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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

#451

Post by bigbugbag »

throwaway473825 wrote: post #269
acidburnNSA wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1.6 GWe is huge for a single nuclear reactor. EPRs are on the high end. Most nuclear reactors are closer to 1 GWe. Nuclear plants with multiple reactors on a site certainly do often go well above 1.6.

> EPRs are on the high end. This is an understatement. The three largest nuclear power reactors in the world (Taishan 1, Taishan 2 and Olkiluoto 3) are all EPRs.

Taishan 1 has been shut down last summer due to what seems to be a design fault and may not be restarted.

It is feared that all other current EPR suffer the same design mistake, but there are currently no plan to stop them.

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

#452

Post by dotancohen »

russnes wrote: post #415
ncmncm wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Geothermal boreholes are suddenly much more practical than anybody had guessed, with laser drilling. Its operating cost will necessarily be quite a bit more than solar, but it works in the Arctic winter, 24x7, and provides cogen heat.

probably a stupid question, but is it a possibility that geothermal energy (if adopted to a great extent) could take away from the earths core energy and reduce the magnetic field?

The answer that I've always heard is "no". But that would have also been the answer to "do tailpipe emissions affect the atmosphere" in March 1922, so I'd say that we just don't yet know.

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

#453

Post by dotancohen »

ncmncm wrote: post #431
russnes wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see. 42 million megawatts is 42,000 gigawatts. A quick google search tells me that typical power output of a nuclear power plant is around 1 gigawatt. So a single nuclear power plant would be roughly equivalent to 0.002% of earths geothermal energy radiation. It doesn't sound like much, but for something as crucial as the earth's magnetic field, I wouldn't want to reduce it one bit. I guess if the heat is radiated…

If only all problems were as trivially ignorable as this one. The radius of the Earth is 4000 miles. A 10-mile hole is thus 1/400 of the way to the center. You may as well worry that scratching the skin of an apple might damage the seeds.

Actually scratching the skin of an apple does negatively affect the apple - the part of the "mantle" under the scratch begins to rot right away.

Look at a graph of the temperature of the Earth as a function of depth. The temperature jumps tremendously below the crust, and is much more stable per depth below. The crust is the insulation of the Earth - and damaging that crust might affect the mantle is ways we cannot yet imagine.

The answer remains "we don't know".

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

#454

Post by bigbugbag »

pasiaj wrote: post #281
tuukkah wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear won't solve the climate crisis as it's too slow to build.

Wind turbines work on average at 18-30% efficiency in Finland. The nadir efficiency is roughly at 6%. You'd need to build 1300+ 3MW wind turbines to match the average production of Olkiluoto 3, or 7000+ turbines to guarantee the same level of constant output that this plant puts out reliably. We had this "too slow to build" -argument 15 years ago, but no other renewables have delivered. We built 67 new windmills in 2…

THe current report on Areva ability to build plants has been the object of a public statement by Bernard Doroszczuk, head of ASN (nuclear safety atuhtority) in newspaper Le Monde[1]

He basically says that France is currently or close to be facing a industrial failure for the whole existing nuclear plants which means the nuclear safety cannot be guaranteed. The ability to build anything nuclear is out of reach for France who lacks engineers and technical know how which is the consequences of decades old political decisions to outsource to China, there is a lack of anticipation and no plans which is leading France in a probable dead-end.

The current French EPR in flamanville has confirmed what happened with Okiluoto, hundreds of failures, lack of planning, huge delays, low quality with forged document, going over budget by several times.

You may be interested in reading Marc Endeweld most recent book "L'Emprise. La France sous influence" it covers the current state of nuclear in France and it depicts an even bleaker picture than what the head of ASN publicly acknowledges.

[1]: https://www.lemonde.fr/economie/article/2022/01/19/la-poursu...

