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The main effect of this is electricity prices going up. It's completely ideological, Vattenfall the company running nuclear power plants wanted to shut down the

The main effect of this is electricity prices going up. It's completely ideological, Vattenfall the company running nuclear power plants wanted to shut down the reactors because they were not economically viable. The irony is that Sweden is ideally suited for going 100% renewable. The North has lots of hydro (which is essentially storage) and the south has lots of windy coastline. But if you go around Sweden the number of wind turbines is tiny. In the Gothenburg area I'm aware of maybe 10 (only one is really close). Sweden (unlike Denmark or Germany) never really invested in renewables. If they would have invested in wind like those countries (and let the north south connections go to rot) they would be fully renewable already. I suspect the 40B would also pay for enough wind to achieve that goal.

tmikaeld 4y ago
Nuclear was shut down due to tax raises and switching out the ceo to a wind-friendly person. Bulding more wind when it is not blowing in the winter does not help. Should we freeze at -10C for days until there is wind again?
- cycomanic 4y ago
  What's that myth that the wind stops blowing in winter. Seriously do you believe what you write or just make up things on the spot. Offshore wind has a capacity factor of 60% that's the same as nuclear (yes nuclear can't run 24/7 either) .
  - tmikaeld 4y ago
    You're right that offshore Wind has a higher wind capacity, but the socialists wanted to build 4000 new on-land wind farms across the country. Also, the IEA even show in their report that Wind is the most resource-consuming power source of all alternatives available, because the blades cannot be recycled and have short life-span + the foundations require enormous amount of steel and miles of copper, plus power stations to function. While nuclear is among the least requiring, because facilities can be refurbished for new nuclear effectively. What we need is a mix, but thinking that Wind can solely solve things are a bad idea, especially considering the very limited amount of minerals required and what is available.
  - ttkari 4y ago
    > Offshore wind has a capacity factor of 60% that's the same as nuclear FWIW, units 1 and 2 at the Finnish Olkiluoto NPP posted a capacity factor of 92,8% for the year 2021.
hurril 4y ago
You make a number bad claims here. The effect of not having enough planable energy production is that prices go up and that the energy industry starts gradually worse power plants. So you have the oil powered plants in the south, spewing out CO2. The reason why this "works" is because a number of countries in the vicinity have large needs for energy in the aftermath of having shut down their planable energy production. (Both coal plants and nuclear plants.) The swedish nuclear plants were not shut down because they were not economically viable, this is as they say _fake news_. A special tax and a number of new fees were introduced by the swedish green party that prevented economic viability. Plus: further development of more modern technology was prevented actively and also indirectly because of political risk and a lack of stability for such investments. The hydro power is in the north and cannot be transported to the south for a number of both technical reasons (too much losses with lines that long) and a lack of capacity. The wind power has to be stored in batteries (or other similar technology) in order for there to be energy available when there's not enough wind blowing. These are problems that are actually hard to solve and that also have plenty of bad consequences for the environment. Not being able to acknowledge this is the real ideological fallacy here. In fact: there is already "too much" wind farm capacity in relation to storage capacity and immediate power needs, as is evident when the price drops way below viability for the plants themselves (and sometimes into negative territory.) When this happens, the wind farms run huge losses _and so does all the other plants_. And when there is no wind, the wind farms rack up losses again. Energy management in Sweden is a lot more complex and nuanced than thinking that what's happening now in regards to a want for nuclear power production is some sort of bad ideology.
