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

#531

Post by afterburner » Sun, Mar 13, 2022, 5:33 PM UTC

chelical wrote: post #437

afterburner wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What does a conflict that started two weeks ago have to do with the construction time of a reactor that has taken 17 years to build.

You also don't seem to realize the other reason, and the primary reason, to lockdown is to lighten the peak load on hospitals, in response to waves of infection.

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

#532

Post by bigbugbag » Sun, Mar 13, 2022, 5:46 PM UTC

pfdietz wrote: post #482

bigbugbag wrote: post #451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Taishan 1 has been shut down last summer due to what seems to be a design fault and may not be restarted. It is feared that all other current EPR suffer the same design mistake, but there are currently no plan to stop them.

China is not going to build any more EPRs. They are going with their home grown LWR design.

From I understand, China's foray in EPR was simply a move to leech the technology from France to improve their own ability to build nuclear plants.

A few people were vocal about this before it happened, and things did not go well for them. The Maureen Kearney case is simply unbelievable, this woman was working for Areva and blowing the whistle hard on this transfer of technology, after receiving threat she was found tied up in her bedroom, a letter A engraved in her abdomen, with a kitchen knife handle inserted in her genitals.

The police decided she probably did that to herself and jailed her, while the state attorney prosecuted her. And she was sentenced to prison time and a hefty fine. it took a while before the sentence was overturned and for the truth to come out that she had not faked anything.

In the end, what she was warning actually happened, France is no better and even worse in its ability to build nuclear plants with no actual plant put in service (ITER is a mess, Flamanville EPR is plagued), while China started both Taishan EPR reactors and is now able to sell its ability to build plants to other countries.

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

#533

Post by rndgermandude » Sun, Mar 13, 2022, 5:46 PM UTC

lazide wrote: post #525

rndgermandude wrote: post #524

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not saying we're almost there, just that we do not necessarily need break-though new tech. You're absolutely right that we will need to spend a lot of money and time if you seriously want to achieve to become globally carbon-neutral. However, going nuclear wouldn't be necessarily cheaper or quicker, either.

Agreed. Though be aware, that puts the decarbonizing countries at a massive disadvantage to those who aren’t decarbonizing, as every action they take (from heating to transport) becomes more directly expensive. Which makes a war of conquest or destruction by countries not doing so much easier to win. Edit: Also, with interest rates likely to go up due to inflation/central bank action, that CapEx may soon be impossibl…

It doesn't mean it is necessarily more directly expensive. The decarbonizing nations, notably the "West" and even China to a degree, have a lot of influence and control over the markets of good and services, both politically as well as a matter of who owns companies manufacturing things, and currently also in regards of who creates demand and margins for producers.

You can see that in a lot of consumer products already, when the EU e.g. started to mandate to put energy consumption ratings on electric appliances, and the market then swiftly went to improve the power consumption in most cases. I grew up with regular light bulbs, but now I and everybody I know largely uses LED light bulbs, again driven by consumer demand and heavily nudged by political policy in the EU. And I either save money now or at least break even thanks to my electric bill being less, and LED lights usually lasting so long they are over time cheaper than the old regular bulbs.

I wouldn't dare try to predict how these things would actually shake out eventually.

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

#534

Post by bigbugbag » Sun, Mar 13, 2022, 5:48 PM UTC

bigbugbag wrote: post #455

acchow wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for this. I'm curious how many scandals are involved with similar projects taking twice as long to complete in Europe. Or projects taking 4 times as long to complete in the USA? Fewer scandals? More scandals? Worse scandals? I have no idea.

We've seen similar scandals for EPRs in Flamanville and Okiluoto, forged document to fake certification of vital components of the plants, unqualified workers, lack of planning, lot of outsourcing,… it should be documented on the relevant wikipedia pages.

Turns out the same recently surfaced for French fusion experimental reactor ITER.

https://reporterre.net/Stress-peur-pression-le-difficile-quo...

