16 ms·

The Olkiluoto 3 EPR plant unit started up

179 points by Maakuth 5y ago

ggm 5y ago
First in Finland for 40 years, first in Europe for 15. (According to the pr release)
- fuoqi 5y ago
  >first in Europe for 15 Not if you count the Astravets plant in Belarus and a bunch of reactors in Russia.
  - littlestymaar 5y ago
    People have this weird tendency to equate “Europe” with Western Europe (or more accurately: EU + Switzerland + Norway (+ UK sometimes, since Brexit it depends))
    - anewhnaccount2 5y ago
      It's not that weird that people shift the borders given that Europe is not a real continent but rather constructed around ideas of "Western civilization". Is using it EU + close allies model really worse than drawing a border at the point where there starts to be too much non-Christian influence to bare?
      - inglor_cz 5y ago
        "Europe" is a name of Phoenician origin, much older than Christianity. It was already old when Classical Greece was young. A lot of the modern confusion stems from the tendency of EU to refer to itself as "Europe" (see: European Council, European Central Bank, European Parliament etc.)
        littlestymaar 5y ago
        I really think it's backwards: EU tends to refer itself as Europe because of the former Western block mindset.
        inglor_cz 5y ago
        That might be the case in the 1980s, but later I believe another mindset prevailed: an ambition of the EU to actually expand to include entire Europe, or at least the non-Russian part thereof. With Brexit, the complicated security situation east of Poland and the fact that the Swiss, the Norwegians and the Icelanders seem to be OK with staying outside, this ambition is no longer realistic to fulfill short- to mid-term, but it survives nonetheless.
        littlestymaar 5y ago
        > an ambition of the EU to actually expand to include entire Europe, or at least the non-Russian part thereof. No, not “the non-Russian part thereof”, the entire Europe “From the Atlantic to Ural”[1] [1]: https://mondediplo.com/2018/10/04russia https://mondediplo.com/2018/10/04russia
        inglor_cz 5y ago
        As recently as 2019, Macron expressed the idea that "Europe stretches from Lisbon to Vladivostok". https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2019/08/20/russia-is-deeply-european-frances-macron-says-in-russian-a66947 https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2019/08/20/russia-is-deeply-e... Realistically, though, Russia would have to change a lot internally before joining the EU. I am slightly more optimistic about Turkish membership, if Erdogan bites the dust and someone more Western-like (Imamoglu?) comes to power and rewrites the constitution again. Turkish industry is very much integrated into European supply chains.
        fuoqi 5y ago
        "Europe from Lisbon to Vladivostok" is a much older ideal, IIRC it has roots as far as in early 90s. And if you stretch it enough you can even trace it back to Charles de Gaulle. But for it to happen not only Russia has to significantly improve internally, but also EU itself has to be different. For starters it would have to be truly independent from the US influence and Brussel's grip on the union would have to be weaker. Russian political culture historically is very firm on being able to independently decide its own fate (and no, it's not a matter of "democratization"). Take the current EU issues with the Poles and multiply it a hundredfold to get a rough approximation of what the current EU would have with Russia. Before 2007 (see the Munich speech) Russia sincerely tried to join the EU and the collective West. But the condition "proposed" at the time and attitude towards Russia fundamentally collided with that deep culture, resulting in the situation which we see today. If you want to learn more about it from a non-Western perspective, I recommend watching https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8X7Ng75e5gQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8X7Ng75e5gQ
      - littlestymaar 5y ago
        Given the prominent role that Russia played in European history since the 17th century I find it really annoying to rule it out of Europe just because it wasn't in the American side of the cold war. Russia is definitely part of the Western civilization by any means if you don't limit this definition to what happened during the second half of the twentieth century… What on earth would make Russia less part of “Western civilization” than Slovakia or Greece?!
        eps 5y ago
        I think Russia is commonly excluded from "Europe" simply because only a small part of it is in Europe and the rest is not. Bundling it in would've caused Europe overlap with Asia and that's just confusing.
        Ekaros 5y ago
        Funnily enough it makes nearly 40% of land area of Europe... And 14% of population... Reality is that most of Russia west of Ural is kinda just there.
        littlestymaar 5y ago
        The majority of the Russian population lives in Europe. It's a bit like saying that Denmark isn't really in Europe because most of its land area are actually Greenland. Yet nobody does that! And the OP was not only excluding Russia from Europe in their post, but also Belarus which is unambiguously in Europe. It's a former part of the eastern block which is still under Moscow's influence so in must not be “Europe” because this word has been preempted by the American block.
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
    - Hamuko 5y ago
      I don't really remember ever hearing anyone talk about Russia when they refer to Europe except in geography class.
      - littlestymaar 5y ago
        In any history class about the history of Europe, you would have a hard time not talking about Russia… Excluding Russia from Europe is a really recent trend actually, it appeared even after the fall of the iron curtain, during the late 90 s, early 2000s as an attempt to marginalize Russia.
        DangerousPie 5y ago
        You'll also have a hard time not talking about Spain in the history of Latin America, but that doesn't mean it's part of it.
