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Europe's Newest Nuclear Reactor Eases Finland's Power Problems

94 points by chewz 4y ago

ChuckNorris89 4y ago
I wish Germany and Austria would have been on the same boat as Finland. We'd be in a much better situation today.
- Gwypaas 4y ago
  You mean spending over 10 years importing 15 TWh a year extra because surely next year this reactor will be ready? Also remember that it produces power at around €100/MWh if you include the loss Areva took. Any year but this year and that cost is laughably high.
  - hocuspocus 4y ago
    €100/MWh surely beats having to choose between recent gas spot prices or shutting down your economy.
    - Gwypaas 4y ago
      Definitely, but how do you feel about locking that in for the next 35 years? Given that the wholesale price usually hovers around €30-50/MWh depending on energy mix.
      - adev_ 4y ago
        > Definitely, but how do you feel about locking that in for the next 35 years? Given that the wholesale price usually hovers around €30-50/MWh depending on energy mix. - €30-50/MWh is the price of intermittent, uncontrollable renewable enegy. - Continue to burn cheap Russian gas emitting CO2 and funding dictators for the next 35 years can not be part of the solution. - If what we aim is controllable low carbon energy at reasonable price, the answer become obvious and contain at least partially is Nuclear energy
    - Schroedingersat 4y ago
      That's not the choice though because it's €100/MWh for power that would maybe possibly start being produced in 17 years tying up enough capital the entire time to produce 4x the net wattage in renewables that could fully pay itself back and fund another 4x the net wattage well before the nuclear comes online. I'd far rather turn all of the gas turbines off 60% of the time than 15% of them off 80% of the time. Add storage to the mix and nuclear is a terrible solution for avoiding having to choose between recent gas spot prices or shutting down your economy.
      - erichocean 4y ago
        Do you have an explanation for why, since solar/wind seems to not only pay for itself, but earns enough to 4x it's initial investment in 17 years, that it's not being done? BlackRock has $10T in liquid capital available to put towards the best investments. Putting just 1% of that towards wind/solar ($100B), given the incredible returns you are indicating, seems like a wise and prudent (and lucrative) investment. Is that happening? (I honestly don't know, but if it isn't, I'd like to know why—BlackRock is a major ESG supporter so they're clearly on the solar/wind train.)
        philipkglass 4y ago
        Do you have an explanation for why, since solar/wind seems to not only pay for itself, but earns enough to 4x it's initial investment in 17 years, that it's not being done? It is being done. According to the International Energy Agency, $44 billion was invested globally in nuclear powered electricity production in 2021. $119 billion was invested in fossil powered electricity production. $367 billion was invested in renewables. https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/global-energy-supply-investment-by-sector-2019-2021-2 https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/global-energy...
        erichocean 4y ago
        Good to know! Thanks
        Schroedingersat 4y ago
  - samatman 4y ago
    Too bad it's this year instead of any other year. Twenty years ago, if planners weren't accounting for geopolitical stability as a risk to petrochemical flows, they had holes in their heads.
  - Timshel 4y ago
    No idea where your Mwh price come from. On wikipedia the LCOE for just OL3 is estimated to be at 42e/MWh.
    - Gwypaas 4y ago
      With Areva, or rather the French tax payers, eating a loss of €5.5 Billion. Include those in the number and you end up a tad bit lower than Hinkley Point C which sits at ~€120/MWh.
      - Timshel 4y ago
        Not exactly Finland problem ... And otherwise it means the price will have to be calculated once all EPR variant come online since it’s essentially the cost of restarting production after a 40 years gap and loss of expertise. But certainly if stopped now it will not be pretty :(
- Schroedingersat 4y ago
  What, so they could have 20% of their energy in nuclear waiting for it to come online some time around 2027 rather than 40% in renewables right now?
  - doikor 4y ago
    Even before this new reactor Finland had lower gCO₂eq/kWh than Germany or Austria (with way harsher winters to boot). Once this thing starts Finland will get even further ahead. In Europe basically only France and the other Nordic countries are ahead of Finland in the cleanliness of their energy production. It really should not matter how the energy is produced the only thing that matters for clime change is how much CO₂ gets pumped into the atmosphere.
    - Schroedingersat 4y ago
      > It really should not matter how the energy is produced the only thing that matters for clime change is how much CO₂ gets pumped into the atmosphere. ... which is an argument for building as much low emissions capacity as possible within a given budget over the next 5-10 years. Which is 0 for nuclear
      - doikor 4y ago
        Yes for nuclear the emissions are very close to 0 (lower or on par with wind depending on the study). The best time to start building new low emission capacity was 3 or 4 decades ago like that France did but the next best time is today. I really don't care what kind you build as long as it is low emission. For Finland nuclear seems to be working really well. Having one of the cheapest and cleanest electricity in EU is more then enough proof of that to me.
