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Finland starts much-delayed nuclear plant, brings respite to power market
- zh3 5y agoI'm pro-nuclear, but having been following this for a long time and it's not exactly a model that's leading the way. Especially as I'm in the UK, and we decided to build a copy of it (Hinckley Point) even after all the flaws become known.
- mrlonglong 5y agoWe're doing it a lot better though. Progress has been good.
- Ciantic 5y agoAs someone else pointed out, we aren't doing enough of these to iron out the kinks. If it's literally copy it might be going much better just because it's second. Now we should figure out where to build third! It should go even better.
- mrlonglong 5y agoA decision will be made soon on building Sizewell C. Again, this will be the same as Hinckley C. It should be noted that Hinckley C is penciled in to start operations in 2026. Hopefully if they give Sizewell the go ahead this year it will be in service 2031.
- varajelle 5y agoWhy did it take so long to build?
- ncmncm 5y agoPartly because nobody involved wanted it ever finished. And partly because, over and over again, construction efforts failed to meet basic quality standards, and had to be ripped out and redone.
- hayksaakian 5y agoWill be interesting to see how a modern plant stacks up to the aging ones running in most of the world
- liketochill 5y agohttps://archive.ph/PVCeB https://archive.ph/PVCeB
- loufe 5y agoWhat 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.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- pstuart 5y agoYep. 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.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- Brakenshire 5y agoIt’s not too distant a dream, the Rolls Royce small modular reactor designs have just been submitted for approval: https://www.newcivilengineer.com/latest/rolls-royce-submits-modular-nuclear-reactor-designs-for-wylfa-and-trawsfynydd-10-03-2022/ https://www.newcivilengineer.com/latest/rolls-royce-submits-...
- alvarlagerlof 5y agoI'm betting they don't get approved.
- ncmncm 5y agoAnyway not for longer than hoped. And, if approved, not built anytime soon, as the cost will still be much more than for renewable + storage, at that time. Those latter costs are falling faster than ever.
- 5y ago
- liketochill 5y agoIt is only producing 100 MW of 1600 MW which they should achieve by July. Congratulations to all of the engineers there!
- cbmuser 5y agoIt’s actually been built by SIEMENS/Areva which is ironic because Germany is on the brink on shutting down all of its nuclear power plants.
- legulere 5y agoSiemens dropped out of the project and constructing nuclear power plants because of how much of a failure this reactor was.
- hnarn 5y agoI'll avoid the tiresome linguistic debate about what qualifies as "irony" and instead point out that sure, while Siemens is a "German" company, giving a multinational corporation a national identity very often does not make sense. Siemens has ~300 000 employees, and while it's one of Germany's biggest employers with ~100 000 employees in the country, that still means two thirds of the company does not work in Germany. Also, Areva is French and Siemens hasn't held any shares in the company since 2009.
- mrits 5y agoIs it a possibility to ramp them back up?
- dry_soup 5y agoElectricity prices are through the roof in Finland right now. This was even the case before the war started. We import an incredible amount of LNG from Russia, a lot of which is used for electricity production if I have it correct, which we would of course like to be independent of. But for the time being we have spikes of 60-70 cents/kWh electricity prices. Hopefully OL3 will help this somewhat. Finland has another nuclear power plant under construction as well... or at least we did, until the war started, now I don't know what will happen. Rusatom was supposed to supply the reactor for Hanhikivi nuclear power plant, which was also severely delayed. Russia is also an important supplier of nuclear fuel to Finland.
- burmanm 5y agoWe don't import a lot of LNG from Russia. Gas coming from Russia comes through the pipes, not LNG. However, we don't even use gas a lot in Finland (it accounts 3% of the total energy production). The electricity prices are through the roof for other reasons (and have been for almost a year now) and are not related to Russia at all.
- dry_soup 5y agoCare to elaborate?
- Ekaros 5y agoFinnish 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.
- dendrite9 5y agoThis 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?
- roschdal 5y ago
- blibble 5y agoat that point we're already in a nuclear war due to the EU collective defence provisions
- oblak 5y agowhat are you talking about?
- RobertMiller 5y agoIt's a BWR, the worst case failure mode looks something like Fukishima. Certainly a mess, but "set on fire" makes me think you're imagining another Chernobyl. BWRs don't catch fire like that. If something went very wrong, the reactor and containment buildings might pop and make a big mess, but it's not as though there's a thousand tons of graphite there to catch fire. It's not an RBMK. Edit: Actually it's a PWR, the other two reactors at this plant are BWRs. Still, similar worst-case scenarios.
- rectang 5y agoThe possibility seems remote right now and I dislike the inflammatory framing, but I think this touches on one of fundamental drawbacks of nuclear power: it is hard to engineer plants to guard against catastrophe because there's a lot of energy stored in an inherently dangerous form. Hydroelectric power is often similarly vulnerable: you can engineer the dam to hold, but when something outside of tolerances appears, the downstream consequences are severe. Compare with solar or wind, where the energy source is not concentrated and so plant machinery is comparatively inert. We are continually reassured by proponents that today's designs are invulnerable, but both history and the fundamentals of energy storage bespeak the limitations of such assurances.
