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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

#33
post #7

The new coalition government has pledged $40B (approximately the market cap of Twitter, heh) in loan guarantees for nuclear power construction. They have also pledged to create legal guarantees that future politicians will not be able to shut down functioning nuclear power reactors without suitable monetary compensation to the owners/operators of these reactors. In addition to this, they are commissioning an urgent s…

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 management as pro for nuclear reactors.

I think the reasons to shut it down are always overlooked and only the pros of nuclear energy are considered in those arguments.

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

#34
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Relying on coal on for 30%+ of their electricity

According to Wikipedia (quoting a source from jan 2021) 24% of energy production comes from coal.

According to the German Federal Statistical Office (report released a few weeks ago) it was 31.4% on the first half of the year up from 17.2% on the same period a year earlier. https://www.destatis.de/EN/Themes/Economic-Sectors-Enterpris...

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

#36
post #12

Sweden is a small player in the EU but hopefully this will drive more countries away from Germany's dystopian madness

What is Germanys dystopian madness?

Something like 40% of the "renewable" energy being generated in the EU/Britain comes from burning wood, a lot of which was shipped from the US.

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

#37
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.

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,…

It would be stupid to spend on storage before there is enough renewable generating capacity to charge it from. In the meantime they spend, sensibly, on renewable generating capacity.

By the time there is enough, storage will be massively cheaper. In the meantime, charging storage from gas or coal and then drawing it down is the same as burning gas or coal for immediate use, just with losses.

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

#38
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. :)

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

#39
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The previous government didn't stop the shutdown planned 40+ years ago (due to a national referendum), in part because the owners (Vattenfall) said it's not economically feasible to run them anymore without subsidies. It's complex.

The previous anti-nuclear social-democratic government together with the demonstrably insane "green" party installed a board in the state owned power company Vattenfall that after a while managed to sort of claim that it wasn't economically feasible to run the nuclear plants, with the new heavy taxes the social democrats had put in place on nuclear power production. Yay? Anyway, all of that insanity is thankfully his…

No need for personal attacks. I'm not a sore loser.

I think it's a waste that we've not maintained the reactors well enough to still have them able to run at a profit.

And generally that we've (the government, both sides) haven't done anything about it in the last 10-20 years when they had a chance to invest in alternatives (whether building new nuclear or other types of energy sources).

If it's just a matter of taxes then I'm sure it would be easy for the new government to remove them and start back up the old reactors - but obviously that's not the plan. Most likely it's all quite complex and lots of factors leading to this outcome.

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