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Sweden’s incoming cabinet says new nuclear reactors will be built

bloomberg.com

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Re: Sweden’s incoming cabinet says new nuclear reactors will be built

#451

Post by doikor »

ncmncm wrote: post #204
belorn wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EU has a yearly public report on energy subsidies that demonstrate factually where subsidies goes, how much, and for what purpose. Nuclear subsidies are a proportional small part of the subsidies, and the public get more energy per $subsidies in nuclear than from other energy sources. Some key findings from 2021 report: "Subsidies to nuclear had varied between €3.2bn and € 4bn between 2008 and 2019 but surged to (€6.…

These accounting of subsidies almost always omit the bulk as not accounted in euros. The disaster liability subsidy, and the decommissioning subsidy are rarely so much as mentioned.

Not every country uses a decommissioning subsidy as you should just take the money from the plants during their lifetime and put in a fund for this purpose. This is what is happening in Finland and the fund already has more money then the projected decommissioning costs but they still keep pumping more money into them just in case.

Re: Sweden’s incoming cabinet says new nuclear reactors will be built

#452

Post by doikor »

ncmncm wrote: post #43
traceelement wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

so they get compensated if they have to close it even so the government payed them to build it. this sound like a bad deal. Tax payers pay for the whole thing and the owner gets even more money if they have to close it for whatever reason. I don't think coal is the answer but germany didn't do enough for renewables during the last 10 years when we knew we would shut down the nuclear plants. So now evrybody uses bad m…

No civil nuke plant has ever been operated, anywhere in the world, without massive government subsidies, or by coercing ratepayers to pay well above market rates. Looks like the Swedish public will be on the hook for subsidies for decades more while the rest of Europe (France and Romania perhaps excepted) coasts on renewables at ever plunging prices.

> No civil nuke plant has ever been operated, anywhere in the world, without massive government subsidies, or by coercing ratepayers to pay well above market rates.

Here in Finland we do. They can't coerce the rate payers as the customer is free to buy their electricity from whomever producer they want here and the only government subsidy is helping with the insurance.

edit: For example TVO at Olkiluoto

https://www.tvo.fi/material/collections/20221014135458/HnAXI...

On page 8 you can see that they have been producing cheaper electricity then the average nordpool area price for Finland for the last 10+ years. (and even before that but the graph starts at 2010). The difference is basically what their owners make as profits. TVO does not sell directly to end users. It only sells to its owners at production costs who can then flip that on the market if they feel like it or cover their fixed price contracts (or just use it themselves for the owners that are big energy heavy industrial companies)

Re: Sweden’s incoming cabinet says new nuclear reactors will be built

#453

Post by froh »

Isolus wrote: post #117
capitainenemo wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The last I read into Germany's plan to be "100%" renewable, it was using other countries in Europe to provide the base load using their hydro and nuclear. Which is great so long as they have excess to provide Germany I suppose. There does not seem to be nearly enough construction of pumped storage or battery to cover the unevenness of German wind power. In fact, their prices have gone negative repeatedly in the past,…

In fact, many believe that storage as hydrogen shows promise. There are many test plants for this right now in areas with a lot of wind and connection to the national gas grid. The idea is that the hydrogen can then be used in existing gas power plants.

hydrogen has a relatively poor efficiency compared to battery storage electricity to store and back, and it's an highly flammable, infamously explosive gas. but it has a high energy density and it can be transported relatively well. hydrogen will find it's niche.

Re: Sweden’s incoming cabinet says new nuclear reactors will be built

#454

Post by H8crilA »

belorn wrote: post #25

A bit of context, the south area which this reactor is suggested to be built in has occasionally a 1000% electricity higher price from the northern regions. A big reason for this is that prices in the south is highly connected to markets that the south region is connected to, and those region are heavily importers of electricity creating a higher demand than there is available of cheap energy. For example, in order t…

Thank you for the HVDC cable to Poland, 600 MW on the Baltic floor. We appreciate it in "mainland" Europe.

Re: Sweden’s incoming cabinet says new nuclear reactors will be built

#455

Post by parminya »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #304
fshbbdssbbgdd wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, there’s not much incentive for manufacturers to develop reliable appliances, because people just shop based on price and features. Once of the only constraints is government regulations which ban the old, less efficient designs. Take away those regs, and manufacturers who don’t want to pay for R&D can churn out those simple designs again.

> because people just shop based on price and features But thats all they can do - suppose I want to fins out if a Samsung phone is more reliable than Fairphone or Huawei - how would I find out? Will their salesmen tell me the truth? would customer support? Does their marketing department publish mean time between failure or statistics for repair? There is very little hard data where anyone took thousands of applianc…

I guess part of the problem here is that everything changes so frequently. If technology moved so slowly that generational change in craftsmen was the major source of a change in quality, then you could actually use word of mouth and other external sources of information. Nowadays, the experience of a year or two ago really doesn't necessarily tell you much about the quality of the products that are available now.