        littlestymaar 5y ago
        I should have added “as a European power” because it's what Russia was: a European power, and nobody would have questioned that in the 1950.
        Hamuko 5y ago
        If they wanted us to be inclusive towards them, maybe they should've tried not invading us.
        fuoqi 5y ago
        Are you talking about the country which was invaded numerous times from the west?
        littlestymaar 5y ago
        Are you going to kick France out of Europe then? Because we've invaded our neighbors way more than Russians ever did. Heck, without the Russians Napoleon would probably have invaded England, achieving complete French domination over the continent!
    - Ekaros 5y ago
      Just like "America" doesn't include Mexico and south...
    - _ph_ 5y ago
      Well, in topics like these, where economics and technical standards play a huge role, it totally makes sense to use this interpretation of Europe.
    - zokier 5y ago
      Its not really much different than saying "America" when meaning the US. Or even England vs UK/GB.
- natded 5y ago
  And as I understand, this is already an old design (they started building it in the 00s).
  - derriz 5y ago
    You might think so but this is the nuclear energy industry - where building a plant typically takes at least a decade (or not-uncommonly 2 decades or more). In fact, this is currently the most modern production reactor design in the world. It's an EPR[1] - a third generation reactor design. But so far it's been plagued by massive cost and schedule overruns and of the two reactors of this design to become operational, Taishan 2[2] has already been taken offline after less than a year in order to investigate problem with the fuel rods. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPR_(nuclear_reactor) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPR_(nuclear_reactor) [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taishan_Nuclear_Power_Plant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taishan_Nuclear_Power_Plant
ncmncm 5y ago
It is always easy to understand a nuke plant construction taking multiples of extra years and euros, when they are permitted at all: So long as it is not finished, the money can keep flowing. If it is ever done, the gravy train stops. Nobody actually involved wants that ever to happen. But if it looks like it will happen anyway, there is some advantage to actually delivering a working nuke plant before that. The trick is in identifying how late that can be. If you get it too wrong, the money runs out without a working nuke constructed. That can be OK if enough money is extracted first, as in South Carolina, where they sucked out ?$30B without delivering a promised 2 GW plant. That ended up with criminal indictments, but only for a few people. Almost everybody got to keep the money, Carolina ratepayers of course excepted. The same process is seen in metro transit projects. It is an interesting topic in governance design how to avoid starting the process. One essential component appears to be easily priced subunits, such as solar panels or wind turbines, and early production. It is not easy to do that, with a nuke, but we don't really need nukes. Sometimes we do need transit projects.
wly_cdgr 5y ago
Pretty standard for a big project to take twice as long as initially projected, no? This isn't exactly a SaaS startup where you can ship a spaghetti turd MVP to hit the deadline and fix later if you get traction
mcraiha 5y ago
Price of electricity has been very high in Finland during last month. And finally they can start this thing (it should have been started 12 years ago) https://www.news24.com/fin24/International/finlands-olkiluoto-nuclear-plant-to-power-up-12-years-late-20211217 https://www.news24.com/fin24/International/finlands-olkiluot...
- RNAlfons 5y ago
  Will the price of electricity now fall with the plant?
  - fulafel 5y ago
    Yes, but the effect size depends on the size of the electricity market area, which is a function of transmission capacity and agreements. In this case it seems the increased supply will be absorbed by a market area that spans multiple countries, so the price effect should be less than what you might guess from the relatively big local production capacity jump. Also there might be an incentive to expand the transmission capacity for export.
  - colechristensen 5y ago
    It will produce 14% of Finland’s electricity so one would think so, but other fuel prices are very high around the world so maybe not a whole lot.
  - fuoqi 5y ago
    In the very best case it will be connected to the grid in the end of January, so not until then.
    - Sharlin 5y ago
      And at 100% capacity only in June, at which point the current price spike is hopefully over…
  - anttisalmela 5y ago
    Definitely. Extra production will tip the scale of imports and exports so that the price in Finland will match most of the time whatever the price is in northern Sweden with its abundance of hydropower. OL3 will also probably lower prices in Estonia and Southern Sweden.
fuoqi 5y ago
Projects like this are commonly used by opponents of nuclear energy to demonstrate that nuclear energy is expensive compared to solar/wind and thus should not be pursued. I wonder how fast the Hanhikivi plant will be built and how much it will cost in the end. Recent Rosatom's record is quite good, so hopefully they will be an example of economic feasibility of nuclear energy and that the nuclear expensiveness is mostly not technological, but an organizational problem.
- 7952 5y ago
  I agree the difficulty is organisational. But that does not make it an easier problem to solve
- belorn 5y ago
