5 ms·

Just to be clear what this means and what it does not mean: It means that nuclear power can count towards Sweden's goal towards fossil-free electricity. It does

by hannob 3y ago

Just to be clear what this means and what it does not mean: It means that nuclear power can count towards Sweden's goal towards fossil-free electricity. It does not mean anyone is actually building nuclear plants, or that anyone would want to pay for it. (The article mentions plans from Vattenfall to build SMRs, but well, SMRs don't exist yet, and as far as I could see, the only thing they did yet is perform a feasibility study.) And then there's this: https://www.power-technology.com/news/orsted-offshore-sweden/ https://www.power-technology.com/news/orsted-offshore-sweden... Danish company Ørsted wants to build offshore wind farms that could power half of sweden. Ørsted is a fascinating company, it is basically the only former oil and gas company that successfully transitioned towards clean energy. Between Vattenfall having announced that they might build a type of nuclear plant that has never been built before, and Ørsted wanting to build massive offshore wind farms, I know which one I think is more plausible.

m_eiman 3y ago
The thing that makes everything impossible to predict is that the parties currently in charge have, for political reasons, decided that nuclear power is the only possible solution (ignoring the fact that t takes longer to build than the available time to transition) and that wind and solar are bad options.
- fifilura 3y ago
  Yes, this message is speaking to the voters, who have been triggered by political parties to expect nuclear as the only solution. ("Build That Wall!")
  - kramerger 3y ago
    With the current structure, Sweden is already a net exporter of electricity (ignoring a handfull of hours every year when it has to import). The real problem is that they can produce it for cheap and sell it with a huge profit to other countries. Since it is an open market, this artificially drives up the domestic prices. So a much cheaper solution would be to cut the cable to Germany and France and leave the open market
    - nyargh 3y ago
      Which unfortunately they can't due to EU agreements. They could, however, tax/nationalize private producers and return windfall profits to swedish ratepayers.
    - fifilura 3y ago
      And Finland who were always one of our main importers. But they just finished their new nuclear reactor (which took more than 15 years to build YMMV). This is also one of the reasons the controversial electricity bill refund was not so controversial IMO. It was our electricity to start with and the money came from profits for selling it abroad. A more stable solution should be developed of course.
      - nyargh 3y ago
        This is not quite correct, the elstöd came from a "bottleneck fee" which was earmarked for infrastructure improvements. It is not a long term solution to high regional energy prices (the fees were accrued over multiple years), and it absolutely was not a windfall profits tax. Edit: iirc the elstöd program administrative costs were predicted to cost more than the amount refunded. It was hasty election politics, and not likely to be anything permanent.
        fifilura 3y ago
        You may be right. Still, the excess energy production is in Sweden so it should be possible to reshuffle that money.
        nyargh 3y ago
        100% agree, and other EU nations have done exactly this. Unfortunately that (a new windfall tax) will never happen with the current government and political interests in Sweden.
- funklute 3y ago
  > for political reasons > (ignoring the fact that t takes longer to build than the available time to transition) My understanding is that nuclear is necessary, unless you believe in very optimistic development timelines for better batteries. Yes, batteries have come a long way, but they are still a long way off from being able to support base load -- is that not correct? It might be faster to build out nuclear, than to develop the necessary improvements in battery tech... Or am I completely off here?