cpursley 4y ago
It's a start! But there should be 100 others under construction right now under a wartime like economy. This is an emergency in both sovereignty and maintaining an industrialized, modern economy.
- Gwypaas 4y ago
  Or get 3-4x as much bang for the buck building renewables. Source: https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-energy-levelized-cost-of-storage-and-levelized-cost-of-hydrogen/ https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-energy-...
  - Msw242 4y ago
    How are you going to deal with base load? We can save money on nuclear but reducing the amount of bureaucracy and increasing the volume for economies of scale.
    - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
      In Finland, Hydro combined with wind should take care of baseload. They've also been importing cheap electricity to avoid burning expensive fossil fuels for about a decade, so they probably want to continue with that.
      - gojomo 4y ago
        Where will they "import cheap electricity" from if none is being exported?
        oldgradstudent 4y ago
        Supposedly from northern Sweden, according to a Swedish friend. Take this with a grain of salt. They have a lot of power generation in the north, but not enough transmission capacity to transfer it to the population centers in the south, so they have to sell it cheaply to their neighbors, and buy expensive electricity from their neighbors in the south. This all worked fine when they could buy cheap electricity from their southern neighbors. But now they have a problem. A few weeks ago there was 10X or more electricity price difference between north and south Sweden. Take a look at: https://www.svk.se/en/national-grid/the-control-room/ https://www.svk.se/en/national-grid/the-control-room/ Pick, for example, August 26, 2022, at 11:04. Prices up north are 14 euro per MWh, and 750 euro per MWh in the south.
dividedbyzero 4y ago
Olkiluoto 3 is sitting at three times the planned cost and has a delay of over a decade, so hopefully they'll be able to take it online for good this time, the last attempt to do so didn't go so well.
- soco 4y ago
  I though when you build an existing model the costs and planning estimations would get a bit closer to reality...
  - hocuspocus 4y ago
    Taishan proved you can build EPRs near cost and time estimates. EDF has promised a simplified design for the EPR2 (after learning from 20 years of mistakes) but it's probably not going to fix the sad state of our nuclear industry in Europe, suffering from a lot of internal and external inefficiencies.
    - distances 4y ago
      I have no proof, but I have a strong feeling that the Chinese nuclear safety authority isn't nowhere near as picky as the Finnish counterpart. Lots of the delays were caused by orders to rebuild after failed quality checks from the authorities.
      - hocuspocus 4y ago
        Certainly, but this is mostly a self-inflicted problem in the EU. Everything that is procured through a public tender gets done by the lowest bidder.
        Gwypaas 4y ago
        Olkiluoto 3 is built by a private company to provide power for a consortium of industry companies, no lowest bidder in sight. Still the same issue though, wonder if it's nuclear that is hard or public procurement? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teollisuuden_Voima https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teollisuuden_Voima
Schroedingersat 4y ago
Nuclear power for a mere 7 euros per watt (with unlimited publicly funded insurance) this time in a short short 17 years with only some unpaid immigrant labour. Areva footed the bill for the overruns this time rather than foisting them on the taxpayer, so that's something at least.
- ZeroGravitas 4y ago
  Areva paying for the overruns just means it's French taxpayers footing the bill.
- gojomo 4y ago
  "unpaid immigrant labor"? Are you alleging slavery in European power-plant construction?
  - scrlk 4y ago
    I assume it might be a reference to this: > In 2012 it was reported that one Bulgarian contracting firm is owned by the mafia, and that Bulgarian workers have been required to pay weekly protection fees to the mafia, wages have been unpaid, employees have been told not to join a union and that employers also reneged on social security payments. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olkiluoto_Nuclear_Power_Plant#Criticism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olkiluoto_Nuclear_Power_Plant#...
    - gojomo 4y ago
      Thanks for the context! I hope a highly-developed EU nation like Finland can ensure all owed wages are paid.
simfoo 4y ago
11 billion € for 1GW. Cost for wind energy is around 1.2m€/MW. Which means that the same amount of money could have been used to build over 3500 wind turbines in the 2-3 MW range, producing up to 8.7GW (and probably never less than 1GW). Nuclear is nice on paper but totally bonkers once you look at the numbers. And they aren't even accounting for all costs, e.g. insurance and long term waste storage are heavily subsidized.
- alexb_ 4y ago
  Wind turbines also are not 100% reliable and take up a gigantic amount of space.
  - locallost 4y ago