  Comparing nuclear with solar/wind has always been a false comparison. In order to make a fair comparison one would need to combine storage with solar/wind, and in latitudes for Finland this would mostly mean wind with storage capacity in terms of months. The alternative is fossil fuels in combination with wind/solar, the most cost effective grid that currently exist. During optimal weather conditions renewables are the cheapest energy on the planet, and during non-optimal weather conditions fossil fuels is usually the cheapest energy that can meet demand. Living in Sweden, I am slightly hopeful that the nuclear plant in Finland might reduce the need to run the oil power plant located in southern parts of Sweden. The oil power plant is the single highest contributor for carbon emissions in the south of Sweden, despite the fact that Sweden mostly operate on hydro and nuclear. 70 tons of oil per hour goes up in smoke in a time where the oil need to stay in the ground. More solar/wind will not have much of an effect on this oil power plant since it only operates during non-optimal weather conditions. Currently we are several weeks in with a weather of low wind conditions, with energy prices skyrocketing as a result. The Finish project had some good luck in term of timing by turning on the nuclear power plant right in the middle of exceptional high energy prices.
  - Krasnol 5y ago
    It has been a false comparison with nuclear too. Nuclear storage, processing remediation, etc. are either not mentioned at all or plainly wrong as they differ extremely from country to country and over time periods which are hardly calculable.
timonoko 5y ago
Unlike in Deutschland only half of the Green Party members oppose Nukular Power. 10 years ago it was 101%.
- Krasnol 5y ago
  Besides the far right party AfD, everybody opposes nuclear power in Germany. Including the operators: https://www.wiwo.de/atomausstieg-rwe-chef-krebber-will-atomkraftwerke-nicht-laenger-laufen-lassen/27544352.html?share=twitter https://www.wiwo.de/atomausstieg-rwe-chef-krebber-will-atomk...
- vesinisa 5y ago
  The Finnish Neo-Luddite / Green Party resigned from the government twice as a protest against permitting new Nuclear Power plants. And these are the people who are supposed to be solving climate change..
  - Ekaros 5y ago
    I hope the day comes when we can put all of them on trial for crimes against humanity.
    - vegai_ 5y ago
      If we did that universally for crimes related to causing the current/upcoming environmental catastrophe, there wouldn't be many people left unjudged.
    - nikanj 5y ago
      Meanwhile greenpeace is putting up memorials for people who voted -for- nuclear power. I think they meant to shame the people https://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenpeace_Norden#/media/Tiedosto:Nuclear_power_vote_memorial_Toolonlahti_Helsinki.jpg https://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenpeace_Norden#/media/Tiedo...
  - lb0 5y ago
    Yes, and they as enough still others believe that you don't solve one huge problem by going back to another huge problem.
leyok93138 5y ago
Hi
vesinisa 5y ago
And only 13 years late! Original estimate for the start of electricity production was 2009. Full-scale commercial production is now on track to start in mid-2022. This project has been absolutely harrowed by a seemingly infinite string of delays, and is now believed to be one of the world's most expensive construction projects ever undertaken: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olkiluoto_Nuclear_Power_Plant#Unit_3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olkiluoto_Nuclear_Power_Plant#...
- maeln 5y ago
  > And only 13 years late! Not very surprising when you see that Areva/Framatome was involved :^) /s All jokes aside, having worked for a manufacturer of nuclear equipment, delay are usually the result of two factor: One is that the sales department of the companies involved are "very optimistic", and by that I mean, they ask engineer to do an estimation for the time/cost of designing/manufacturing one part, and then ask them to slash it by half (talking from experience, sadly, ...). They want to make sure that they get the contract so they make unrealistic proposition and then make sure that the contract is made so that they can still profit when the project will take twice the time and money. The second is the level of standard for this type of construction and equipment which is, thankfully, extremely high. A single small scratch could mean that you had to scrap and redo a lot of part of a thermal exchanger or tank. So, even the tiniest of manufacturing defect, or even slight damaged made when testing of moving the piece, can mean months of delay to redo and qualify the piece.
  - doikor 5y ago
    Also the project taking this long caused further delays. For example Siemens finished their work on the turbines a long time ago but had to basically rebuild the whole damn thing because it just sat there for more than a decade. This is due to turbines being designed to spin constantly not sit still for years.
  - masklinn 5y ago
    Here they also sold a novel design, Olki 3 ate most of the construction teething issues (though flamanville hit its fair share as well), Taishan seems to have gone better as they entered service in 2018 and 2019. Construction and operation teething issues are nothing surprising, but Areva was definitely… way over-optimistic about the EPR. I still can’t believe they advertised a 4 years plan when the first N4 (previous generation) took 12 years to build, and needed an additional 4 before it started operation. Hell, going down the list of reactors on the wiki, even the 900MWe class never went from first stone to operation in 4 years, the shortest looks to have been Blayais 1 which took a hair short of 5 (January 1st, 1977 to December 1st, 1981), and taking somewhere between 5 and 6 was much more typical for the 900MWe class. The P4s were a bit worse (7-9) and the N4s were way worse (the shortest time between build start and start of operation was Civaux 2 at 11 years, the Chooz reactors took 16).
nikanj 5y ago
Due to Political Reasons, they decided to limit the permit on number of reactors - not total power. Hence they had to build one ginormous reactor, facing numerous issues caused by venturing into the limits of maximum power per reactor. Had they permitted 4 * 400MW instead of 1 * 1600MW, the plant would have been in production for years already.
