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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

#571

Post by ncmncm »

chelical wrote: post #436
nl wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Evidently you failed to read "redundancy and geographic distribution".

That there is North Sea wind power, howsoever intermittent, is a pure good. Tying it into a larger network makes it better. The solution to local deficits is more localities.

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

#572

Post by ncmncm »

JohnBooty wrote: post #390
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.

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 s…

The future is not that predictable.

Who in 2000 would have guessed solar and wind would be radically cheaper than coal? No 100-year plan would have mentioned them.

If small-scale hydrogen-boron aneutronic fusion becomes unexpectedly practical in 20 years, all the other plans go out the window.

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

#573

Post by ncmncm »

FredPret wrote: post #358
DasIch wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I.e., by increasing cost. But nukes are already not competitive. Increasing cost makes them less so. Their competitiveness is already in sharp decline as alternatives get ever cheaper.

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

#574

Post by ncmncm »

bluejekyll wrote: post #356
ilyich wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/e…

Solar installation is compatible with many, even most food crops, most trivially pasture, and increases yield while cutting water need.

There is absolutely no need for single-use solar or wind area, anywhere.

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

#575

Post by ncmncm »

jturpin wrote: post #326
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…

Agreed, though solar tech has gotten a lot better and cheaper in the last 20 years, so it's not completely fair to compare. Power storage is still an issue, but this is getting better and better each year with the prices of lithium iron phosphate batteries coming way down.

Lithium batteries will not be used for utility-scale storage, beyond load-leveling. Overwhelmingly cheaper alternatives will be used instead.

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

#576

Post by ncmncm »

Manuel_D wrote: post #566
ncmncm wrote: post #557

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To have built them, you first have to plan, fund, and then actually build them, all of which takes actual time. Nobody announces billion-dollar physical construction projects for untested tech.

Right, these alternative energy storage systems are untested technology . Contrary to your prior claims, they're not being built at grid scale currently.

You mean, they are not being operated at grid scale, currently.

Things still being built need to finish being built before they go into service.

Just yesterday, you said some unspecified "breakthroughs" would be needed. Now you point to construction not finished. You are clutching at straws. The more honest course would be to admit you were just wrong.

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

#577

Post by ncmncm »

CRConrad wrote: post #513
ncmncm wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And it is pointless to talk about when there is no need to build there.

That looks very much like blaming the commenter you replied to for posting a "pointless" comment. Which is not a very gracious spelling of "Sorry, my comment you replied to was stupid; I retract it and apologize", which I'm sure was what you were trying to convey.

No, he is making up imaginary impediments to wind power build-out. If trees could be a problem, they would be built in ways that trees would not be a problem, full stop.

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

#578

Post by pfdietz »

ncmncm wrote: post #561
pfdietz wrote: post #477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pumped storage needs a lot of water to start but can then just cycle the water between reservoirs. Some will be lost by evaporation, but that loss isn't that high. I once compared a proposed pumped hydro system in Arizona near Phoenix vs. the water evaporated by the Palos Verde nuclear generating station. Per unit of levelized power output, the pumped hydro system used at least an order of magnitude less water than t…

That analysis ignores the prospect of siting a solar array floating on the reservoir, with benefits of reduced evaporation and cooler, more efficient conversion, an opportunity unlikely to be long neglected.

I'm not sure how practical floating solar would be on pumped hydro reservoirs. The water will go up and down a lot.

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

#579

Post by natmaka »

pasiaj wrote: post #520
natmaka wrote: post #502

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Err..... Not exactly! https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/nuclear-renewables-electr...

I was talking specifically about Finland. Our situation is such that our energy consumption peaks during the winter months when onshore wind farms perform poorly. You can see that the total share of renewables has climbed significantly, but production is heavily weighted on summer months when there is no shortage of electricity. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/nuclear-renewables-electr... These numbers are all ins…

> I was talking specifically about Finland

Understood, thank you!

More minor points:

> You'd need to build 1300+ 3MW wind turbines

Modern offshore ones develop 12MW, and their load factor peaks at .6

> We had this "too slow to build" -argument 15 years ago, but no other renewables have delivered.

Nuclear isn't a renewable source.

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

#580

Post by Manuel_D »

ncmncm wrote: post #576
Manuel_D wrote: post #566

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, these alternative energy storage systems are untested technology . Contrary to your prior claims, they're not being built at grid scale currently.

You mean, they are not being operated at grid scale, currently. Things still being built need to finish being built before they go into service. Just yesterday, you said some unspecified "breakthroughs" would be needed. Now you point to construction not finished. You are clutching at straws. The more honest course would be to admit you were just wrong.

The construction hasn't even begun on these projects, and it's unclear whether they will actually be built. The Utah project is still trying to secure funding, We do need a scientific breakthrough to make storage possible. Grid scale hydrogen electrolysis could be that breakthrough, but we don't know if it will live up to expectations.

Energy storage is far from a solved problem. You insist that it's been solved, but none of your proposed solutions have actually been implemented.

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