    Are they unreliable? They break down unexpectedly and require a lot of maintenance? I don't think so. Furthermore, when they break the risk is spread out - a whole lot would need to go out at the same time to cause issues. You probably meant their output is unpredictable. But even this is wrong, since weather forecasts allow for a very predictable output. Nuclear is neither - it requires extensive maintenance (see France), and they can go out unpredictably, taking out a lot of capacity at an instant (see France). And turbines also take a lot less space than say parking lots.
- Timshel 4y ago
  From Finland pov they paid 5.5billion, the rest is on Areva since they had lost the knowledge/expertise on how to build. Deploying such a high number of wind turbine might not be so easy since usually nobody wants them close by and even if Finland is vast not all space is probably suitable. Nuclear is far from perfect but at least it’s low co2 and once built cost are usually stable (uranium price is negligeable).
  - ftth_finland 4y ago
    In addition, there are restrictions on the erection of wind turbines in the east due to defense reasons.
jmyeet 4y ago
I'm pretty sure I could write a bot that would accurately simulate any nuclear energy topic on HN. The pro-nuclear people will argue any extreme incidents are just outliers that can be ignored, the high cost of construction is completely artificial and regulatory in nature, the high cost to build is just because we don't build enough of them, all the waste (from processing and from fuel) are solved problems, we need a base load in the grid and the time to build isn't an issue. The anti-nuclear people will point out the devastating failure modes, no nuclear plant has been built without massive government support, in places like the US the costs of nuclear clean up in case of accidents is actually capped by legislation so the government is bearing these costs too, if base load is real hydro power is better, fuel waste needs can't just be locked in a cave (eg for years or decades it needs to be actively cooled because it generates heat), transport of fuel and waste introduces risk of accidents and mamlfeasance, humans are terrible at managing long-term and low-probability high-impact risk, nobody wants to live near a nuclear power plant and that the plummetting cost of renewables make nuclear increasingly uneconomic. Rinse and repeat.
- lbriner 4y ago
  This is true but what is more shocking is that the powers-that-be in each of the major countries haven't been able to sit down and say: Nuclear option: Environment cost, land cost, resource cost, availability of materials etc. Renewables option: Requirement for the correct geography, unbalanced grid, storage options, increase of energy efficiency etc. Then at least work out that currently in situations a, b and c, only Nuclear is viable, whereas in situations d, e and f, renewables make sense. In almost all cases, it will need to be a mix and I'm unsure that anywhere has so many renewables that have a massive problem. Australia struggled with too much solar but their grid is still alive so in many countries, we could probably scale renewables more quickly for some capacity. Nuclear is longer term and might be needed where you don't have Norway's water or Iceland's geothermal, great. Why does everyone have to be an extremist on these discussions?
- Gwypaas 4y ago
  Sadly the problem is that HN is not up to date on current research and economics, nuclear proponents argue like it's 2005-10 and that nothing has changed. Similarly to how you are characterizing the arguments. At that time starting up another wave of nuclear was the best choice we ever made, because renewables was too far flung out to be a certain solution. If Olkiluoto 3, Flamanville, Vogtle and Virgil C. Summer had been completed on time with amazing efficiency we would be running nuclear today. The difference now, 10 years later, is that renewables have leapfrogged nuclear several times over and thus it does not make a sensible investment from either safety, economics or any other angle. Other than being a "known" choice because the grid has always been centralized and some people like the cool dangerous steam boiler technology of it. So what we need to do today is to draw the learnings of those nuclear attempts and not pour another €X00 billion into pride projects.
lbriner 4y ago
I think a struggle in many other countries, including the UK, is that the housing stock is old and was not built for energy-efficiency. We have Extinction Rebellion going on about insulating all the houses in Britain but this is not practical, as much as I am a big believer (and purchaser!) of insulation. We wonder how much we could reduce the need for something as unwanted as another nuclear power station (another reactor on an existing site is probably less bad). Countries in the far north have had years to learn that they need good insulation and with a low population density, a relatively small amount of energy goes a long way. Compare to the UK, France, Germany, USA, Brasil etc. who have very large populations and either very hot or very cold weather and you have the problem with privately owned buildings who you cannot easily coerce into spending on their own energy efficiency but the gains would be entirely in the homeowners pocket so why should the taxpayer foot the bill? There are really obvious things that should be emergency legislation by anyone without their head in the sand and that is 1) Changes to the requirements for new-builds including improving the standard of checks since a lot of it is easily gamed by the developers and 2) Getting rid of VAT and possibly subsidising insulation products so that a good number of people who could do it might be persuaded that they can now afford it. Insulating a loft in the UK could easily cost £300 DIY or £500+ if you paid someone, which for many households is a large amount of money. Once you add it the more difficult insulating, the costs would be enormous.