  - geewee 3y ago
    You're not completely off, the IEA recommends still building out nuclear and keeping existing plants alive. [0] I've seen several analysis' such as [1] that tend point towards renewables being cheaper than nuclear power, even when taking transmission and storage into account. Better transmission cables to require less storage, plus overprovisioning and using the surplus power to create e-fuels and similar is a pretty viable alternative. So the short answer is - is nuclear necessary? - no. Is building out new nuclear cheaper than building out new renewables + storage? Also probably no - but that might change if small scale modular reactors really take off. However is keeping nuclear plants around a good idea? Absolutely. [0] https://iea.blob.core.windows.net/assets/ad5a93ce-3a7f-461d-a441-8a05b7601887/Nuclear_Power_in_a_Clean_Energy_System.pdf https://iea.blob.core.windows.net/assets/ad5a93ce-3a7f-461d-... [1] https://reneweconomy.com.au/solar-and-wind-keep-getting-cheaper-and-crush-coal-gas-and-nuclear-on-costs-lazard/ https://reneweconomy.com.au/solar-and-wind-keep-getting-chea...
    - pyrale 3y ago
      > even when taking transmission and storage into account. I would take reports that account for stuff never done before with a pinch of salt.
  - defrost 3y ago
    Here (Australia) we've been using large battery parks to offset peak daytime solar into the evening peak demand periods. eg. [1] ( $$ == AUD Australian ) French firm Neoen will build a mega battery in Collie after winning a two-year contract to smooth out energy supply and demand in Western Australia’s south-west grid, which is under strain from soaring midday peak supply from rooftop solar and ageing coal-fired power stations. The battery, to be constructed from 224 Tesla “Megapacks”, can store 219 megawatts of energy for four hours during the day and discharge it back to the grid during high demand in the evening when solar generation falls. ... UGL, a subsidiary of Spanish-owned CIMIC, has started construction on one of four grid-scale batteries in the south-west of WA. No cost was provided for the battery. Synergy is commissioning a battery in Kwinana that can store 100 megawatts for two hours that was originally meant to be operating by the end of 2022. In the May budget, the WA government allocated $2.3 billion for two further batteries. Synergy will build another battery at Kwinana that can store or discharge 200 megawatts for four hours that is expected to start operating by late 2024. The cost per megawatt isn't exactly clear in the news article - I'd have to table numbers from primary sources to declutter the journalistic filter. South Australia is also investing in new battery parks [2] (on the back of the success of one of the earliest "city scale" battery parks globally) [1] https://www.watoday.com.au/national/western-australia/tesla-mega-battery-bound-for-collie-to-smooth-out-wa-power-system-20230620-p5dhyw.html https://www.watoday.com.au/national/western-australia/tesla-... [2] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-06-23/vanadium-flow-battery-south-australia/102515616 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-06-23/vanadium-flow-battery...
- bigger_inside 3y ago
  < for political reasons well, and for technical ones. Since this a tech-heavy board, I expect it to be common knowledge here that you can't operate a grid on wind and solar alone, as you can't control the weather-based output (which, in the case of solar, also has a tendency to maximize when it's -not- most needed). A grid needs a controllable baseline source to have any stability. That can be gas or any other fired plant, it could sometimes be hydro, but it can also be nuclear. Burning things up is a climate nightmare (though still where about 90% of world power comes from), and also very much more expensive in Europe now than it used to be. Hydro can't be built just anywhere you like, and if the river is also a waterway, also can't be controlled based on energy need (as it is controlled based on traffic demands). So until we get a fusion plant, nuclear is just a predictable decision tree outcome.
