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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

#541

Post by ciphol »

robertlagrant wrote: post #464
ciphol wrote: post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people don't drive all day long either. They drive half an hour at a time several times a day, going to work or school or the mall and back. The remaining ~22 hours a day are available for charging. If a country has abundant solar power (probably not Finland!) it would make more sense to wire up workplace parking lots so that EVs could absorb the excess midday electricity.

Sure, but at night the car will probably be in place for, say, 10 hours, every night. Not faffing jumping between places and trying to find a public charging point. Even just driving to work and charging there is say 6 hours of continuous charging. The main block of time will still be at night.

6 hours charging is more than enough for work/school/shopping. On the rare occasion that you want to drive all day, you can add a night charge to that (before or after the drive as appropriate). Overall, the large majority of charging will (or can) be during the day.

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

#542

Post by mikaeluman »

tuukkah wrote: post #189
mikaeluman wrote: post #67

Finland has no other good source of energy. In Sweden and Norway we have hydro capacity that covers more than 50% of need. Then we can cover the rest with nuclear and a small portion of wind power. In Finland nuclear is the only option. Happy to see it come online.

Define a good source: there is no silver bullet to stop the climate crisis. Traditionally, there's a big share of hydro in Finland too (23% of electricity production in 2020), and the market has been building a lot of wind lately (share 12% in 2020, capacity growth 30%). In heating, heat pumps (geothermal and others) are growing fast (market share 16% in 2021).

That was much more than I thought.

Still, wind and other unstable sources can never be the dominant source in society. We need dependable power and for that you need nuclear unless something drastically changes with energy storage.

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

#543

Post by bobthepanda »

xiphias2 wrote: post #341
bobthepanda wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is that nuclear is the only one where the first one’s cost is measured in the the tens of billions. Nuclear is just too big for a privatized energy market’s participants.

It’s not too big, just too politicized. Bill Gates wanted to do it for a long time, but he can’t get the political buy in. For me even seeing the Tesla Berlin factory delays makes me sad: in China already the second factory is being built while Germany is coming up with new arguments without looking at the cost/benefit ratio for EU of those delays.

Using someone who's been comfortably in the top 5 wealthiest people for the past two decades, with a 12-digit estimated net worth is perhaps not a good way to illustrate "not too big."

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

#544

Post by robertlagrant »

ciphol wrote: post #541
robertlagrant wrote: post #464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but at night the car will probably be in place for, say, 10 hours, every night. Not faffing jumping between places and trying to find a public charging point. Even just driving to work and charging there is say 6 hours of continuous charging. The main block of time will still be at night.

6 hours charging is more than enough for work/school/shopping. On the rare occasion that you want to drive all day, you can add a night charge to that (before or after the drive as appropriate). Overall, the large majority of charging will (or can) be during the day.

I'm answering the question "why are most charged at night?" There's no point reading what I'm saying in isolation!

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

#545

Post by Sharlin »

danuker wrote: post #526
Sharlin wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We (Finland) are probably not going to move towards electric heating to any significant degree. Currently direct (resistive) electric is already the most common means of heating in single-family homes and other low-density residential buildings. Heat pumps are fortunately becoming popular especially in new development, and with them a significant reduction of electricity use compared to direct electric. For condos an…

What kind of coefficients of performance are there in Finland, for heat pumps? And what kind of heat pumps are there? Are air-sourced pumps any use in the Finnish climate?

Not an expert, but apparently the latest ASHPs still have a CoP of around 2 at –20°C and unity at –30°C, which is pretty much the extreme low for the less-sparsely populated parts of the country. Ground source HPs are of course better in that respect but the initial investment is larger. Apparently GSHP is the most popular mode of heating in newly built single-family homes.

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

#546

Post by usefulcat »

rdsubhas wrote: post #27

What I find incredible is: Once this fully ramps up, this one power plant is expected to satisfy 14% of the entire country's electricity needs. 7 of these could power an entire country, 24/7.

> 7 of these could power an entire country, 24/7.

A /very small/ entire country of 5.5M.

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

#547

Post by xiphias2 »

bobthepanda wrote: post #543
xiphias2 wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not too big, just too politicized. Bill Gates wanted to do it for a long time, but he can’t get the political buy in. For me even seeing the Tesla Berlin factory delays makes me sad: in China already the second factory is being built while Germany is coming up with new arguments without looking at the cost/benefit ratio for EU of those delays.

Using someone who's been comfortably in the top 5 wealthiest people for the past two decades, with a 12-digit estimated net worth is perhaps not a good way to illustrate "not too big."

The main reason I was writing it is that there _is_ willingness from the top tech billionaires to invest in modern nuclear plants. They don’t do it because the politicians don’t let them do it, and it’s not only about regulations, they want to keep full control.

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

#548

Post by danuker »

Sharlin wrote: post #545
danuker wrote: post #526

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What kind of coefficients of performance are there in Finland, for heat pumps? And what kind of heat pumps are there? Are air-sourced pumps any use in the Finnish climate?

Not an expert, but apparently the latest ASHPs still have a CoP of around 2 at –20°C and unity at –30°C, which is pretty much the extreme low for the less-sparsely populated parts of the country. Ground source HPs are of course better in that respect but the initial investment is larger. Apparently GSHP is the most popular mode of heating in newly built single-family homes.

Thank you! In that case, they are very much worth it. In Romania, with the current absurd gas prices, even resistive heating is cheaper when powered by the national hydroelectric supplier.

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

#549

Post by ncmncm »

dotancohen wrote: post #453
ncmncm wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Actually scratching the skin of an apple does negatively affect the apple - the part of the "mantle" under the scratch begins to rot right away. Look at a graph of the temperature of the Earth as a function of depth. The temperature jumps tremendously below the crust, and is much more stable per depth below. The crust is the insulation of the Earth - and damaging that crust might affect the mantle is ways we cannot y…

Hint: the mantle is not made out of apple flesh, it starts much, much deeper than 10 miles most places, and nothing exists that can eat it.

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

#550

Post by ncmncm »

dotancohen wrote: post #452
russnes wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

probably a stupid question, but is it a possibility that geothermal energy (if adopted to a great extent) could take away from the earths core energy and reduce the magnetic field?

The answer that I've always heard is "no". But that would have also been the answer to "do tailpipe emissions affect the atmosphere" in March 1922, so I'd say that we just don't yet know.

Global climate disruption by CO2 emissions was first predicted in the 1890s.

You should worry instead about the effects of excreted pharmaceuticals and neo-nicotinoid pesticides on wildlife, excess fertilizer runoff on coastal ecosystems, and ocean acidification from CO2 dissolving to produce carbonic acid, making sea life unable to fix calcium for shells, destroying the underpinnings of the food chain and the whole ocean ecosystem. Oh, and global climate disruption.

We have no need to borrow imaginary trouble, we are making plenty of actually real trouble already.

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