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

#455

Post by bigbugbag »

acchow wrote: post #402
Gwypaas wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Easier when you cheat on the documentation. Sitting on two chairs at the same time is hard. > In November 2012 it was discovered that over 5,000 small components used in five reactors at Yeonggwang Nuclear Power Plant had not been properly certified; eight suppliers had faked 60 warranties for the parts. Two reactors were shut down for component replacement, which was likely to cause power shortages in South Korea du…

Thanks for this. I'm curious how many scandals are involved with similar projects taking twice as long to complete in Europe. Or projects taking 4 times as long to complete in the USA? Fewer scandals? More scandals? Worse scandals? I have no idea.

We've seen similar scandals for EPRs in Flamanville and Okiluoto, forged document to fake certification of vital components of the plants, unqualified workers, lack of planning, lot of outsourcing,… it should be documented on the relevant wikipedia pages.

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

#456

Post by bigbugbag »

korantu wrote: post #316
afterburner wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Um, the one in this very article took 17 years.

The fact that other countries build reactors en masse in 5 years, tells us it is possible. South Korea is good place to learn from

Not so sure: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30657725

Also we already have a similar level of wrongdoings with the French EPRs.

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

#457

Post by bigbugbag »

cm2187 wrote: post #225
threeseed wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't work in every country but renewables with storage can provide 24/7 power. And it's a fraction of the price of nuclear.

Renewables with “magic” storage. Wind can be low for a month for a whole country (cf UK last year). There is no storage technology that can store that much power at scale. What you need is an alternative on demand source of energy, which cost is always omitted when looking at renewable energy cost.

Actually, no.

The only climate compatible way is not an alternative on demande source of energy, but the other way around: adapt our energy consumption to its availability and significantly lower our energy use. (see this 2009 piece by low tech magazine[1])

This is the real issue with dealing with climate change: we have to drastically change our way of living, in ways that most of us have not properly grasped and are not ok with.

But it is not a matter of choice, this will happen. It is a matter of choosing to do it in a somewhat controlled manner over the few time left, of to be subjected to this change in a brutal way.

[1]: https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2009/11/renewable-energy-i...

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

#458

Post by bigbugbag »

chelical wrote: post #439
threeseed wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't work in every country but renewables with storage can provide 24/7 power. And it's a fraction of the price of nuclear.

24/7 isn't true at all. People keep repeating this like it's 2020. There's an ongoing energy crisis that started in 2021. Low wind speeds across all of Europe were a massive trigger.

also France stopped 13+ nuclear reactors mid-winter which really did not help.

But defects were found that would jeopardize the current evaluation to renew the certification for using them for 10 more years, so the decision was made to stop several reactors for forced maintenance and repairs.

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

#459

Post by chii »

chelical wrote: post #435
pavlov wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s… not the definition of waste. Have you ever worked at a big corporation? They pay for some stupid useless shit just because it’s nobody’s job to stop paying for the service.

I think the point is that the only way to reduce crypto profitability is to impose a soft limit on electricity by massively increase the cost of electricity if you exceed a certain allotment. Otherwise, there's no real way to tell if someone is mining crypto or if they just using a lot of electricity unless it's a massive mining operation.

Why is crypto a waste, but another equivalently large use of electricity isn't?

If somebody was growing weed indoors, or they're smelting aluminium, then they're not wasting?

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

#460

Post by kleene_op »

ncmncm wrote: post #300
Manuel_D wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right. But remember, not all forms of green energy generation are equal. Wind and solar need some dispatchable source as a backup. Hydro works, if you have it. But it's geographically limited. Gas is the typical backup source, but that emits carbon. Nuclear, as it stands, is the only solution to decarbonizing the energy grid for much of the world. Until some breakthrough in energy storage transpires, or fusion become…

Storage is a solved problem, and only needs to be built out. No such "breakthrough" is needed. Storage cost is falling much faster, even, than solar and wind generation. The only question today is whether to put a euro into solar or wind now, or into storage that will be much cheaper next year. Thus far, in most places, the former is still favored. More carbon tax can help move the choice the other way. As solar and…

I'll consider storage a solved problem when we actually have it.

In the mean time, nuclear is a nice thing to invest in.

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