- Turing_Machine 4y ago
  > but the gains would be entirely in the homeowners pocket so why should the taxpayer foot the bill? It's pretty common (though not universal) in the United States for renters to be responsible for utilities, such as heating, water, and electricity. In those cases, the owner neither cares about, nor benefits from, increased energy efficiency, while on the other side of the coin, the tenant has little incentive to make capital improvements on a property he or she may only be planning on occupying for a year or so. In this scenario, anything that doesn't have a payback period shorter than the length of expected tenancy is unlikely to get done.
- dmos62 4y ago
  > unwanted as another nuclear power station Call me an outsider, but I do want more nuclear reactors, since they provide clean energy and don't open up regions to geopolitical pressure, like what's happening during the Russo-Ukrainian war. Nuclear reactors have been expensive to build so far, but hopefully that's going to change.
jscipione 4y ago
Most of Europe will be in a state of open rebellion in a few months when there is no more energy to heat their homes and no more food to feed their family. This is due to the failure of European leaders to create policies of energy independence. Protests have already begun all over the continent. Finland’s nuclear reactor is too little to late to save Europe from total war.
- darthrupert 4y ago
  > Protests have already begun all over the continent Have they, though? > total war Only Ukraine is in a state of war. I'd like to quote Zelensky because he hits the sentiment of most of Europe brilliantly: "Without gas or without you? Without you. Without light or without you? Without you. Without water or without you? Without you. Without food or without you? Without you.” “Cold, hunger, darkness and thirst are not as scary and deadly for us as your ‘friendship and brotherhood,' But history will put everything in its place. And we will be with gas, light, water and food and WITHOUT you!”
  - _-david-_ 4y ago
    Is Zelensky saying it would be better for Western Europe to freeze to death than have Ukraine taken over by Russia?
    - darthrupert 4y ago
      He's talking about Ukraine. I'm thinking that Western Europe can and should follow his great example. I live in Finland. Nobody's freezing to death here next winter, and most of Europe is in warmer zones than we are. We're fine. Russia is fucked if they keep following this insane path their dictators have put them on.
- rcxdude 4y ago
  Europe will be fine over the winter, it'll just be expensive (European countries have been working together to move heaven and earth to make sure they do have enough fuel, it's quite an impressive achievement). Most of the complaints are about who's going to pay for it, considering a good chunk of the population cannot easily make that much room in their budget if the costs are passed on directly, as opposed to being taken up by the government.
rasz 4y ago
I was looking at https://euenergy.live https://euenergy.live today and wondering WTF just happened in Scandinavia, usually only 2 NO sectors have cheap power, but today its whole region.
Arnt 4y ago
I'm puzzled by how many people confuse gas and electricity, enough to wonder whether I am the one who's wrong. The country where I live historically used about 15% of its gas to produce electricity. (Most of the 85% were burned for heat at end-user sites, some were used as molecules in chemical plants.) I'd like to know two things. I can't find these on the web, but perhaps someone on HN knows. 1. Do any of the European countries that imported gas from Russia burn most of to produce electricity? I (perhaps mistakenly) assumed that most of it was burned in furnaces and other heating devices, like here. 2. Are there any countries with a sizable set of heating devices (furnaces, ovens, whatever) can can use either gas or electricity, depending on what's available at any given moment?
- _ph_ 4y ago
  No, you are not wrong. Gas is only a small part of German electricity production. It is a larger part in the US, but the US has a lot of gas available from fracking. Yes, if there were plentiful of cheap gas, it is much better to use that instead of coal and oil, but electricity production isn't the bottle neck. Switching home heating to heat pumps alone could reduce the gas consumption considerably.
  - doikor 4y ago
    The % of actual gas used does not matter much as the price is set by the most expensive form of production at that moment. Most of the time this is a peaker gas (or oil) plants if it is required to run one. So if you normally need to run the last 1% of your production with peaker plants that used to cost X but now due to external reasons their costs are 10X then your electricity price for the moment they are on is 10 times more.
    - _ph_ 4y ago
      Gas wouldn't cost 10x more, if it were not scarce.
      - doikor 4y ago