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

#535

Post by Manuel_D » Sun, Mar 13, 2022, 5:48 PM UTC

rndgermandude wrote: post #530

Manuel_D wrote: post #521

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And other than wind and solar, we also have hydro and geo-thermal. These are geographically dependent. You can't build the where you need them. > As for storage, one way to "store" energy is hydrogen, which we can then burn as needed. We can probably get the efficiency of that to 70% (for hydrogen-burning larger-scale power plants). Large scale electrolysis remains unproven. This goes in the "scientific breakthroug…

Geo-thermal is a little bit geographically dependent, but by far not as much as you make it sound. Hydro is indeed very geo-dependent, no contest there. Large-scale electrolysis is not unproven. E.g. Air Liquide operates a 20MW plant producing 3000t/annum near Quebec already[0]. Other projects in development aim for 200MW facilities. Granted, that isn't yet massive scale, just about 99,000 MWh/annum of usable energy…

Geothermal is indeed geographically dependent. You need to be on a fault line, or otherwise have heated rocks near the surface. Most places do not have these conditions.

The hydrolysis example you provided is tiny relative to the requirements of grid scale storage. To put this in perspective, the US alone uses 500 GWh of electricity every hour. And this will increase as electrification progresses, electricity only accounts for about a third of total energy production. Producing grid scale hydrolysis remains unproven.

The same reliance on a globalized economy still exist with intermittent sources. The copper used in wind turbine generators probably comes from Chile, for instance.

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

#536

Post by rectang » Sun, Mar 13, 2022, 5:53 PM UTC

CRConrad wrote: post #519

rectang wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The possibility seems remote right now and I dislike the inflammatory framing, but I think this touches on one of fundamental drawbacks of nuclear power: it is hard to engineer plants to guard against catastrophe because there's a lot of energy stored in an inherently dangerous form. Hydroelectric power is often similarly vulnerable: you can engineer the dam to hold, but when something outside of tolerances appears,…

> there's a lot of energy stored in an inherently dangerous form. [Citation needed]

Oh, come on. Give me a break with the lazy "citation needed" comment. I'm not going to go hunt up a reference to a paper which reasons that compared with wind and solar rays constantly around us, nuclear fuel rods are inherently dangerous, nor that a dammed river is inherently dangerous because the dam may burst. I expect people to be able to reason about such things themselves.

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

#537

Post by lazide » Sun, Mar 13, 2022, 6:15 PM UTC

rndgermandude wrote: post #533

lazide wrote: post #525

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. Though be aware, that puts the decarbonizing countries at a massive disadvantage to those who aren’t decarbonizing, as every action they take (from heating to transport) becomes more directly expensive. Which makes a war of conquest or destruction by countries not doing so much easier to win. Edit: Also, with interest rates likely to go up due to inflation/central bank action, that CapEx may soon be impossibl…

It doesn't mean it is necessarily more directly expensive. The decarbonizing nations, notably the "West" and even China to a degree, have a lot of influence and control over the markets of good and services, both politically as well as a matter of who owns companies manufacturing things, and currently also in regards of who creates demand and margins for producers. You can see that in a lot of consumer products alrea…

True! Though be aware, what you are referring to is not energy production, which is what I was referring to. It is efficiency gains in energy consumption.

Most of the easy improvements have already been done. with the possible exception of insulating more (far harder than changing out electric bulbs or when new appliances get bought or computers age out replacing them with higher efficiency versions). Normal ICE cars and trucks have also hit diminishing returns efficiency wise.

Usually not so easy though as it may seem, especially in concrete, stone, or other masonry buildings which are very common in Europe.

What I’m referring to is far coarser grained, and on the production side.

Fossil fuels are very, very energy dense, and that energy is released/used through completely different mechanisms than electrical energy. So for heat, even if switching to heat pumps which are over unity devices (1 Input unit of energy can move almost 3x units of heat), the amount of energy required to do so for countries which need a lot of heat is astronomical. I did some back of the envelope math for Germany in another thread, and even being very conservative we’re talking 7x the total energy requirements of their current entire grid to replace natural gas for them.