- Maakuth 5y ago
  I'm doubtful of that. One big root cause for most of the delays is the fact that no new reactor projects were started in a long time before this one, in Western regulation regimes. Due to this, a lot of cumulative experience was lost from the industry and the designs become outdated. For example all the previous designs relied on relay based automation, which is no longer available. Add to that the increasing demand of safety, necessitating way heavier structures and yet again obsoleting designs. I would think building another one like this should be less of an ordeal. Too bad the sister project at Flamanville was started too early after this one to benefit from the lessons learned.
  - tekkk 5y ago
    No it's almost a rule to build reactors in pairs. That way when you maintain the other, the other still outputs energy. When the decision was made Green Party was in the cabinet and they had made a promise not to build any more nuclear power. So a compromise was made and to actually meet the energy demands of the Finnish industry, the biggest possible reactor was chosen.
    - Maakuth 5y ago
      I'm not disputing that there were politics involved in choosing to build one instead of two reactors. What I mean is that the many of the big challenges facing this project were not particularly connected to the power of the unit. Any size of a reactor would have had the challenges with strict regulation, new type of automation, lack of experienced personnel, etc.
    - doikor 5y ago
thinkingemote 5y ago
Given that it has cost around $11 Billion and has taken 13 years, but has around a 60 year life span (much longer than older ones) and then the costs with decommissioning, how long will it take to be economically worth it? (let alone make an operating profit or be environmentally beneficial)
- pasiaj 5y ago
  At current energy prices in Finland, it would take less than 1/10 of the time expected. (Of course the current price is a bit of an anomaly.)
  - eb0la 5y ago
    I am not sure if it is just a bit. Gas supply in Europe is having issues: - Gas supply from Algeria via Morocco is closed. - Russia is sending less gas as usual (and profiting from it). Demand from gas in Europe remains the almost the same, but supply isn't.
    - fuoqi 5y ago
      - Force long-term contracts to be tied to spot prices instead of oil. - Do not fill storage assuming lower prices in autumn. - Intentionally delay certification of a pipeline from one of your main suppliers. - Act very surprised when the aforementioned supplier does nothing to stop spot prices explosion due to the external circumstances and even fans the flames a bit. - Make questionable remarks which accelerate the rise of gas prices even further. - Demand (sic!) from the supplier additional gas not covered by existing contracts, even though it's clearly not in his interest. I wonder why does the EU has gas supply issues?
      - zajio1am 5y ago
        > Intentionally delay certification of a pipeline from one of your main suppliers. The pipeline is not certified because it breaks existing legislation. It is up to pipeline developers/owners to fix this issue.
Sharlin 5y ago
OL3 goes critical and the JWST is (probably) actually launching! Great week for massively complex, massively delayed engineering projects.
ekianjo 5y ago
> The EPR design has several active and passive protection measures against accidents: > Four independent emergency cooling systems, each providing the required cooling of the decay heat that continues for 1 to 3 years after the reactor's initial shutdown (i.e., 300% redundancy) > Leak-tight containment around the reactor > An extra container and cooling area if a molten core manages to escape the reactor (see containment building and core catcher) > Two-layer concrete wall with total thickness 2.6 m, designed to withstand impact by aeroplanes and internal overpressure
- Maakuth 5y ago
  https://www.tvo.fi/uploads/julkaisut/tiedostot/ydinvoimalayks_OL3_ENG.pdf https://www.tvo.fi/uploads/julkaisut/tiedostot/ydinvoimalayk... here's a nice summary of the plant design.
Yaggo 5y ago
When the said plant project started over 10 years ago, I was an opponent of nuclear power, participating in demonstrations etc. Nowadays I'm really thankful for the new plant, as every non-fossil energy source is absolutely crucial, not to mention my electricity bill. Actually nuclear has the lowest carbon footprint, and a big advantage of being able to deliver very stable power output. The challenge with waste storage and other risks are real of course, but we just have to to accept them in the current situation of global warming.
- ridruejo 5y ago
  And from a geopolitical perspective, given everything going on and Finland’s neighbour
- rosndo 5y ago
  > The challenge with waste storage and other risks are real of course But the “challenge” with waste storage is a big lie. The French have all the waste ever generated by their nuclear program sitting under the floor of a single room. The quantities of “waste” generated by nuclear plants are not really meaningful even over long time horizons.
  - chinathrow 5y ago
    How can you be so sure about that? We have like waste from max 40-50 years now sitting around and the problem is still unsolved. I doubt that civilisation can manage to manage this waste for 100'000y to come.
    - Sharlin 5y ago
      It's sitting around. Solid. Inert. Meanwhile there are gigatons of CO2 released to the atmosphere every year that causes an extremely acute global problem and we have no idea what to do to that either.
      - chinathrow 5y ago
        My post was not about CO2 (the fact that I hate that we emit way too much that I remove some via Stripe Climatr). Sitting nuclear waste still needs to be maintained for centuries to come and we still have no solition for that.
sandos 5y ago
Thank you Finland, can we stop exporting 1GW+ of our precious electricity to you year-round soon? ;)
- foxfluff 5y ago
  You don't welcome our money? I need to keep my sauna hot one way or another :(