  - nyargh 3y ago
    Sweden has long since maxed out on its hydro capacity and hydro is at times the largest portion of domestic energy production. Generation capacity to match domestic base load is not a problem in Sweden. As mentioned elsewhere in the comments, Sweden is consistently (except literally a few days a year) a net energy exporter, in a national sense they don't really need more production. The issue is regional production, which fell off a cliff due to russian gas supplies to Germany being shut off and them deciding to continue with planned decommissioning of domestic nuclear generation during that period.
- pyrale 3y ago
  > (ignoring the fact that t takes longer to build than the available time to transition) We're reaching a point where anything we should do will take longer than the time we have to do it. That is a weak claim, given that the same is true for any solution we try to implement, and that late is much better than never.
troupo 3y ago
> Danish company Ørsted wants to build offshore wind farms that could power half of sweden. It will "power half of Sweden" in the ideal conditions of 100% wind always blowing.
- nyargh 3y ago
  It tends to be a bit windy there, so... yes.
  - troupo 3y ago
    Right now Denmark which probably has the most windmills and the most wind: - 0.23% of installed wind capacity is available - luckily it's a sunny day, so 23% of Denmark's electricity is provided by solar (at 57% installed capacity) - Right now Denmark imports 30% of its energy from Germany, and another 16% from the Netherlands So yeah. Pretty windy.
    - troupo 3y ago
      It's a cloudy and rainy day today. - wind: 25% of installed capacity - solar: 2.37% of installed capacity - almost 50% of all electricity imported from Sweden and Norway
dybber 3y ago
Couldn’t it mean that closed down reactors, such as those at Barsebäck, could potentially re-open at some time in the future (after restoration, testing, etc.)?
- troupo 3y ago
  IIRC you can't just re-open a stopped nuclear reactor. You have to fully rebuild one from scratch.
  - _nalply 3y ago
    s/stopped/closed down/ but yeah.
  - Maakuth 3y ago
    It's technically not quite that way, shutting down a nuclear reactor doesn't destroy it like a blast furnace. However it might be practically true after a couple of years. The institutional knowledge is gone, many moving parts degraded due to stillness. And also a lot of relicensing to do. That must be way harder for a plant that's not currently operational.
    - troupo 3y ago
      There's also a good discussion here: https://engineering.stackexchange.com/questions/7394/why-does-it-take-so-long-to-restart-a-nuclear-power-plant https://engineering.stackexchange.com/questions/7394/why-doe...
- fifilura 3y ago
  Barsebäck was closed down almost 20 years ago. There is not much to re-use there. There may be something to salvave at Ringhals but not worth it more than for sentinental reasons. It would be like renovating a 50yo veteran car. Maybe fun for someone but not worth the effort. That was also one of the main reasons it was closed down. It was simply reaching its end of life and required a major overhaul that neither government or owners were willing to invest.
madspindel 3y ago
Vattenfall wants to double the lifespan of the existing nuclear plants: https://www.svt.se/nyheter/inrikes/vattenfall-vill-dubbla-livslangden-pa-karnreaktorerna https://www.svt.se/nyheter/inrikes/vattenfall-vill-dubbla-li... So instead of building 6 new nuclear plants, they will use the existing ones for another 40 years.
Gud 3y ago
> SMRs don't exist yet Sweden built their first SMR in the 60s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%85gesta_Nuclear_Plant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%85gesta_Nuclear_Plant Sweden intended to build 50+ of these, primarily intended for heating. Sadly, the anti-nuclear mania struck hard in Sweden during the 70s and our awesome nuclear industry never recovered.