- cycomanic 4y ago
  > You make a number bad claims here. > The effect of not having enough planable energy production is that prices go up and that the energy industry starts gradually worse power plants. So you have the oil powered plants in the south, spewing out CO2. The reason why this "works" is because a number of countries in the vicinity have large needs for energy in the aftermath of having shut down their planable energy production. (Both coal plants and nuclear plants.) Actually this year many countries were pushing energy to France were most nuclear plants were not operational for maintanance and heat. > The swedish nuclear plants were not shut down because they were not economically viable, this is as they say _fake news_. A special tax and a number of new fees were introduced by the swedish green party that prevented economic viability. Are you saying Vattenfall did not shut down ringhals because they said they are not commercially viable? You are directly contradicting their own words (In October 2015, Vattenfall decided to close down Ringhals 1 by 2020 and Ringhals 2 by 2019 due to their declining profitability, instead of, as previously announced, around 2025.[16][5] from https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ringhals_Nuclear_Power_Plant https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ringhals_Nuclear_Power_Plant) Or are you saying it was because of the introduction of the Swedish Nuclear Waste Fund? I would argue that paying for waste storage should be part of the operating cost (just as CO2 costs should be covered by coal operators btw). >Plus: further development of more modern technology was prevented actively and also indirectly because of political risk and a lack of stability for such investments. You mean they could not find investors on the open market because they deemed it too risky with questionable returns, without government guarantees. Is that not how the free market is supposed to operate? > The hydro power is in the north and cannot be transported to the south for a number of both technical reasons (too much losses with lines that long) and a lack of capacity. HVDC has 3% power loss over 1000km HVAC has 6%, losses are not the problem. From https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-voltage_direct_current https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-voltage_direct_current You are correct capacity of those lines is a problem though, maybe some investments are in order? > The wind power has to be stored in batteries (or other similar technology) in order for there to be energy available when there's not enough wind blowing. These are problems that are actually hard to solve and that also have plenty of bad consequences for the environment. Not being able to acknowledge this is the real ideological fallacy here. What are the bad environmental consequences? Also offshore wind has a capacity factor of 60% that is similar to nuclear. > In fact: there is already "too much" wind farm capacity in relation to storage capacity and immediate power needs, as is evident when the price drops way below viability for the plants themselves (and sometimes into negative territory.) When this happens, the wind farms run huge losses _and so does all the other plants_. And when there is no wind, the wind farms rack up losses again. That just points to a huge market opportunity. If the wind turbines have to pay "huge" amounts when the wind is high, I just need to store that energy and make twice the money. > Energy management in Sweden is a lot more complex and nuanced than thinking that what's happening now in regards to a want for nuclear power production is some sort of bad ideology. Funny, usually it's the nuclear proponents saying it's all straight forward and the opponents are just ideologically motivated.
zppln 4y ago
And why weren't they viable? Sounds strange that other countries would be able to operate nuclear reactors profitably but not Sweden.
- cycomanic 4y ago
  Because they are not viable to operate in many other countries either?
  - DynamicStatic 4y ago
    They were not viable because of taxes added to make them not viable.

