161–170 of 632 posts
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Does that suggest that one plant will satisfy 36% of the country's electricity demand?
Finland is an entire country, but it also has a population smaller than Toronto or Dallas.
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> solar/wind could serve both factors well Not 24/7.
Sure, but let's build 150% of total needed capacity as renewables, and burn coal for the 5 days a year we still need to.
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.
Is wind not possible?
Now that I think of it, I've never anyone speak of the impact on wildlife, nor seen a wind turbine in a forest (only ever on open farmland). Considering both noise and large shadows moving constantly, I assume it will have some impact. (I did hear that bird strikes are a non-issue in relative terms.) Even Wikipedia has no info on anything but birds/bats for on-shore installations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_wind_p...
Edit: double checked that Finland is actually mostly forest: [PDF] https://www.eea.europa.eu/themes/landuse/land-cover-country-... Screenshot from relevant part of PDF: https://snipboard.io/KFDEIr.jpg
The 9+5+4=18% water bodies, arable land, and pastures/mosaics (respectively) might also be a good target.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surface_power_density says 1.84 W/m², so at 18% of 338'662 "hundreds ha" = 61 billion m² you get 112 GW which translates into 983 TWh after a year (8760 hours). Looking at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Finland that's 2.6 times more energy than they used in 2013 (this includes heating, driving, etc. but not things like imported clothes, plastic products, etc.). All this is considering only the land area, not sea.
Future work: calculate how many years of monopolizing the world's steel production it takes to get these things produced, much less built in the middle of nowhere with frozen winters.
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Where are the uranium mines?
Kazakhstan (under Russia's sphere of influence) is the largest producer at 36% of the global supply (5% from Russia itself.) It can be purchased from countries like Canada (15%) or Australia (12%). The next two are Namibia and Niger, each producing 8% of the global supply.
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When an article starts with chernobyl as example of what mistakes we're likely to make when building a new plant today, it makes me itch to just close the tab and dismiss the opinion of the person who linked it. Not sure why I even bothered digging into it, but for example one later point is also misleading: "uranium resources will be depleted by the end of this century". I think I found the source (not that they lin…
> Accidents in nuclear power plants can have disastrous implications. As in the case if Chernobyl, large areas around the site remain unusable forever What exactly about this do you not buy? And what is your solution for storing nuclear waste safely for hundreds of thousands of years?
We got from horses to Lamborghini Huracan in a century.
Good job Finland. I respect the opinions of the environmentalists and agree with most of what they say, but until we have something more reliable that can put out power 24/7 year round, we need more new, modern nuclear plants.
And it's a fraction of the price of nuclear.
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And heat-polluted waste waters? People keep pretending there are no externalities.
What prevents heated waste water from being used for…heat? Surely Finland uses central heating plants that pump hot water throughout the city (or maybe that’s just a Chinese/Russian thing?). What makes waste heat water less suited to heating, higher entropy?
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And heat-polluted waste waters? People keep pretending there are no externalities.
What prevents heated waste water from being used for…heat? Surely Finland uses central heating plants that pump hot water throughout the city (or maybe that’s just a Chinese/Russian thing?). What makes waste heat water less suited to heating, higher entropy?
What I find shockingly absent in this article is any commentary on budget and cost overruns. I'm definitely not anti-nuclear but it stands to reason that a comparison vs other forms of energy would've been wise to consider.
With the success of anti-nuclear rhetoric, we became pretty incompetent at building these things. It's just like the space program.
That's the reason it has struggled for traction.
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Is wind not possible?
Depends how much area you want to repurpose (note that it includes roads, power lines, and regular tree trimming near those power lines in addition to the turbines themselves), but I'd estimate that with current and projected Finnish population density, this would actually be a realistic option, yes. Now that I think of it, I've never anyone speak of the impact on wildlife, nor seen a wind turbine in a forest (only e…
1) wind moves faster/freer the higher you are above the ground. the height of the trees moves the ‘ground’ up, without actually moving it up from a foundation or structure perspective. So you spend the money for a 300 ft tower, but only get 200ft of usable height. Not fun.
2) trees grow into things, fall on things, burn at inconvenient times, and are generally a maintenance headache.
3) many types of trees are very, very strong and require expensive heavy equipment to clear at large scales, especially if you need to remove a lot of stumps. So it adds extra cost above some already significant costs of land.
If you already have some cleared land somewhere, assuming all other factors are equal, it will definitely be preferred.