94 points by chewz 4y ago

ChuckNorris89 4y ago

I wish Germany and Austria would have been on the same boat as Finland. We'd be in a much better situation today.

Gwypaas 4y ago
You mean spending over 10 years importing 15 TWh a year extra because surely next year this reactor will be ready? Also remember that it produces power at around €100/MWh if you include the loss Areva took. Any year but this year and that cost is laughably high.
- hocuspocus 4y ago
  €100/MWh surely beats having to choose between recent gas spot prices or shutting down your economy.
  - Gwypaas 4y ago
    Definitely, but how do you feel about locking that in for the next 35 years? Given that the wholesale price usually hovers around €30-50/MWh depending on energy mix.
    - adev_ 4y ago
      > Definitely, but how do you feel about locking that in for the next 35 years? Given that the wholesale price usually hovers around €30-50/MWh depending on energy mix. - €30-50/MWh is the price of intermittent, uncontrollable renewable enegy. - Continue to burn cheap Russian gas emitting CO2 and funding dictators for the next 35 years can not be part of the solution. - If what we aim is controllable low carbon energy at reasonable price, the answer become obvious and contain at least partially is Nuclear energy
  - Schroedingersat 4y ago
    That's not the choice though because it's €100/MWh for power that would maybe possibly start being produced in 17 years tying up enough capital the entire time to produce 4x the net wattage in renewables that could fully pay itself back and fund another 4x the net wattage well before the nuclear comes online. I'd far rather turn all of the gas turbines off 60% of the time than 15% of them off 80% of the time. Add storage to the mix and nuclear is a terrible solution for avoiding having to choose between recent gas spot prices or shutting down your economy.
    - erichocean 4y ago
      Do you have an explanation for why, since solar/wind seems to not only pay for itself, but earns enough to 4x it's initial investment in 17 years, that it's not being done? BlackRock has $10T in liquid capital available to put towards the best investments. Putting just 1% of that towards wind/solar ($100B), given the incredible returns you are indicating, seems like a wise and prudent (and lucrative) investment. Is that happening? (I honestly don't know, but if it isn't, I'd like to know why—BlackRock is a major ESG supporter so they're clearly on the solar/wind train.)
      - philipkglass 4y ago
        Do you have an explanation for why, since solar/wind seems to not only pay for itself, but earns enough to 4x it's initial investment in 17 years, that it's not being done? It is being done. According to the International Energy Agency, $44 billion was invested globally in nuclear powered electricity production in 2021. $119 billion was invested in fossil powered electricity production. $367 billion was invested in renewables. https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/global-energy-supply-investment-by-sector-2019-2021-2 https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/global-energy...
        erichocean 4y ago
        Good to know! Thanks
      - Schroedingersat 4y ago
- samatman 4y ago
  Too bad it's this year instead of any other year. Twenty years ago, if planners weren't accounting for geopolitical stability as a risk to petrochemical flows, they had holes in their heads.
- Timshel 4y ago
  No idea where your Mwh price come from. On wikipedia the LCOE for just OL3 is estimated to be at 42e/MWh.
  - Gwypaas 4y ago
    With Areva, or rather the French tax payers, eating a loss of €5.5 Billion. Include those in the number and you end up a tad bit lower than Hinkley Point C which sits at ~€120/MWh.
    - Timshel 4y ago
      Not exactly Finland problem ... And otherwise it means the price will have to be calculated once all EPR variant come online since it’s essentially the cost of restarting production after a 40 years gap and loss of expertise. But certainly if stopped now it will not be pretty :(
Schroedingersat 4y ago
What, so they could have 20% of their energy in nuclear waiting for it to come online some time around 2027 rather than 40% in renewables right now?
- doikor 4y ago
  Even before this new reactor Finland had lower gCO₂eq/kWh than Germany or Austria (with way harsher winters to boot). Once this thing starts Finland will get even further ahead. In Europe basically only France and the other Nordic countries are ahead of Finland in the cleanliness of their energy production. It really should not matter how the energy is produced the only thing that matters for clime change is how much CO₂ gets pumped into the atmosphere.
  - Schroedingersat 4y ago
    > It really should not matter how the energy is produced the only thing that matters for clime change is how much CO₂ gets pumped into the atmosphere. ... which is an argument for building as much low emissions capacity as possible within a given budget over the next 5-10 years. Which is 0 for nuclear
    - doikor 4y ago
      Yes for nuclear the emissions are very close to 0 (lower or on par with wind depending on the study). The best time to start building new low emission capacity was 3 or 4 decades ago like that France did but the next best time is today. I really don't care what kind you build as long as it is low emission. For Finland nuclear seems to be working really well. Having one of the cheapest and cleanest electricity in EU is more then enough proof of that to me.

cpursley 4y ago

It's a start! But there should be 100 others under construction right now under a wartime like economy. This is an emergency in both sovereignty and maintaining an industrialized, modern economy.

