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Finland starts much-delayed nuclear plant, brings respite to power market

reuters.com

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Re: Finland starts much-delayed nuclear plant, brings respite to power market

#41

Post by rdsubhas »

loufe wrote: post #4

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.

We have completely screwed up market price discovery for energy with big govt involvement and subsidies. The numbers I see everywhere are cherry picked to present a winner and loser.

e.g. Depending on whose point of view you read, solar/wind prices either includes or not: subsidies, storage, land, weather, green label costs passed on to customers, interest rates, etc. Coal prices either includes or not: labor, imports, duties, mining, environmental costs, health costs, etc.

Lately I've come to a conclusion that we can make any of these methods appear equal, higher or lower by shifting the books.

Atleast I'm happy that this article is focusing only on the benefits and outcome, rather than invent winners and losers.

Re: Finland starts much-delayed nuclear plant, brings respite to power market

#42

Post by sascha_sl »

pstuart wrote: post #6
loufe wrote: post #4

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.

Yep. I think the only chance for embracing more nuclear would be to have smaller modular reactors that can be built on an assembly line. And while we're dreaming, moving to Thorium as the fuel.

Very distinct things. China is actively deploying modular reactors while thorium salt reactors have many unsolved problems, mostly with durability that will need substantial advancements in material sciences to become viable.

Re: Finland starts much-delayed nuclear plant, brings respite to power market

#44

Post by dendrite9 »

Ekaros wrote: post #22
dry_soup wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Care to elaborate?

Finnish market is tied to other Nordics that are tied to central Europe. So it is cascading effect. Main culprit for Nordics really is poor levels of hydro reservoirs. And high prices in Central Europe leading to prices also increasing here.

This is surprising to me, I found this number for Finland: 22.5% comes from hydropower. I suppose I'm stuck associating Tampere, Finland (Nokia) with hydropower as well as the Venmork plant in Norway that was sabotaged during WW2. I realize that doesn't mean much however.

I have to do some reading, but my understanding was that the Finnish plant is using an alternate funding structure from many of the existing nuclear installations. Less direct subsidies or more risk directly on the commercial entities?

Re: Finland starts much-delayed nuclear plant, brings respite to power market

#45

Post by pstuart »

sascha_sl wrote: post #42
pstuart wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. I think the only chance for embracing more nuclear would be to have smaller modular reactors that can be built on an assembly line. And while we're dreaming, moving to Thorium as the fuel.

Very distinct things. China is actively deploying modular reactors while thorium salt reactors have many unsolved problems, mostly with durability that will need substantial advancements in material sciences to become viable.

Acknowledged -- I was smooshing thoughts together.

Re: Finland starts much-delayed nuclear plant, brings respite to power market

#46

Post by jpgvm »

krono wrote: post #34
cipher_system wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something like this. The project started in 2000, construction began in 2005 and should have been completed in 2010. Original cost was 3 billion euro but landed on over 10 billion euro. It is the first nuclear reactor in Europe for 15 years so not much working experience or available sub contractors. Apparently, China, South Korea, Japan and Russia can build at a third of the cost and time of that. If nuclear energy…

> Apparently, China, South Korea, Japan and Russia can build at a third of the cost and time of that. Any insight into the why?

They didn't lose their nuclear capability because they kept maintaining and building reactors instead of decommissioning them. US and to a degree most of Europe did not.

China in particular plans to build ~250 new reactors over the next few years, most like new HTG reactors based on the pebble bed technology Germany sold to them when they abandoned their next-gen nuclear plans.

Russia has reactor building capabilities that are still current but their domestic needs are stagnating so said capability could decay as they don't actually need to build modern reactors at this time.

Japan has a similar problem to Russia in that post-Fukishima there isn't domestic demand for nuclear reactors. However they are building reactors for other countries, in particular I think they are planning to build ~20 good sized reactors in India.

Re: Finland starts much-delayed nuclear plant, brings respite to power market

#47

Post by [deleted] »

Hikikomori wrote: post #19
loufe wrote: post #4

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.

That isn't something you typically see from Reuters.

[deleted]

Re: Finland starts much-delayed nuclear plant, brings respite to power market

#49

Post by londons_explore »

LatteLazy wrote: post #32
rdsubhas wrote: post #27

What I find incredible is: Once this fully ramps up, this one power plant is expected to satisfy 14% of the entire country's electricity needs. 7 of these could power an entire country, 24/7.

That's the average. But you'd need a few more for peak demand and a few more for when these are offline for maintenance, refuelling etc.

I suspect in today's world of maximizing capital efficiency, and being able to contract in large numbers of people, the very expensive power plant won't be offline for long for maintenance.

They'll probably shut the plant down, and have 500 workers come in to replace everything that needs to be replaced, and then power it up again within a few days, and let it run for another 6 months or so.

Everything will be planned on workplans, and most won't require specialist knowledge... Eg. "Replace pump 205 in building C with this pump. Required skills people: 2x plumber, 2x electrician".

Re: Finland starts much-delayed nuclear plant, brings respite to power market

#50

Post by krasin »

sascha_sl wrote: post #40
dahfizz wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A bit of pumped hydro storage would also satisfy those needs.

PSH could not bridge demand for long enough. Maintenance cycles on nuclear reactors can be quite long.

Make it 8 stations instead of 7 to have an excess of energy and then use the extra energy, when there's not enough demand, to produce fertilizers or other energy-intensive goods.
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