179 points by Maakuth 5y ago

ggm 5y ago

First in Finland for 40 years, first in Europe for 15. (According to the pr release)

fuoqi 5y ago
>first in Europe for 15 Not if you count the Astravets plant in Belarus and a bunch of reactors in Russia.
- littlestymaar 5y ago
  People have this weird tendency to equate “Europe” with Western Europe (or more accurately: EU + Switzerland + Norway (+ UK sometimes, since Brexit it depends))
  - anewhnaccount2 5y ago
    It's not that weird that people shift the borders given that Europe is not a real continent but rather constructed around ideas of "Western civilization". Is using it EU + close allies model really worse than drawing a border at the point where there starts to be too much non-Christian influence to bare?
    - inglor_cz 5y ago
      "Europe" is a name of Phoenician origin, much older than Christianity. It was already old when Classical Greece was young. A lot of the modern confusion stems from the tendency of EU to refer to itself as "Europe" (see: European Council, European Central Bank, European Parliament etc.)
      - littlestymaar 5y ago
        I really think it's backwards: EU tends to refer itself as Europe because of the former Western block mindset.
        inglor_cz 5y ago
        That might be the case in the 1980s, but later I believe another mindset prevailed: an ambition of the EU to actually expand to include entire Europe, or at least the non-Russian part thereof. With Brexit, the complicated security situation east of Poland and the fact that the Swiss, the Norwegians and the Icelanders seem to be OK with staying outside, this ambition is no longer realistic to fulfill short- to mid-term, but it survives nonetheless.
        littlestymaar 5y ago
        > an ambition of the EU to actually expand to include entire Europe, or at least the non-Russian part thereof. No, not “the non-Russian part thereof”, the entire Europe “From the Atlantic to Ural”[1] [1]: https://mondediplo.com/2018/10/04russia https://mondediplo.com/2018/10/04russia
        inglor_cz 5y ago
        As recently as 2019, Macron expressed the idea that "Europe stretches from Lisbon to Vladivostok". https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2019/08/20/russia-is-deeply-european-frances-macron-says-in-russian-a66947 https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2019/08/20/russia-is-deeply-e... Realistically, though, Russia would have to change a lot internally before joining the EU. I am slightly more optimistic about Turkish membership, if Erdogan bites the dust and someone more Western-like (Imamoglu?) comes to power and rewrites the constitution again. Turkish industry is very much integrated into European supply chains.
        fuoqi 5y ago
        "Europe from Lisbon to Vladivostok" is a much older ideal, IIRC it has roots as far as in early 90s. And if you stretch it enough you can even trace it back to Charles de Gaulle. But for it to happen not only Russia has to significantly improve internally, but also EU itself has to be different. For starters it would have to be truly independent from the US influence and Brussel's grip on the union would have to be weaker. Russian political culture historically is very firm on being able to independently decide its own fate (and no, it's not a matter of "democratization"). Take the current EU issues with the Poles and multiply it a hundredfold to get a rough approximation of what the current EU would have with Russia. Before 2007 (see the Munich speech) Russia sincerely tried to join the EU and the collective West. But the condition "proposed" at the time and attitude towards Russia fundamentally collided with that deep culture, resulting in the situation which we see today. If you want to learn more about it from a non-Western perspective, I recommend watching https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8X7Ng75e5gQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8X7Ng75e5gQ
    - littlestymaar 5y ago
      Given the prominent role that Russia played in European history since the 17th century I find it really annoying to rule it out of Europe just because it wasn't in the American side of the cold war. Russia is definitely part of the Western civilization by any means if you don't limit this definition to what happened during the second half of the twentieth century… What on earth would make Russia less part of “Western civilization” than Slovakia or Greece?!
      - eps 5y ago
        I think Russia is commonly excluded from "Europe" simply because only a small part of it is in Europe and the rest is not. Bundling it in would've caused Europe overlap with Asia and that's just confusing.
        Ekaros 5y ago
        Funnily enough it makes nearly 40% of land area of Europe... And 14% of population... Reality is that most of Russia west of Ural is kinda just there.
        littlestymaar 5y ago
        The majority of the Russian population lives in Europe. It's a bit like saying that Denmark isn't really in Europe because most of its land area are actually Greenland. Yet nobody does that! And the OP was not only excluding Russia from Europe in their post, but also Belarus which is unambiguously in Europe. It's a former part of the eastern block which is still under Moscow's influence so in must not be “Europe” because this word has been preempted by the American block.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
  - Hamuko 5y ago
    I don't really remember ever hearing anyone talk about Russia when they refer to Europe except in geography class.
    - littlestymaar 5y ago
      In any history class about the history of Europe, you would have a hard time not talking about Russia… Excluding Russia from Europe is a really recent trend actually, it appeared even after the fall of the iron curtain, during the late 90 s, early 2000s as an attempt to marginalize Russia.
      - DangerousPie 5y ago
        You'll also have a hard time not talking about Spain in the history of Latin America, but that doesn't mean it's part of it.
        littlestymaar 5y ago
        I should have added “as a European power” because it's what Russia was: a European power, and nobody would have questioned that in the 1950.
      - Hamuko 5y ago
        If they wanted us to be inclusive towards them, maybe they should've tried not invading us.
        fuoqi 5y ago
        Are you talking about the country which was invaded numerous times from the west?
        littlestymaar 5y ago
        Are you going to kick France out of Europe then? Because we've invaded our neighbors way more than Russians ever did. Heck, without the Russians Napoleon would probably have invaded England, achieving complete French domination over the continent!
  - Ekaros 5y ago
    Just like "America" doesn't include Mexico and south...
  - _ph_ 5y ago
    Well, in topics like these, where economics and technical standards play a huge role, it totally makes sense to use this interpretation of Europe.
  - zokier 5y ago
    Its not really much different than saying "America" when meaning the US. Or even England vs UK/GB.
natded 5y ago
And as I understand, this is already an old design (they started building it in the 00s).
- derriz 5y ago
  You might think so but this is the nuclear energy industry - where building a plant typically takes at least a decade (or not-uncommonly 2 decades or more). In fact, this is currently the most modern production reactor design in the world. It's an EPR[1] - a third generation reactor design. But so far it's been plagued by massive cost and schedule overruns and of the two reactors of this design to become operational, Taishan 2[2] has already been taken offline after less than a year in order to investigate problem with the fuel rods. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPR_(nuclear_reactor) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPR_(nuclear_reactor) [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taishan_Nuclear_Power_Plant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taishan_Nuclear_Power_Plant

