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

bloomberg.com

541–550 of 583 posts

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

#541
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…

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. :)

So how are they able to transfer electricity to Finland, Poland, Germany etc but not from north to south sweden?

Completely unnecessary rules were put in place to create submarkets for north and south sweden, and it's these rules that disallow the transfer of the electricity. It's more profitable to limit production to keep prices high in sweden, then export and sell in other countries.

Hydro in sweden was overflowing and forced to produce more electricity in sweden during the fall, prices would be zero and even negative if supply and demand was actually in effect, but this would mean zero profits as well, so it's not allowed.

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

#542

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looking at the ratio between installed capacity and actual output of wind turbines, this seems like a faulty calculation. 40GW of installed wind capacity will get you a small percentage of 40GW of guaranteed output. Roughly as much as you get from the nuke. The surplus (when there is enough wind) has to be either burned off, compensated, or stored. Storage technology is nowhere near the scale that would be needed. Co…

The ratio of installed capacity and actual output is called load factor. It’s typically 30% for wind power. That’s still 12GW. 40 billion should be enough for one Hinkley point C type reactor, having 3 GW capacity. Mind you that especially one nuclear reactor is not reliable either having to shut down for maintenance. France for example only gets a load factor of 77% out of their nuclear reactors.

I'm not talking about the average load factor, but the minimum output of the installations. This varies from region to region. At e.g. https://www.smard.de you can easily see the range for wind in Germany. The recent data shows such a minimum at the Oct 12 mark. Anything above that needs to be accounted for. You can also very easily see how gas power stations kick in during lulls. Because that is how it is currently accounted for in Germany (plus the aforementioned burning off of excessive energy to deal with short term spikes etc).

That minimum is, at least for Germany, nowhere near 30% of installed capacity. It's just a few percent. And that's how 40GW are in reality just about one or two GW of guaranteed power. The rest will get burned off or you need a very flexible alternative energy source.

A year ago I would have said that to be gas. Seemed like a good fit for wind. Had Germany converted all its coal and nuclear plants to wind/solar + gas, however, the current situation would be more dire than it already is today.

The most reliable way seems to be to accompany wind with storage. A lot of storage. But that's a long term solution. Short to mid term you need alternative reliable sources. If you don't want to go with coal, nuclear is the only remaining option. So I can't blame the Swedes for going that way.

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

#543
post #506

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Markets aren’t governments, but they have raised the global standard of living vastly beyond our ancestors. They all happily do long term planning, just look at VC funding for risky investments that won’t see returns for years.

Markets existed for six thousand years, they predate ancient egypt. It is scientists and engineers who raised our standars of living, and they appeared recently. It is absolutely perserve for proponents of markets to take credit they do not deserve. Take the invention of Penicilin, Alexander Flemming raised our standards of living while working at a public hospital. It was british and US governments who established m…

So you don’t actually know how ancient or medieval markets worked. That explains the confusion.

Generally people couldn’t arbitrarily start a business without permission. Rulers would limit who could say sell salt and permission it’s self was quite valuable. Think Arrakis being handed over in Dune, only one house had the right to mine spice and that would change based on politics not just competence.

And that’s just the start as slavery, guilds, gender, etc all limited markets.

Throughout history you can track a huge wealth boom whenever places opened up their markets. England’s wealth traces back before the industrial revolution to the early dissolution of serfdom relative to most places. It was actually far more influential than inventions like the early steam engine.

As to penicillin, invention is onky part of the story having a society where people had free time and resources to do research was it’s self a major hurdle. As would having surplus labor to manufacture such complex medicine.

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

#544
post #443

Will they also build a new nuclear waste repository then or are they just going to dump the radioactive waste into the Baltic Sea? Besides: Are they going to buy Uranium from Russia as the US are doing for their reactors?

Hello Miljöpartiet. Still full of bullsh*t and FUD I see.

Thank you for this answer full of facts.

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

#545
post #478
post #443

Will they also build a new nuclear waste repository then or are they just going to dump the radioactive waste into the Baltic Sea? Besides: Are they going to buy Uranium from Russia as the US are doing for their reactors?

> Besides: Are they going to buy Uranium from Russia as the US are doing for their reactors? Sweden has been anti-nuclear for several decades, and one of the laws that has been passed is to forbid Uranium extraction, even though Sweden has quite a bit in its soil. So if this development is any sign, maybe they'll do away with that silly law as well and make it so Sweden doesn't have to buy it from someone else? Also,…

Russia isn’t the largest exporter, but

„Russia is a significant supplier of both uranium and uranium enrichment services. According to the latest available data, the European Union purchased about 20 percent of its natural uranium and 26 percent of its enrichment services from Russia in 2020. The United States imported about 14 percent of its uranium and 28 percent of all enrichment services from Russia in 2021.“

https://www.rferl.org/amp/russia-nuclear-power-industry-grap...