- orangecat 5y agoWe are continually reassured by proponents that today's designs are invulnerable Not invulnerable, but the expected harm is far less than fossil fuels under any reasonable assumptions.
- rdsubhas 5y agoWhat 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.
- chabes 5y agoA grid based exclusively on 7 power plants would be highly centralized. If one of those goes down, there goes 14% of your country’s entire supply.
- LatteLazy 5y agoThat'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.
- dahfizz 5y agoA bit of pumped hydro storage would also satisfy those needs.
- sascha_sl 5y agoPSH could not bridge demand for long enough. Maintenance cycles on nuclear reactors can be quite long.
- krasin 5y agoMake 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.
- londons_explore 5y agoI 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".
- f_allwein 5y agoHandy reference on why nuclear power might not be such a good idea as some people think: https://www.wien.gv.at/english/environment/ombuds-office/arguments.html https://www.wien.gv.at/english/environment/ombuds-office/arg...
- exdsq 5y ago> Nuclear waste from power stations can be used as raw materials for nuclear weapons. I imagine it's almost impossible to manufacture nuclear weapons 'quietly' with waste and sanctions/agreements stop this happening, while countries that go against these are able to manufacture nuclear weapons anyway (North Korea). So I don't think this is as big a risk as suggested. The rest seem solvable by focusing on better secure designs and then moving from Uranium to another source. I don't know the difficulty of this but I can't imagine it's insurmountable?
- Aachen 5y agoWhen an article starts with chernobyl as example of what mistakes we're likely to make when building a new plant today, it makes me itch to just close the tab and dismiss the opinion of the person who linked it. Not sure why I even bothered digging into it, but for example one later point is also misleading: "uranium resources will be depleted by the end of this century". I think I found the source (not that they link it, that would be too easy, but by ducking around for this number): > the total identified amount of conventional uranium stock, which can be mined for less than USD 130 per kg, [was found] to be about 4.7 million tonnes. Based on the 2004 nuclear electricity generation rate of demand the amount is sufficient for 85 years, the study states. Fast reactor technology would lengthen this period to over 2500 years. > However, world uranium resources in total are considered to be much higher. Based on geological evidence and knowledge of uranium in phosphates the study considers more than 35 million tonnes is available for exploitation. https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/global-uranium-resources-meet-projected-demand https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/global-uranium-resource... I'm not sure how the "city of vienna" can read this and summarize it down to say that we'll plainly run out of uranium by 2100. That's just not what the source says. Maybe that's what makes this "reference" "handy" for people with a certain preexisting opinion? The same bullet point continues with some other interesting claims, let alone the rest of the page, but let me quickly close that tab before I feel inclined to go down more of these rabbit holes...
- firekvz 5y agoComming from a country where nucler power is nowhere near the radar, what is the case against nuclear power? it seems such a nobrainer for me to use
- Andrew_nenakhov 5y agoIt usually goes like this: Chernobyl! Fukushima! Radiation! Waste! Death! Death!! DEATH TO ALL HUMANITY!!!
- rectang 5y agoYou left out proliferation of dual-use technologies. The fewer countries with advanced nuclear capabilities, the more thinly spread the expertise necessary to build nuclear weapons. If Russia didn't have nukes, its imperialistic ambitious would be curtailed. The ability to shield conventional assaults behind a nuclear threat is destabilizing for the rules-based world order.
- qwytw 5y agoIs this also sarcasm? So you're saying that building this plant has increase the chance Finland will try to acquire Nuclear weapons? And Russia has nukes purely due to political and military reasons, they'd still have more than enough of them if they mostly started closing/stopped building new plants after Chernobyl.
- rectang 5y agoNo, it's not sarcasm — I would appreciate it if you would be a little more generous when interpreting my remark. The proliferation problem is exacerbated incrementally by every additional plant in every additional country — including this one. The issue is not Finland in particular developing nuclear weapons, but any country developing nuclear weapons — especially a country governed by an autocracy. Or a country that might be governed by an autocracy in the future — the last few years have raised the urgency of the problem of democratic backsliding, which we need to figure out how to avert.
- mikaeluman 5y agoFinland has no other good source of energy. In Sweden and Norway we have hydro capacity that covers more than 50% of need. Then we can cover the rest with nuclear and a small portion of wind power. In Finland nuclear is the only option. Happy to see it come online.
- hackerfromthefu 5y agoIs wind not possible?