ncmncm 5y ago

It is always easy to understand a nuke plant construction taking multiples of extra years and euros, when they are permitted at all: So long as it is not finished, the money can keep flowing. If it is ever done, the gravy train stops. Nobody actually involved wants that ever to happen. But if it looks like it will happen anyway, there is some advantage to actually delivering a working nuke plant before that. The trick is in identifying how late that can be. If you get it too wrong, the money runs out without a working nuke constructed. That can be OK if enough money is extracted first, as in South Carolina, where they sucked out ?$30B without delivering a promised 2 GW plant. That ended up with criminal indictments, but only for a few people. Almost everybody got to keep the money, Carolina ratepayers of course excepted. The same process is seen in metro transit projects. It is an interesting topic in governance design how to avoid starting the process. One essential component appears to be easily priced subunits, such as solar panels or wind turbines, and early production. It is not easy to do that, with a nuke, but we don't really need nukes. Sometimes we do need transit projects.

wly_cdgr 5y ago

Pretty standard for a big project to take twice as long as initially projected, no? This isn't exactly a SaaS startup where you can ship a spaghetti turd MVP to hit the deadline and fix later if you get traction

mcraiha 5y ago

Price of electricity has been very high in Finland during last month. And finally they can start this thing (it should have been started 12 years ago) https://www.news24.com/fin24/International/finlands-olkiluoto-nuclear-plant-to-power-up-12-years-late-20211217 https://www.news24.com/fin24/International/finlands-olkiluot...

RNAlfons 5y ago
Will the price of electricity now fall with the plant?
- fulafel 5y ago
  Yes, but the effect size depends on the size of the electricity market area, which is a function of transmission capacity and agreements. In this case it seems the increased supply will be absorbed by a market area that spans multiple countries, so the price effect should be less than what you might guess from the relatively big local production capacity jump. Also there might be an incentive to expand the transmission capacity for export.
- colechristensen 5y ago
  It will produce 14% of Finland’s electricity so one would think so, but other fuel prices are very high around the world so maybe not a whole lot.
- fuoqi 5y ago
  In the very best case it will be connected to the grid in the end of January, so not until then.
  - Sharlin 5y ago
    And at 100% capacity only in June, at which point the current price spike is hopefully over…
- anttisalmela 5y ago
  Definitely. Extra production will tip the scale of imports and exports so that the price in Finland will match most of the time whatever the price is in northern Sweden with its abundance of hydropower. OL3 will also probably lower prices in Estonia and Southern Sweden.

fuoqi 5y ago

Projects like this are commonly used by opponents of nuclear energy to demonstrate that nuclear energy is expensive compared to solar/wind and thus should not be pursued. I wonder how fast the Hanhikivi plant will be built and how much it will cost in the end. Recent Rosatom's record is quite good, so hopefully they will be an example of economic feasibility of nuclear energy and that the nuclear expensiveness is mostly not technological, but an organizational problem.