So it’s more than just buying a heat pump and installing it, it’s a massive undertaking involving the equivalent of $120-$600k+ of capex to accomplish. That is for every many woman and child when you add it all up. One would hope they could be more efficient, but those prices already involve a huge economy of scale.

If the EU forms an army and has mandated no fossil fuels, they would need to spend a massive amount more capex to build that army than if they did not right now, let alone keep it energized. That takes time, resources from other things, and exposes them to unique supply chain challenges too.

If they want to just switch their economy off fossil fuels, right now that will likely take a 5-10 years even on a wartime footing. It takes time to build factories, source materials, R&D complex things. Many of these will depend on countries they may not want to depend on (such as chips from China or raw materials currently sourced from Russia). And that is a massive amount of money, on top of likely weapons manufacturing, etc.

If they wanted to do it in 2 years, I’m not sure it’s possible right now.

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

#538

Post by yakubin » Sun, Mar 13, 2022, 6:27 PM UTC

CRConrad wrote: post #516

yakubin wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The countries which are least trustworthy wrt nuclear weapons are the ones that aren't going to ask the public's permission. An autocracy doesn't need to power itself by nuclear plants in order to have nuclear weapons. On the other hand having a sustainable, clean source of power not tied to autocratic regimes lowers the leverage those regimes hold over democratic countries. In my particular country, a major chunk of…

> In my particular country... But yet [your country] is not lost?

What do you mean by "lost"?

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

#539

Post by belorn » Sun, Mar 13, 2022, 6:56 PM UTC

ncmncm wrote: post #428

Manuel_D wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you're describing is a combination of electrolysis and the Sabatier process [1]. And as I explain before there are major obstacles to actually converting electricity to methane at scale. It needs a source of carbon, and extraction of carbon from the air or exhaust is not feasible. Furthermore, massive electrolysis of hydrogen is also not something we have been able to do. Almost all hydrogen is produced through…

It is fortunate that you are not making decisions, then, for the people who are directing the use of billions of dollars invested in exactly the activities you insist do not work.

The Swedish government made a viability study on green hydrogen a years ago, which is public as all other government papers are. The cost estimate was around 100 times that of burning natural gas, or about 10 times higher than nuclear. It has potential if it can fall in prices, but so far it has not. The study also referenced German studies with similar findings.

It is so economical nonviable that there isn't even small scale experiments to get the ball running as a storage medium. There is however some bright spots for green hydrogen when hydrogen itself can be used. Green hydrogen is only a few times more expensive than using fossil fuel in order to create hydrogen, and in that situation green hydrogen has found a place. It also reduces those industries CO2 emissions which can then be turned into profits in terms of trading existing emissions rights. As fossil fuels prices goes up, the economical viability of green hydrogen in hydrogen using industries goes up, but the price compared to nuclear remain the same.

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

#540

Post by jotm » Sun, Mar 13, 2022, 7:04 PM UTC

bllguo wrote: post #283

jotm wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> China is seems to be successful at large scale construction projects in a way that we can not replicate in the west Are they? Considering that their population is higher than the whole of North America + EU + Russia combined, wouldn't it be fair to compare it that way? Sure, it's one country as opposed to several, but still, the population plays a huge role in this "amazing construction at scale".

can you flesh this out, why exactly does a larger population mean more efficient construction projects? i don't follow seems to me other factors like economics and government structure are more important, don't think a 4x larger US would be building faster and more cheaply

I guess what I'm saying is you can't compare what "China" is doing to most western countries, which have a fraction of the population, so of course there will be fewer reactors, fewer roads, less housing, less production.

I'd say it's more fair to compare it to a region of equal population. People actually do stuff, and the more of them (especially educated ones) there are, the more stuff will get done.

People are the biggest resource these days, which western countries realized a long time ago (or maybe it's the other way around, western countries created this system?). Hence, immigration heavily in favour of the best from other parts of the world.

And higher concentrations of people are more productive and effective. Think cities vs rural areas.

After accounting for that and comparing, if your region (clump of people) is still losing, then you might have a real problem and should take notes from the other group.