Gwypaas 4y ago
Or get 3-4x as much bang for the buck building renewables. Source: https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-energy-levelized-cost-of-storage-and-levelized-cost-of-hydrogen/ https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-energy-...
- Msw242 4y ago
  How are you going to deal with base load? We can save money on nuclear but reducing the amount of bureaucracy and increasing the volume for economies of scale.
  - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
    In Finland, Hydro combined with wind should take care of baseload. They've also been importing cheap electricity to avoid burning expensive fossil fuels for about a decade, so they probably want to continue with that.
    - gojomo 4y ago
      Where will they "import cheap electricity" from if none is being exported?
      - oldgradstudent 4y ago
        Supposedly from northern Sweden, according to a Swedish friend. Take this with a grain of salt. They have a lot of power generation in the north, but not enough transmission capacity to transfer it to the population centers in the south, so they have to sell it cheaply to their neighbors, and buy expensive electricity from their neighbors in the south. This all worked fine when they could buy cheap electricity from their southern neighbors. But now they have a problem. A few weeks ago there was 10X or more electricity price difference between north and south Sweden. Take a look at: https://www.svk.se/en/national-grid/the-control-room/ https://www.svk.se/en/national-grid/the-control-room/ Pick, for example, August 26, 2022, at 11:04. Prices up north are 14 euro per MWh, and 750 euro per MWh in the south.

dividedbyzero 4y ago

Olkiluoto 3 is sitting at three times the planned cost and has a delay of over a decade, so hopefully they'll be able to take it online for good this time, the last attempt to do so didn't go so well.

soco 4y ago
I though when you build an existing model the costs and planning estimations would get a bit closer to reality...
- hocuspocus 4y ago
  Taishan proved you can build EPRs near cost and time estimates. EDF has promised a simplified design for the EPR2 (after learning from 20 years of mistakes) but it's probably not going to fix the sad state of our nuclear industry in Europe, suffering from a lot of internal and external inefficiencies.
  - distances 4y ago
    I have no proof, but I have a strong feeling that the Chinese nuclear safety authority isn't nowhere near as picky as the Finnish counterpart. Lots of the delays were caused by orders to rebuild after failed quality checks from the authorities.
    - hocuspocus 4y ago
      Certainly, but this is mostly a self-inflicted problem in the EU. Everything that is procured through a public tender gets done by the lowest bidder.
      - Gwypaas 4y ago
        Olkiluoto 3 is built by a private company to provide power for a consortium of industry companies, no lowest bidder in sight. Still the same issue though, wonder if it's nuclear that is hard or public procurement? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teollisuuden_Voima https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teollisuuden_Voima

Schroedingersat 4y ago

Nuclear power for a mere 7 euros per watt (with unlimited publicly funded insurance) this time in a short short 17 years with only some unpaid immigrant labour. Areva footed the bill for the overruns this time rather than foisting them on the taxpayer, so that's something at least.

ZeroGravitas 4y ago
Areva paying for the overruns just means it's French taxpayers footing the bill.
gojomo 4y ago
"unpaid immigrant labor"? Are you alleging slavery in European power-plant construction?
- scrlk 4y ago
  I assume it might be a reference to this: > In 2012 it was reported that one Bulgarian contracting firm is owned by the mafia, and that Bulgarian workers have been required to pay weekly protection fees to the mafia, wages have been unpaid, employees have been told not to join a union and that employers also reneged on social security payments. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olkiluoto_Nuclear_Power_Plant#Criticism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olkiluoto_Nuclear_Power_Plant#...
  - gojomo 4y ago
    Thanks for the context! I hope a highly-developed EU nation like Finland can ensure all owed wages are paid.

simfoo 4y ago

11 billion € for 1GW. Cost for wind energy is around 1.2m€/MW. Which means that the same amount of money could have been used to build over 3500 wind turbines in the 2-3 MW range, producing up to 8.7GW (and probably never less than 1GW). Nuclear is nice on paper but totally bonkers once you look at the numbers. And they aren't even accounting for all costs, e.g. insurance and long term waste storage are heavily subsidized.

