Finland’s Green Party endorses nuclear power • Hacker News Board

Re: Finland’s Green Party endorses nuclear power

#301

Post by ncmncm » Fri, May 27, 2022, 9:36 AM UTC

0xTJ wrote: post #298

ncmncm wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is because money that would be building renewables that displace coal, oil and gas is instead tied up in construction, and not displacing any. When the project is finally cancelled, over budget and late, that money is spent and still not bringing renewables online. So, each nuke project eliminates substantial immediate, progressive, and permanent erosion of their market.

Developing effective renewables does not preclude the development of nuclear power. Switching completely to renewables in the very short term is not feasible, and it will take particularly long in areas that aren't well-suited to any of the main renewable power technologies. Also, many governments provide ridiculous fossil fuel subsidies, which should be eliminated, freeing up money. New nuclear power plants will pro…

Building out nukes to displace fossil fuels is much less feasible, in exact proportion to the radically greater cost per MW, plus the additional >decade-long delay before any power comes out.

Money is fungible. Each dollar tied up in nuke construction, plus each other in fossil fuel while waiting on it, are unavailable to use building out renewables.

(And, yes, I ignore the "nukes" thing. There is no confusion. The facts suffice to denigrate them.)

Re: Finland’s Green Party endorses nuclear power

#302

Post by Sharlin » Fri, May 27, 2022, 10:48 PM UTC

gcanyon wrote: post #279

xorcist wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That reactor is on one of my favourite wikipedia articles: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_expensive_buildin...

No offense to Finland, but I was not expecting Finland to have three entries on the “most expensive buildings” list…

Honestly, me neither. There is likely some selection bias going on however. It's difficult to say how many expensive buildings are missing from that list.

Re: Finland’s Green Party endorses nuclear power

#303

Post by jsnell » Sat, May 28, 2022, 8:02 PM UTC

ncmncm wrote: post #300

jsnell wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no idea of what you mean by "a shipment of ammonia". 24 hour sunlight does not work to make solar power viable in Finland, because that extra production happens exactly when there is least need for electricity, and there is no economical way to store that energy for consumption 7 months later. Basically nobody builds solar power in Finland. It's about 0.3% of the electricity production (while renewables as a w…

Where does Finland get fuel for its turbines today? Fuel is imported. Do you really imagine that importation will become impossible just because additional means of power generation, such as wind, have been added? In near future decades, synthetic ammonia will become cheaper, per kWh, than NG, and reliably available from, e.g., solar farms in the tropics. So, that will be imported, instead of more expensive alternati…

The ability to import fuels, even if synthetically generated ones, for most of the year doesn't seem like much of a benefit.

Currently 14% of the Finnish electricity generation is done using fossil fuels + peat. That should go down as Olkiluoto 3 starts production. The infra you're assuming is not there. So your plan would in practice require building up not only massive amounts of solar power but also similarly massive amounts of new fuel-powered power plants that you'd run with foreign fuel for half the year. That is a really shit plan.

Look, it is obvious you're fanatical about solar power. And I'm sure it is a great fit for the areas where most of humans currently live. But it is an awful fit for a country at the Arctic circle. By making up these fairy tales about how it'd work, you just lose your credibility when talking about the areas of the world you actually know something about.

Re: Finland’s Green Party endorses nuclear power

#304

Post by ncmncm » Tue, May 31, 2022, 4:05 AM UTC

jsnell wrote: post #303

ncmncm wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where does Finland get fuel for its turbines today? Fuel is imported. Do you really imagine that importation will become impossible just because additional means of power generation, such as wind, have been added? In near future decades, synthetic ammonia will become cheaper, per kWh, than NG, and reliably available from, e.g., solar farms in the tropics. So, that will be imported, instead of more expensive alternati…

The ability to import fuels, even if synthetically generated ones, for most of the year doesn't seem like much of a benefit. Currently 14% of the Finnish electricity generation is done using fossil fuels + peat. That should go down as Olkiluoto 3 starts production. The infra you're assuming is not there. So your plan would in practice require building up not only massive amounts of solar power but also similarly mass…

Importing synthetic fuel, at need, at a radically cheaper price than what operating a nuke year-round costs would be rather a large benefit.

Re: Finland’s Green Party endorses nuclear power

#305

Post by seanw444 » Tue, May 31, 2022, 2:49 PM UTC

happytoexplain wrote: post #26

seanw444 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If Chernobyl and Fukushima are the only examples of major catastrophe they can point to, and one wasn't even directly caused by malpractice of the employees, and the last one that was malpractice was nearly 40 years ago... then I don't even know. The best I got is "they're stupid."

Why are you implying that natural disasters don't "count"? That's not a very pragmatic stance. If an earthquake has drastically different effects on two different power sources, than that is one difference you must consider. I'm for nuclear power, but you shouldn't call people stupid for petty reasons.

That's not my point. We've learned from the mistake of building a nuclear facility that's vulnerable to earthquakes. We know how to build earthquake-resistant buildings. We know how to build dams. We know that building things close to coastal areas puts them risk of being hit by tsunami. We've learned the hard way. We're in a better position now to build them than we were before.

Re: Finland’s Green Party endorses nuclear power

#306

Post by Andrew_nenakhov » Tue, May 31, 2022, 9:30 PM UTC

cywick wrote: post #293

Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a bold thing to claim that crypto mining is run on stolen power. Stolen from whom, may I ask?

> It is a bold thing to claim that crypto mining is run on stolen power. Stolen from whom, may I ask? It's a bit surprising to me that you that you hadn't heard about this yet. I've come across dozens and dozens of news reports on this phenomenon. There are at least three different versions how this is typically done: A) By illegal hookups directly to the power grid, so the victim is a power company (and thereby effe…

The percentage of electricity stolen for mining is dwarfed by the amount of electricity stolen for other means. Energy company executives in my country are almost always sell it on the side, so thank you very much for your concern that some very small part of it is stolen to power bitcoin mining.

And it is known that all major mining pools which consume maybe 80% of all power run on energy bought at commercial rates.

I'm not a miner, nor I want to be one, but I can hardly stand this baseless smearing of bitcoin on the pretense that it hurts environment. Energy producers produce energy, and sell it at some price. Whoever buys that energy can use it however they like it. If you want to help the environment, well, advocate for building nuclear power plants instead of coal and oil ones.