- Aachen 5y agoDepends how much area you want to repurpose (note that it includes roads, power lines, and regular tree trimming near those power lines in addition to the turbines themselves), but I'd estimate that with current and projected Finnish population density, this would actually be a realistic option, yes. Now that I think of it, I've never anyone speak of the impact on wildlife, nor seen a wind turbine in a forest (only ever on open farmland). Considering both noise and large shadows moving constantly, I assume it will have some impact. (I did hear that bird strikes are a non-issue in relative terms.) Even Wikipedia has no info on anything but birds/bats for on-shore installations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_wind_power#Impact_on_wildlife https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_wind_p... Edit: double checked that Finland is actually mostly forest: [PDF] https://www.eea.europa.eu/themes/landuse/land-cover-country-fact-sheets/land-cover-country-fact-sheets-2012/fi-finland-landcover-2012.pdf/at_download/file https://www.eea.europa.eu/themes/landuse/land-cover-country-... Screenshot from relevant part of PDF: https://snipboard.io/KFDEIr.jpg https://snipboard.io/KFDEIr.jpg The 9+5+4=18% water bodies, arable land, and pastures/mosaics (respectively) might also be a good target. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surface_power_density https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surface_power_density says 1.84 W/m², so at 18% of 338'662 "hundreds ha" = 61 billion m² you get 112 GW which translates into 983 TWh after a year (8760 hours). Looking at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Finland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Finland that's 2.6 times more energy than they used in 2013 (this includes heating, driving, etc. but not things like imported clothes, plastic products, etc.). All this is considering only the land area, not sea. Future work: calculate how many years of monopolizing the world's steel production it takes to get these things produced, much less built in the middle of nowhere with frozen winters.
- lizardactivist 5y agoGood job Finland. I respect the opinions of the environmentalists and agree with most of what they say, but until we have something more reliable that can put out power 24/7 year round, we need more new, modern nuclear plants.
- threeseed 5y agoIt 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.
- arnaudsm 5y agoDo you have a source regarding your pricing claim? Renewables are usually cheaper per W, but way more expensive in real world usage (battery storage + full life cycle costs)
- pfdietz 5y agoSee for yourself: https://model.energy/ https://model.energy/ The area around Finland and Eastern Europe is one of the worst in the world for renewables, though.
- arnaudsm 5y agoAwesome simulation tool, but why is nuclear power absent from the simulation?
- pfdietz 5y agoIt's not! The strangely named "Dispatchable 2" can be turned on as an option; it's based on the economics of the EPR (although you can change all the assumptions as needed.) If you do that, you'll find the solutions tend to be either "no nuclear" or "all nuclear", depending on the cost assumptions. This is a counter to the people who suggest "renewables, but use nuclear to cover the last 20%", which is a dumb idea.
- jollybean 5y agoTake the exact design and duplicate it 5 more times in the country, and then build the same in Sweden, Norway 5x each. Thanks. Be Carbon Free in 10 years and sell excess energy to neighbours. Do it now. Putin has taught us that politicians can actually do stuff when they are forced into an existential crisis, maybe they should do something here as well. I don't claim to have the answers but I suggest there are many opportunities that are worth pursuing.
- Pxtl 5y agoHas there been any political movement in Germany to stop and reverse the decommissioning of their nuclear power plants?
- bluejekyll 5y agoWhat's surprising is the length of time of this project. It was started in 2000, and just completed. That's 23 years of development. These nuclear projects appear to take a significant amount of time. By comparison, this wind turbine project near my parents was approved in 2016 and completed in 2018, providing 78 megawatts of power. Yes that's significantly less than the 1.6 gigawatts of this Finnish power plant. But, consider that in the same time period, 10 of this wind projects could be completed. On top of that, solar projects are also much faster. Look at the Solar Star solar installation which provides .5 gigawatts of power, started in 2013 and completed in 2015. So 10 of these could have been completed in the same time as the Finnish system. No, I'm not suggesting that Solar is a good option in Finland. And yes, it would be important to work on massive battery storage systems, to make these work. This just points out just how uneconomical nuclear power is. On top of that, with nuclear facilities coming under fire in Ukraine and Russia making (probably bluffing) threats against Finland, it really makes nuclear an unappealing option. Can someone point out why these projects are so attractive to so many people when it would appear that a combination of renewables appear to both be faster to bring on line and overall safer? Edit: forgot the links, Arkwright Summit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arkwright_Summit_Wind_Farm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arkwright_Summit_Wind_Farm Solar Star https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_Star https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_Star
- mcronce 5y agoWithout significantly more information, it doesn't really point out nuclear being uneconomical. It points out artificial roadblocks, regulatory and otherwise, imposed on nuclear generation that aren't imposed on other forms of generation. Other forms of generation that require GHG-emitting backup generation.
- jturpin 5y agoAgreed, though solar tech has gotten a lot better and cheaper in the last 20 years, so it's not completely fair to compare. Power storage is still an issue, but this is getting better and better each year with the prices of lithium iron phosphate batteries coming way down.
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- rbrbr 5y ago
- gigatexal 5y agoNothing like an aggressive Russia and a war in your neighborhood to kickstart your move towards energy independence. I like seeing this. We should see more plants announced across Europe as part of a push along side wind and solar to diversify energy production. Advancements in nuclear plant design and such have made them cheaper and safer, too.
- DeathArrow 5y agoI wonder why is nuclear power controversed? I believe that is one of the most clean forms of energy and leaving hydro and coal aside, one of the cheapest. Is it because of political activism and some occult groups of interest which have their own agenda?
- ngcc_hk 5y agoYou have to worry about this as Finland is a non-nato country and Russia has bombed and occupied nuclear plants in Ukraine.