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

#546

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ratio of installed capacity and actual output is called load factor. It’s typically 30% for wind power. That’s still 12GW. 40 billion should be enough for one Hinkley point C type reactor, having 3 GW capacity. Mind you that especially one nuclear reactor is not reliable either having to shut down for maintenance. France for example only gets a load factor of 77% out of their nuclear reactors.

I'm not talking about the average load factor, but the minimum output of the installations. This varies from region to region. At e.g. https://www.smard.de you can easily see the range for wind in Germany. The recent data shows such a minimum at the Oct 12 mark. Anything above that needs to be accounted for. You can also very easily see how gas power stations kick in during lulls. Because that is how it is currently…

How is that different from nuclear? Half of France's power plants are offline. That's not reliable at all. Building new nuclear power plants also takes too long.

We're talking about Sweden that has high amounts of hydro power available for storage.

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

#547
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dr Angela Merkel holds a PhD in quantum physics. she stands by her cabinets decision to leave nuclear energy in densely populated Germany, as per a recent interview. renewables will provide for 80% of Germanies energy needs by 2030, and close enough to 100% in 2050.

Is that the same interview in which she also stood by their decision to rely so heavily on Russian gas, even though the writing has been clearly on the wall since at least 2014?

first that's not what she said. she said given what the cabinet and western intelligence knew they considered it the right approach. and second, in hindsight some writing was on the wall in 2014.

however back then Germany was between a rock and a hard place for our energy supply and we simply added a new supply channel, in addition to US LNG and Saudi and Qatari LNG.

https://youtu.be/yR0wsWrs2yY

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

#548
post #543

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Markets existed for six thousand years, they predate ancient egypt. It is scientists and engineers who raised our standars of living, and they appeared recently. It is absolutely perserve for proponents of markets to take credit they do not deserve. Take the invention of Penicilin, Alexander Flemming raised our standards of living while working at a public hospital. It was british and US governments who established m…

So you don’t actually know how ancient or medieval markets worked. That explains the confusion. Generally people couldn’t arbitrarily start a business without permission. Rulers would limit who could say sell salt and permission it’s self was quite valuable. Think Arrakis being handed over in Dune, only one house had the right to mine spice and that would change based on politics not just competence. And that’s just…

Its not it’s. damn auto corrupt

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

#549
post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It'd be expensive, but it's technically feasible. I'd also expect there's economies of scale involved; building a cable with twice the capacity doesn't cost twice as much; you might even just use the same cable and run it at a higher voltage.

> It'd be expensive, but it's technically feasible. So is nuclear fusion. You have provided no evidence or even argument that it is practical. Proposing that you can compensate day night cycle with transmission is surely a joke, no infrastructure of such scale has ever been built.

Those things aren't equivalent. Useful nuclear fusion (i.e. more electrical power out than in) has not been demonstrated yet, and probably relies on techniques and technologies that haven't been invented yet.

On the other hand, we know how to make high-voltage DC transmission lines -- the only real questions are: how much will it cost, and is there some way we can do it better and cheaper?

There have already been DC lines over 2,000 miles long built that run at 800 kV or more. That's already long enough to reach several time zones away, and it's not a conceptual stretch to imagine linking several of these together to reach further. According to wikipedia:

> In 2010, ABB Group built the world's first 800 kV UHVDC in China. The Zhundong–Wannan UHVDC line with 1100 kV, 3400 km (2100 miles) length and 12 GW capacity was completed in 2018. As of 2020, at least thirteen UHVDC transmission lines in China have been completed.

> While the majority of recent UHVDC technology deployment is in China, it has also been deployed in South America as well as other parts of Asia. In India, a 1830 km (1140 mile), 800 kV, 6 GW line between Raigarh and Pugalur is expected to be completed in 2019.[58] In Brazil, the Xingu-Estreito line over 2076 km (1290 miles) with 800 kV and 4 GW was completed in 2017, and the Xingu-Rio line over 2543 km (1580 miles) with 800 kV and 4 GW was completed in 2019, both to transmit the energy from Belo Monte Dam. As of 2020, no UHVDC line (≥ 800 kV) exists in Europe or North America.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-voltage_direct_current#Ad...

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

#550

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Key policy writers clearly don't understand the difference between energy and power. Ridiculous. Of course they do. > Shuts down nuclear power. You don't know what you are talking about. It was decided decades ago in a referendum that Sweden should move away from nuclear power. A majority of the parties in the parliament has supported this for decades. Despite that. The government hasn't actively closed down nuclea…

> It was decided decades ago in a referendum that Sweden should move away from nuclear power A 1980 referendum where the three options were 1. Decommission the nuclear power, as soon as it is socio-economically feasible. 2. Decommission the nuclear power, as soon as it is socio-economically feasible. Work on reducing electricity use (by e.g. stopping new homes from being built with electric heating), invest in renewa…

My reason for bringing up the referendum was this: Gp insinuated the green party had somehow single handedly shut down Swedish nuclear reactors. This is not the case. The referendum shows scepticism towards nuclear has been the majority opinion in the Swedish parliament for decades. This changed only recently. The green party is one of several parties sceptical towards nuclear energy, they are not some kind of extremists.
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