alexb_ 4y ago
Wind turbines also are not 100% reliable and take up a gigantic amount of space.
- locallost 4y ago
  Are they unreliable? They break down unexpectedly and require a lot of maintenance? I don't think so. Furthermore, when they break the risk is spread out - a whole lot would need to go out at the same time to cause issues. You probably meant their output is unpredictable. But even this is wrong, since weather forecasts allow for a very predictable output. Nuclear is neither - it requires extensive maintenance (see France), and they can go out unpredictably, taking out a lot of capacity at an instant (see France). And turbines also take a lot less space than say parking lots.
Timshel 4y ago
From Finland pov they paid 5.5billion, the rest is on Areva since they had lost the knowledge/expertise on how to build. Deploying such a high number of wind turbine might not be so easy since usually nobody wants them close by and even if Finland is vast not all space is probably suitable. Nuclear is far from perfect but at least it’s low co2 and once built cost are usually stable (uranium price is negligeable).
- ftth_finland 4y ago
  In addition, there are restrictions on the erection of wind turbines in the east due to defense reasons.

jmyeet 4y ago

I'm pretty sure I could write a bot that would accurately simulate any nuclear energy topic on HN. The pro-nuclear people will argue any extreme incidents are just outliers that can be ignored, the high cost of construction is completely artificial and regulatory in nature, the high cost to build is just because we don't build enough of them, all the waste (from processing and from fuel) are solved problems, we need a base load in the grid and the time to build isn't an issue. The anti-nuclear people will point out the devastating failure modes, no nuclear plant has been built without massive government support, in places like the US the costs of nuclear clean up in case of accidents is actually capped by legislation so the government is bearing these costs too, if base load is real hydro power is better, fuel waste needs can't just be locked in a cave (eg for years or decades it needs to be actively cooled because it generates heat), transport of fuel and waste introduces risk of accidents and mamlfeasance, humans are terrible at managing long-term and low-probability high-impact risk, nobody wants to live near a nuclear power plant and that the plummetting cost of renewables make nuclear increasingly uneconomic. Rinse and repeat.

lbriner 4y ago
This is true but what is more shocking is that the powers-that-be in each of the major countries haven't been able to sit down and say: Nuclear option: Environment cost, land cost, resource cost, availability of materials etc. Renewables option: Requirement for the correct geography, unbalanced grid, storage options, increase of energy efficiency etc. Then at least work out that currently in situations a, b and c, only Nuclear is viable, whereas in situations d, e and f, renewables make sense. In almost all cases, it will need to be a mix and I'm unsure that anywhere has so many renewables that have a massive problem. Australia struggled with too much solar but their grid is still alive so in many countries, we could probably scale renewables more quickly for some capacity. Nuclear is longer term and might be needed where you don't have Norway's water or Iceland's geothermal, great. Why does everyone have to be an extremist on these discussions?
Gwypaas 4y ago
Sadly the problem is that HN is not up to date on current research and economics, nuclear proponents argue like it's 2005-10 and that nothing has changed. Similarly to how you are characterizing the arguments. At that time starting up another wave of nuclear was the best choice we ever made, because renewables was too far flung out to be a certain solution. If Olkiluoto 3, Flamanville, Vogtle and Virgil C. Summer had been completed on time with amazing efficiency we would be running nuclear today. The difference now, 10 years later, is that renewables have leapfrogged nuclear several times over and thus it does not make a sensible investment from either safety, economics or any other angle. Other than being a "known" choice because the grid has always been centralized and some people like the cool dangerous steam boiler technology of it. So what we need to do today is to draw the learnings of those nuclear attempts and not pour another €X00 billion into pride projects.

lbriner 4y ago

I think a struggle in many other countries, including the UK, is that the housing stock is old and was not built for energy-efficiency. We have Extinction Rebellion going on about insulating all the houses in Britain but this is not practical, as much as I am a big believer (and purchaser!) of insulation. We wonder how much we could reduce the need for something as unwanted as another nuclear power station (another reactor on an existing site is probably less bad). Countries in the far north have had years to learn that they need good insulation and with a low population density, a relatively small amount of energy goes a long way. Compare to the UK, France, Germany, USA, Brasil etc. who have very large populations and either very hot or very cold weather and you have the problem with privately owned buildings who you cannot easily coerce into spending on their own energy efficiency but the gains would be entirely in the homeowners pocket so why should the taxpayer foot the bill? There are really obvious things that should be emergency legislation by anyone without their head in the sand and that is 1) Changes to the requirements for new-builds including improving the standard of checks since a lot of it is easily gamed by the developers and 2) Getting rid of VAT and possibly subsidising insulation products so that a good number of people who could do it might be persuaded that they can now afford it. Insulating a loft in the UK could easily cost £300 DIY or £500+ if you paid someone, which for many households is a large amount of money. Once you add it the more difficult insulating, the costs would be enormous.