7952 5y ago
I agree the difficulty is organisational. But that does not make it an easier problem to solve
belorn 5y ago
Comparing nuclear with solar/wind has always been a false comparison. In order to make a fair comparison one would need to combine storage with solar/wind, and in latitudes for Finland this would mostly mean wind with storage capacity in terms of months. The alternative is fossil fuels in combination with wind/solar, the most cost effective grid that currently exist. During optimal weather conditions renewables are the cheapest energy on the planet, and during non-optimal weather conditions fossil fuels is usually the cheapest energy that can meet demand. Living in Sweden, I am slightly hopeful that the nuclear plant in Finland might reduce the need to run the oil power plant located in southern parts of Sweden. The oil power plant is the single highest contributor for carbon emissions in the south of Sweden, despite the fact that Sweden mostly operate on hydro and nuclear. 70 tons of oil per hour goes up in smoke in a time where the oil need to stay in the ground. More solar/wind will not have much of an effect on this oil power plant since it only operates during non-optimal weather conditions. Currently we are several weeks in with a weather of low wind conditions, with energy prices skyrocketing as a result. The Finish project had some good luck in term of timing by turning on the nuclear power plant right in the middle of exceptional high energy prices.
- Krasnol 5y ago
  It has been a false comparison with nuclear too. Nuclear storage, processing remediation, etc. are either not mentioned at all or plainly wrong as they differ extremely from country to country and over time periods which are hardly calculable.

timonoko 5y ago

Unlike in Deutschland only half of the Green Party members oppose Nukular Power. 10 years ago it was 101%.

Krasnol 5y ago
Besides the far right party AfD, everybody opposes nuclear power in Germany. Including the operators: https://www.wiwo.de/atomausstieg-rwe-chef-krebber-will-atomkraftwerke-nicht-laenger-laufen-lassen/27544352.html?share=twitter https://www.wiwo.de/atomausstieg-rwe-chef-krebber-will-atomk...
vesinisa 5y ago
The Finnish Neo-Luddite / Green Party resigned from the government twice as a protest against permitting new Nuclear Power plants. And these are the people who are supposed to be solving climate change..
- Ekaros 5y ago
  I hope the day comes when we can put all of them on trial for crimes against humanity.
  - vegai_ 5y ago
    If we did that universally for crimes related to causing the current/upcoming environmental catastrophe, there wouldn't be many people left unjudged.
  - nikanj 5y ago
    Meanwhile greenpeace is putting up memorials for people who voted -for- nuclear power. I think they meant to shame the people https://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenpeace_Norden#/media/Tiedosto:Nuclear_power_vote_memorial_Toolonlahti_Helsinki.jpg https://fi.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenpeace_Norden#/media/Tiedo...
- lb0 5y ago
  Yes, and they as enough still others believe that you don't solve one huge problem by going back to another huge problem.

leyok93138 5y ago

vesinisa 5y ago

And only 13 years late! Original estimate for the start of electricity production was 2009. Full-scale commercial production is now on track to start in mid-2022. This project has been absolutely harrowed by a seemingly infinite string of delays, and is now believed to be one of the world's most expensive construction projects ever undertaken: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olkiluoto_Nuclear_Power_Plant#Unit_3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olkiluoto_Nuclear_Power_Plant#...

maeln 5y ago
> And only 13 years late! Not very surprising when you see that Areva/Framatome was involved :^) /s All jokes aside, having worked for a manufacturer of nuclear equipment, delay are usually the result of two factor: One is that the sales department of the companies involved are "very optimistic", and by that I mean, they ask engineer to do an estimation for the time/cost of designing/manufacturing one part, and then ask them to slash it by half (talking from experience, sadly, ...). They want to make sure that they get the contract so they make unrealistic proposition and then make sure that the contract is made so that they can still profit when the project will take twice the time and money. The second is the level of standard for this type of construction and equipment which is, thankfully, extremely high. A single small scratch could mean that you had to scrap and redo a lot of part of a thermal exchanger or tank. So, even the tiniest of manufacturing defect, or even slight damaged made when testing of moving the piece, can mean months of delay to redo and qualify the piece.
- doikor 5y ago
  Also the project taking this long caused further delays. For example Siemens finished their work on the turbines a long time ago but had to basically rebuild the whole damn thing because it just sat there for more than a decade. This is due to turbines being designed to spin constantly not sit still for years.
- masklinn 5y ago
  Here they also sold a novel design, Olki 3 ate most of the construction teething issues (though flamanville hit its fair share as well), Taishan seems to have gone better as they entered service in 2018 and 2019. Construction and operation teething issues are nothing surprising, but Areva was definitely… way over-optimistic about the EPR. I still can’t believe they advertised a 4 years plan when the first N4 (previous generation) took 12 years to build, and needed an additional 4 before it started operation. Hell, going down the list of reactors on the wiki, even the 900MWe class never went from first stone to operation in 4 years, the shortest looks to have been Blayais 1 which took a hair short of 5 (January 1st, 1977 to December 1st, 1981), and taking somewhere between 5 and 6 was much more typical for the 900MWe class. The P4s were a bit worse (7-9) and the N4s were way worse (the shortest time between build start and start of operation was Civaux 2 at 11 years, the Chooz reactors took 16).

nikanj 5y ago

Due to Political Reasons, they decided to limit the permit on number of reactors - not total power. Hence they had to build one ginormous reactor, facing numerous issues caused by venturing into the limits of maximum power per reactor. Had they permitted 4 * 400MW instead of 1 * 1600MW, the plant would have been in production for years already.

