor is only incrementally more powerful than those already running at the facility. "The Olkiluoto plant consists of two boiling…

> boiling water reactors It amazes me that we are still using steam power (mostly 18th and 19t century discovery AFAIR) in such advanced systems.

The funny thing is even fusion plants would produce energy by turning a steam turbine.

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

#434

Post by shapefrog »

dghlsakjg wrote: post #349
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)?

Why do EVs mostly be charged at night? We have electricity run to almost everywhere there is a road, and every building that we spend any significant amount of time in. We can charge at work or on the street during the day. Basically anywhere a car is stationary. With the right incentives and infrastructure we can shift electric vehicle charging to daytime, or whenever there is excess generating ability coming from t…

> whenever there is excess generating ability coming from the grid

That would be nighttime.

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

#435

Post by chelical »

pavlov wrote: post #397
chii wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's not a waste if the receiver of the service is paying for the service.

That’s… not the definition of waste. Have you ever worked at a big corporation? They pay for some stupid useless shit just because it’s nobody’s job to stop paying for the service.

I think the point is that the only way to reduce crypto profitability is to impose a soft limit on electricity by massively increase the cost of electricity if you exceed a certain allotment. Otherwise, there's no real way to tell if someone is mining crypto or if they just using a lot of electricity unless it's a massive mining operation.

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

#436

Post by chelical »

nl wrote: post #387
winkeltripel wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Except when the North Sea wind was weaker than usual in 2021, triggering an energy crisis that has persisted to this day. This impacted almost the entirety of Europe and led to a spike in gas prices, since, surprise, all the backup plants rely on gas and coal.

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

#437

Post by chelical »

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 process takes much longer due to political issues not technical ones. The ongoing price crunch and energy sanctions have allowed Finland to speed up the process. The same thing happened with vaccine production and COVID. Normally, vaccines take much longer to develop, test, and approve. If we followed your logic, we wouldn't bother with lockdowns since a vaccine could take a decade to develop.

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

#438

Post by DeathArrow »

I wonder why is nuclear power controversed? I believe that is one of the most clean forms of energy and leaving hydro and coal aside, one of the cheapest.

Is it because of political activism and some occult groups of interest which have their own agenda?

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

#439

Post by chelical »

threeseed wrote: post #166
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.

It doesn't work in every country but renewables with storage can provide 24/7 power. And it's a fraction of the price of nuclear.

24/7 isn't true at all. People keep repeating this like it's 2020. There's an ongoing energy crisis that started in 2021. Low wind speeds across all of Europe were a massive trigger.

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

#440

Post by akvadrako »

wbl wrote: post #344
fny wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a word, reliability. Nuclear is /by far/ the most reliable energy source. Nuclear power plants produce maximum power 92.5% of the time. Compare that to other energy sources: - Geothermal: 74.3% - Nat gas: 56.6% - Hydropower: 41.5% - Coal: 40.2% - Wind: 35.4% - Solar: 24.9% Batteries are a joke. Consider the 409MW / 900MWh battery at Florida Power & Light: this is only enough to power 329,000 homes just over two ho…

The other sources produce less because they can. Since nuclear has a high capital cost and low variable cost it bids low.

Nuclear can produce less too, it's just kind of pointless since as you say fuel is cheap.
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