tmikaeld 4y ago

Nuclear was shut down due to tax raises and switching out the ceo to a wind-friendly person. Bulding more wind when it is not blowing in the winter does not help. Should we freeze at -10C for days until there is wind again?

cycomanic 4y ago
What's that myth that the wind stops blowing in winter. Seriously do you believe what you write or just make up things on the spot. Offshore wind has a capacity factor of 60% that's the same as nuclear (yes nuclear can't run 24/7 either) .
- tmikaeld 4y ago
  You're right that offshore Wind has a higher wind capacity, but the socialists wanted to build 4000 new on-land wind farms across the country. Also, the IEA even show in their report that Wind is the most resource-consuming power source of all alternatives available, because the blades cannot be recycled and have short life-span + the foundations require enormous amount of steel and miles of copper, plus power stations to function. While nuclear is among the least requiring, because facilities can be refurbished for new nuclear effectively. What we need is a mix, but thinking that Wind can solely solve things are a bad idea, especially considering the very limited amount of minerals required and what is available.
- ttkari 4y ago
  > Offshore wind has a capacity factor of 60% that's the same as nuclear FWIW, units 1 and 2 at the Finnish Olkiluoto NPP posted a capacity factor of 92,8% for the year 2021.

hurril 4y ago

You make a number bad claims here. The effect of not having enough planable energy production is that prices go up and that the energy industry starts gradually worse power plants. So you have the oil powered plants in the south, spewing out CO2. The reason why this "works" is because a number of countries in the vicinity have large needs for energy in the aftermath of having shut down their planable energy production. (Both coal plants and nuclear plants.) The swedish nuclear plants were not shut down because they were not economically viable, this is as they say _fake news_. A special tax and a number of new fees were introduced by the swedish green party that prevented economic viability. Plus: further development of more modern technology was prevented actively and also indirectly because of political risk and a lack of stability for such investments. The hydro power is in the north and cannot be transported to the south for a number of both technical reasons (too much losses with lines that long) and a lack of capacity. The wind power has to be stored in batteries (or other similar technology) in order for there to be energy available when there's not enough wind blowing. These are problems that are actually hard to solve and that also have plenty of bad consequences for the environment. Not being able to acknowledge this is the real ideological fallacy here. In fact: there is already "too much" wind farm capacity in relation to storage capacity and immediate power needs, as is evident when the price drops way below viability for the plants themselves (and sometimes into negative territory.) When this happens, the wind farms run huge losses _and so does all the other plants_. And when there is no wind, the wind farms rack up losses again. Energy management in Sweden is a lot more complex and nuanced than thinking that what's happening now in regards to a want for nuclear power production is some sort of bad ideology.

cycomanic 4y ago
> You make a number bad claims here. > The effect of not having enough planable energy production is that prices go up and that the energy industry starts gradually worse power plants. So you have the oil powered plants in the south, spewing out CO2. The reason why this "works" is because a number of countries in the vicinity have large needs for energy in the aftermath of having shut down their planable energy production. (Both coal plants and nuclear plants.) Actually this year many countries were pushing energy to France were most nuclear plants were not operational for maintanance and heat. > The swedish nuclear plants were not shut down because they were not economically viable, this is as they say _fake news_. A special tax and a number of new fees were introduced by the swedish green party that prevented economic viability. Are you saying Vattenfall did not shut down ringhals because they said they are not commercially viable? You are directly contradicting their own words (In October 2015, Vattenfall decided to close down Ringhals 1 by 2020 and Ringhals 2 by 2019 due to their declining profitability, instead of, as previously announced, around 2025.[16][5] from https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ringhals_Nuclear_Power_Plant https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ringhals_Nuclear_Power_Plant) Or are you saying it was because of the introduction of the Swedish Nuclear Waste Fund? I would argue that paying for waste storage should be part of the operating cost (just as CO2 costs should be covered by coal operators btw). >Plus: further development of more modern technology was prevented actively and also indirectly because of political risk and a lack of stability for such investments. You mean they could not find investors on the open market because they deemed it too risky with questionable returns, without government guarantees. Is that not how the free market is supposed to operate? > The hydro power is in the north and cannot be transported to the south for a number of both technical reasons (too much losses with lines that long) and a lack of capacity. HVDC has 3% power loss over 1000km HVAC has 6%, losses are not the problem. From https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-voltage_direct_current https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-voltage_direct_current You are correct capacity of those lines is a problem though, maybe some investments are in order? > The wind power has to be stored in batteries (or other similar technology) in order for there to be energy available when there's not enough wind blowing. These are problems that are actually hard to solve and that also have plenty of bad consequences for the environment. Not being able to acknowledge this is the real ideological fallacy here. What are the bad environmental consequences? Also offshore wind has a capacity factor of 60% that is similar to nuclear. > In fact: there is already "too much" wind farm capacity in relation to storage capacity and immediate power needs, as is evident when the price drops way below viability for the plants themselves (and sometimes into negative territory.) When this happens, the wind farms run huge losses _and so does all the other plants_. And when there is no wind, the wind farms rack up losses again. That just points to a huge market opportunity. If the wind turbines have to pay "huge" amounts when the wind is high, I just need to store that energy and make twice the money. > Energy management in Sweden is a lot more complex and nuanced than thinking that what's happening now in regards to a want for nuclear power production is some sort of bad ideology. Funny, usually it's the nuclear proponents saying it's all straight forward and the opponents are just ideologically motivated.

zppln 4y ago

And why weren't they viable? Sounds strange that other countries would be able to operate nuclear reactors profitably but not Sweden.

cycomanic 4y ago
Because they are not viable to operate in many other countries either?
- DynamicStatic 4y ago
  They were not viable because of taxes added to make them not viable.