Re: Sweden’s incoming cabinet says new nuclear reactors will be built

#456

Post by munch117 »

cycomanic wrote: post #412
phire wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The government isn't paying to build it. They are only providing loan guarantees, not actual money. And they only have to pay to shut it down if a future government forces it to shut it down before the plant stops being commercially viable. The main purpose of both guarantees is to make it much easier for nuclear reactors to get commercial funding from private banks.

> The government isn't paying to build it. They are only providing loan guarantees, not actual money. Loan guarantees are actual money, especially if the builder defaults. > The main purpose of both guarantees is to make it much easier for nuclear reactors to get commercial funding from private banks. So ask yourself why will commercial funders not give money to the builds, while they are perfectly happy for solar/wi…

Never the less, the financing strategy works. At least in Scandinavia. Defaulting happens rarely enough to not be an issue.

Well-run governments can borrow money much cheaper than private actors. Lower interest rates means a higher chance of success for a long-running project.

Re: Sweden’s incoming cabinet says new nuclear reactors will be built

#457

Post by phire »

cycomanic wrote: post #412
phire wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The government isn't paying to build it. They are only providing loan guarantees, not actual money. And they only have to pay to shut it down if a future government forces it to shut it down before the plant stops being commercially viable. The main purpose of both guarantees is to make it much easier for nuclear reactors to get commercial funding from private banks.

> The government isn't paying to build it. They are only providing loan guarantees, not actual money. Loan guarantees are actual money, especially if the builder defaults. > The main purpose of both guarantees is to make it much easier for nuclear reactors to get commercial funding from private banks. So ask yourself why will commercial funders not give money to the builds, while they are perfectly happy for solar/wi…

Its theoretical money, not actual money. A potential future cost. It only becomes actual money if there is a default.

And in most default scenarios, the government wouldn't have to pay the full $40 billion. Just the shortfall between the foreclosure sale price and the remaining loan amount.

> So ask yourself why will commercial funders not give money to the builds, while they are perfectly happy for solar/wind?

First, Solar/wind projects are typically smaller. Less risky to do hundreds or thousands of small projects, spread out over country (or world). The chance of all the projects defaulting at once are small.

Second, one of the biggest risk to nuclear projects are government related. The risk that they might introduce expensive new regulations. Or that the general population (who are typically anti-nuclear) might vote a new anti-nuclear government into power. By having the current government guarantee the loans, future governments will be motivated to not mess with them.

Third, you can't always trust commercial funders to do what's best for the nation, especially from a national security perspective. They might (for example in Germany) decide to rely on cheap natural gas imports from Russia as the primary source of energy, assuming that Russia will always be a stable source of energy forever, and would never start randomly invading it's neighbors.

Re: Sweden’s incoming cabinet says new nuclear reactors will be built

#458

Post by doikor »

ncmncm wrote: post #124
TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another factor affecting the price is that, while there's a lot of hydropower generated in northern Sweden, there's not enough capacity for transferring energy to the south where most consumption is. The investors building industry in the north that can use cheap renewable energy don't seem to mind though. :)

That is, surely, fixable by constructing transmission lines massively cheaper than nukes.

Transmission lines increase the end customer costs (a lot). They are necessary but you want as little of them as you can get away with. Obviously not having enough can also increase costs as you have to use very expensive forms of production to compensate.

Here in Finland the transmission costs before this current price hike were usually 50%+ (for me with my current fixed price contract they are around 60%) of the total electricity bill. We got a really good network but it does come with a cost.

Re: Sweden’s incoming cabinet says new nuclear reactors will be built

#459

Post by FartyMcFarter »

f_allwein wrote: post #84
f_allwein wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except nuclear is expensive and takes decades to build, runs on non renewable materials (a good percentage of which come from Russia), leaves waste that is deadly for 100.000s of years, and promising new technologies will need decades to reach maturity. Now why is it so great compared to, say, solar or geothermal?

Oh wait! And will stop working if your rivers should run dry, as happened in France this summer. Oh and! May not be so easy to build, supposing not everyone loves the technology as much as you do. Google Wackersdorf. Edit: of course, you assume you’d be able to run your power plants safely throughout their life span, even if cough a natural disaster were to occur nearby.

If you use the ocean for cooling, that isn't an issue.

Re: Sweden’s incoming cabinet says new nuclear reactors will be built

#460

Post by ZeroGravitas »

Gravityloss wrote: post #432
coryrc wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which would result in prices going up in the North. Ready to see why people would work against it.

But they get better price for their electricity, more profit for the plant, more taxes and thus the people benefit. Yes, local electricity bill would go up but if the price is often extremely low, selling some for higher price is a net win. Ie this is why we have trade as concept in the first place.

Ironically, this is why the interconnects to mainland Europe that let (southern) Sweden sell its electricity at high prices when there is demand elsewhere are a good thing for everyone involved.

Not a good sign when right-wing governments are complaining about market based price signals and trade.

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