Turing_Machine 4y ago
> but the gains would be entirely in the homeowners pocket so why should the taxpayer foot the bill? It's pretty common (though not universal) in the United States for renters to be responsible for utilities, such as heating, water, and electricity. In those cases, the owner neither cares about, nor benefits from, increased energy efficiency, while on the other side of the coin, the tenant has little incentive to make capital improvements on a property he or she may only be planning on occupying for a year or so. In this scenario, anything that doesn't have a payback period shorter than the length of expected tenancy is unlikely to get done.
dmos62 4y ago
> unwanted as another nuclear power station Call me an outsider, but I do want more nuclear reactors, since they provide clean energy and don't open up regions to geopolitical pressure, like what's happening during the Russo-Ukrainian war. Nuclear reactors have been expensive to build so far, but hopefully that's going to change.

jscipione 4y ago

Most of Europe will be in a state of open rebellion in a few months when there is no more energy to heat their homes and no more food to feed their family. This is due to the failure of European leaders to create policies of energy independence. Protests have already begun all over the continent. Finland’s nuclear reactor is too little to late to save Europe from total war.

darthrupert 4y ago
> Protests have already begun all over the continent Have they, though? > total war Only Ukraine is in a state of war. I'd like to quote Zelensky because he hits the sentiment of most of Europe brilliantly: "Without gas or without you? Without you. Without light or without you? Without you. Without water or without you? Without you. Without food or without you? Without you.” “Cold, hunger, darkness and thirst are not as scary and deadly for us as your ‘friendship and brotherhood,' But history will put everything in its place. And we will be with gas, light, water and food and WITHOUT you!”
- _-david-_ 4y ago
  Is Zelensky saying it would be better for Western Europe to freeze to death than have Ukraine taken over by Russia?
  - darthrupert 4y ago
    He's talking about Ukraine. I'm thinking that Western Europe can and should follow his great example. I live in Finland. Nobody's freezing to death here next winter, and most of Europe is in warmer zones than we are. We're fine. Russia is fucked if they keep following this insane path their dictators have put them on.
rcxdude 4y ago
Europe will be fine over the winter, it'll just be expensive (European countries have been working together to move heaven and earth to make sure they do have enough fuel, it's quite an impressive achievement). Most of the complaints are about who's going to pay for it, considering a good chunk of the population cannot easily make that much room in their budget if the costs are passed on directly, as opposed to being taken up by the government.

rasz 4y ago

I was looking at https://euenergy.live https://euenergy.live today and wondering WTF just happened in Scandinavia, usually only 2 NO sectors have cheap power, but today its whole region.

Arnt 4y ago

I'm puzzled by how many people confuse gas and electricity, enough to wonder whether I am the one who's wrong. The country where I live historically used about 15% of its gas to produce electricity. (Most of the 85% were burned for heat at end-user sites, some were used as molecules in chemical plants.) I'd like to know two things. I can't find these on the web, but perhaps someone on HN knows. 1. Do any of the European countries that imported gas from Russia burn most of to produce electricity? I (perhaps mistakenly) assumed that most of it was burned in furnaces and other heating devices, like here. 2. Are there any countries with a sizable set of heating devices (furnaces, ovens, whatever) can can use either gas or electricity, depending on what's available at any given moment?

_ph_ 4y ago
No, you are not wrong. Gas is only a small part of German electricity production. It is a larger part in the US, but the US has a lot of gas available from fracking. Yes, if there were plentiful of cheap gas, it is much better to use that instead of coal and oil, but electricity production isn't the bottle neck. Switching home heating to heat pumps alone could reduce the gas consumption considerably.
- doikor 4y ago
  The % of actual gas used does not matter much as the price is set by the most expensive form of production at that moment. Most of the time this is a peaker gas (or oil) plants if it is required to run one. So if you normally need to run the last 1% of your production with peaker plants that used to cost X but now due to external reasons their costs are 10X then your electricity price for the moment they are on is 10 times more.
  - _ph_ 4y ago
    Gas wouldn't cost 10x more, if it were not scarce.
    - doikor 4y ago