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This article is completely off point. The three Baltic states have inherited Soviet power system and back then they produced more power than they needed and the
by JackPoach 6y ago
This article is completely off point. The three Baltic states have inherited Soviet power system and back then they produced more power than they needed and they were net power exporters. However, in order to join the EU, they had to comply with very strict environmental regulations. For instance, Lithuania had to shut down Ignalina nuclear power plant, this was a required condition from the EU or Lithuania wouldn't be able to join the Union. Last year Estonia had to decommission their shale plants (yes, they used to burn shale) due to CO2. In order to get power from somewhere, a series of interconnectors were built, with Sweden and Finland (which is funny, 40% of Sweden's power comes from nuclear) and those interconnectors had 16 outages within a very short period of time, which happens when you build new grids, you need to work all kinks out. As the result of this, the price of power in the Baltic states increases by about 30% each year. So, this is the background story that you need to understand before reading the article. If you first destroy your power generation capacity and become depended on imports - yeah, you become vulnerable. Excess capacity is unprofitable BUT it's much safer to have it. Right now excess capacity for the Balitc states is Russia and they want to change it to the EU. But physics doesn't care about your political views. It's always smart to have internal excess capacity rather than depend on outside parties.
- probablypower 6y agoYour post is mostly right. I haven't read the article itself (paywall) but I already knew about this particular issue through work. You've touched on a lot of the "pull" factors that cause the Baltic states to connect to the EU. There are however a few geopolitical "push" factors that cause Baltic states (particularly Lithuania) from staying dependent upon connections to Russia. The Lithuanian grid has been able to rely on energy from Russia due to the Kaliningrad enclave being dependent upon the Lithuanian grid. Russia has recently been making investments into making Kaliningrad energy independent. If this is achieved, Russia no longer has a vested interest in the security of the Lithuanian grid. Given the history of alleged Russian sabotage of Lithuanian infrastructure (other than electrical), there is considerable fear that once Kaliningrad is energy independent that Russia may sabotage the Lithuanian grid. Therefore Lithuania is rushing to connect to the EU grid before Kaliningrad achieves self-sufficiency.
- alephnil 6y ago> Lithuania had to shut down Ignalina nuclear power plant, this was a required condition from the EU or Lithuania wouldn't be able to join the Union > which is funny, 40% of Sweden's power comes from nuclear I think the issue there was that this was RBMK-type reactors, which is the same type as in Chernobyl, and it is generally considered unsafe, even with the safety upgrades that was done to it.
- arethuza 6y agoI believe HBO Chernobyl used Ignalina as a filming location.
- anilakar 6y agoOperating a reactor designed for weapon grade fissile material production (which RBMK is) does not look too good, either.
- thoughtstheseus 6y ago“Megatons to megawatts“ was a good slogan though. Agreed it’s not the best approach.
- JackPoach 6y agoYou are correct. And there we talks to build a new nuclear plan for all three Baltic states but they don't seem to have any progress. Moreover, Belarus has built a new nuclear plant 30 miles away from the Lithuanian border (the first reactor is being loaded as we speak) and Lithuania has actually banned any purchases from that plant, while Latvia and Estonia have not. So, there's a lot of politics around nuclear power there as well.
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- yxhuvud 6y agoThe problem with Ignalina was not that it was nuclear, it was that it used a horrible old design that both can and have blown up in catastrophic ways. Note that Sweden is also slowly decommissioning our old bad plants.