Maakuth 5y ago
I'm doubtful of that. One big root cause for most of the delays is the fact that no new reactor projects were started in a long time before this one, in Western regulation regimes. Due to this, a lot of cumulative experience was lost from the industry and the designs become outdated. For example all the previous designs relied on relay based automation, which is no longer available. Add to that the increasing demand of safety, necessitating way heavier structures and yet again obsoleting designs. I would think building another one like this should be less of an ordeal. Too bad the sister project at Flamanville was started too early after this one to benefit from the lessons learned.
- tekkk 5y ago
  No it's almost a rule to build reactors in pairs. That way when you maintain the other, the other still outputs energy. When the decision was made Green Party was in the cabinet and they had made a promise not to build any more nuclear power. So a compromise was made and to actually meet the energy demands of the Finnish industry, the biggest possible reactor was chosen.
  - Maakuth 5y ago
    I'm not disputing that there were politics involved in choosing to build one instead of two reactors. What I mean is that the many of the big challenges facing this project were not particularly connected to the power of the unit. Any size of a reactor would have had the challenges with strict regulation, new type of automation, lack of experienced personnel, etc.
  - doikor 5y ago

thinkingemote 5y ago

Given that it has cost around $11 Billion and has taken 13 years, but has around a 60 year life span (much longer than older ones) and then the costs with decommissioning, how long will it take to be economically worth it? (let alone make an operating profit or be environmentally beneficial)

pasiaj 5y ago
At current energy prices in Finland, it would take less than 1/10 of the time expected. (Of course the current price is a bit of an anomaly.)
- eb0la 5y ago
  I am not sure if it is just a bit. Gas supply in Europe is having issues: - Gas supply from Algeria via Morocco is closed. - Russia is sending less gas as usual (and profiting from it). Demand from gas in Europe remains the almost the same, but supply isn't.
  - fuoqi 5y ago
    - Force long-term contracts to be tied to spot prices instead of oil. - Do not fill storage assuming lower prices in autumn. - Intentionally delay certification of a pipeline from one of your main suppliers. - Act very surprised when the aforementioned supplier does nothing to stop spot prices explosion due to the external circumstances and even fans the flames a bit. - Make questionable remarks which accelerate the rise of gas prices even further. - Demand (sic!) from the supplier additional gas not covered by existing contracts, even though it's clearly not in his interest. I wonder why does the EU has gas supply issues?
    - zajio1am 5y ago
      > Intentionally delay certification of a pipeline from one of your main suppliers. The pipeline is not certified because it breaks existing legislation. It is up to pipeline developers/owners to fix this issue.

Sharlin 5y ago

OL3 goes critical and the JWST is (probably) actually launching! Great week for massively complex, massively delayed engineering projects.

ekianjo 5y ago

> The EPR design has several active and passive protection measures against accidents: > Four independent emergency cooling systems, each providing the required cooling of the decay heat that continues for 1 to 3 years after the reactor's initial shutdown (i.e., 300% redundancy) > Leak-tight containment around the reactor > An extra container and cooling area if a molten core manages to escape the reactor (see containment building and core catcher) > Two-layer concrete wall with total thickness 2.6 m, designed to withstand impact by aeroplanes and internal overpressure

Maakuth 5y ago
https://www.tvo.fi/uploads/julkaisut/tiedostot/ydinvoimalayks_OL3_ENG.pdf https://www.tvo.fi/uploads/julkaisut/tiedostot/ydinvoimalayk... here's a nice summary of the plant design.

Yaggo 5y ago

When the said plant project started over 10 years ago, I was an opponent of nuclear power, participating in demonstrations etc. Nowadays I'm really thankful for the new plant, as every non-fossil energy source is absolutely crucial, not to mention my electricity bill. Actually nuclear has the lowest carbon footprint, and a big advantage of being able to deliver very stable power output. The challenge with waste storage and other risks are real of course, but we just have to to accept them in the current situation of global warming.

ridruejo 5y ago
And from a geopolitical perspective, given everything going on and Finland’s neighbour
rosndo 5y ago
> The challenge with waste storage and other risks are real of course But the “challenge” with waste storage is a big lie. The French have all the waste ever generated by their nuclear program sitting under the floor of a single room. The quantities of “waste” generated by nuclear plants are not really meaningful even over long time horizons.
- chinathrow 5y ago
  How can you be so sure about that? We have like waste from max 40-50 years now sitting around and the problem is still unsolved. I doubt that civilisation can manage to manage this waste for 100'000y to come.
  - Sharlin 5y ago
    It's sitting around. Solid. Inert. Meanwhile there are gigatons of CO2 released to the atmosphere every year that causes an extremely acute global problem and we have no idea what to do to that either.
    - chinathrow 5y ago
      My post was not about CO2 (the fact that I hate that we emit way too much that I remove some via Stripe Climatr). Sitting nuclear waste still needs to be maintained for centuries to come and we still have no solition for that.

sandos 5y ago

Thank you Finland, can we stop exporting 1GW+ of our precious electricity to you year-round soon? ;)

foxfluff 5y ago
You don't welcome our money? I need to keep my sauna hot one way or another :(