by hannob 3y ago

m_eiman 3y ago

The thing that makes everything impossible to predict is that the parties currently in charge have, for political reasons, decided that nuclear power is the only possible solution (ignoring the fact that t takes longer to build than the available time to transition) and that wind and solar are bad options.

fifilura 3y ago
Yes, this message is speaking to the voters, who have been triggered by political parties to expect nuclear as the only solution. ("Build That Wall!")
- kramerger 3y ago
  With the current structure, Sweden is already a net exporter of electricity (ignoring a handfull of hours every year when it has to import). The real problem is that they can produce it for cheap and sell it with a huge profit to other countries. Since it is an open market, this artificially drives up the domestic prices. So a much cheaper solution would be to cut the cable to Germany and France and leave the open market
  - nyargh 3y ago
    Which unfortunately they can't due to EU agreements. They could, however, tax/nationalize private producers and return windfall profits to swedish ratepayers.
  - fifilura 3y ago
    And Finland who were always one of our main importers. But they just finished their new nuclear reactor (which took more than 15 years to build YMMV). This is also one of the reasons the controversial electricity bill refund was not so controversial IMO. It was our electricity to start with and the money came from profits for selling it abroad. A more stable solution should be developed of course.
    - nyargh 3y ago
      This is not quite correct, the elstöd came from a "bottleneck fee" which was earmarked for infrastructure improvements. It is not a long term solution to high regional energy prices (the fees were accrued over multiple years), and it absolutely was not a windfall profits tax. Edit: iirc the elstöd program administrative costs were predicted to cost more than the amount refunded. It was hasty election politics, and not likely to be anything permanent.
      - fifilura 3y ago
        You may be right. Still, the excess energy production is in Sweden so it should be possible to reshuffle that money.
        nyargh 3y ago
        100% agree, and other EU nations have done exactly this. Unfortunately that (a new windfall tax) will never happen with the current government and political interests in Sweden.
funklute 3y ago
> for political reasons > (ignoring the fact that t takes longer to build than the available time to transition) My understanding is that nuclear is necessary, unless you believe in very optimistic development timelines for better batteries. Yes, batteries have come a long way, but they are still a long way off from being able to support base load -- is that not correct? It might be faster to build out nuclear, than to develop the necessary improvements in battery tech... Or am I completely off here?
- geewee 3y ago
  You're not completely off, the IEA recommends still building out nuclear and keeping existing plants alive. [0] I've seen several analysis' such as [1] that tend point towards renewables being cheaper than nuclear power, even when taking transmission and storage into account. Better transmission cables to require less storage, plus overprovisioning and using the surplus power to create e-fuels and similar is a pretty viable alternative. So the short answer is - is nuclear necessary? - no. Is building out new nuclear cheaper than building out new renewables + storage? Also probably no - but that might change if small scale modular reactors really take off. However is keeping nuclear plants around a good idea? Absolutely. [0] https://iea.blob.core.windows.net/assets/ad5a93ce-3a7f-461d-a441-8a05b7601887/Nuclear_Power_in_a_Clean_Energy_System.pdf https://iea.blob.core.windows.net/assets/ad5a93ce-3a7f-461d-... [1] https://reneweconomy.com.au/solar-and-wind-keep-getting-cheaper-and-crush-coal-gas-and-nuclear-on-costs-lazard/ https://reneweconomy.com.au/solar-and-wind-keep-getting-chea...
  - pyrale 3y ago
    > even when taking transmission and storage into account. I would take reports that account for stuff never done before with a pinch of salt.
- defrost 3y ago
  Here (Australia) we've been using large battery parks to offset peak daytime solar into the evening peak demand periods. eg. [1] ( $$ == AUD Australian ) French firm Neoen will build a mega battery in Collie after winning a two-year contract to smooth out energy supply and demand in Western Australia’s south-west grid, which is under strain from soaring midday peak supply from rooftop solar and ageing coal-fired power stations. The battery, to be constructed from 224 Tesla “Megapacks”, can store 219 megawatts of energy for four hours during the day and discharge it back to the grid during high demand in the evening when solar generation falls. ... UGL, a subsidiary of Spanish-owned CIMIC, has started construction on one of four grid-scale batteries in the south-west of WA. No cost was provided for the battery. Synergy is commissioning a battery in Kwinana that can store 100 megawatts for two hours that was originally meant to be operating by the end of 2022. In the May budget, the WA government allocated $2.3 billion for two further batteries. Synergy will build another battery at Kwinana that can store or discharge 200 megawatts for four hours that is expected to start operating by late 2024. The cost per megawatt isn't exactly clear in the news article - I'd have to table numbers from primary sources to declutter the journalistic filter. South Australia is also investing in new battery parks [2] (on the back of the success of one of the earliest "city scale" battery parks globally) [1] https://www.watoday.com.au/national/western-australia/tesla-mega-battery-bound-for-collie-to-smooth-out-wa-power-system-20230620-p5dhyw.html https://www.watoday.com.au/national/western-australia/tesla-... [2] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-06-23/vanadium-flow-battery-south-australia/102515616 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-06-23/vanadium-flow-battery...
bigger_inside 3y ago
< for political reasons well, and for technical ones. Since this a tech-heavy board, I expect it to be common knowledge here that you can't operate a grid on wind and solar alone, as you can't control the weather-based output (which, in the case of solar, also has a tendency to maximize when it's -not- most needed). A grid needs a controllable baseline source to have any stability. That can be gas or any other fired plant, it could sometimes be hydro, but it can also be nuclear. Burning things up is a climate nightmare (though still where about 90% of world power comes from), and also very much more expensive in Europe now than it used to be. Hydro can't be built just anywhere you like, and if the river is also a waterway, also can't be controlled based on energy need (as it is controlled based on traffic demands). So until we get a fusion plant, nuclear is just a predictable decision tree outcome.
- nyargh 3y ago
  Sweden has long since maxed out on its hydro capacity and hydro is at times the largest portion of domestic energy production. Generation capacity to match domestic base load is not a problem in Sweden. As mentioned elsewhere in the comments, Sweden is consistently (except literally a few days a year) a net energy exporter, in a national sense they don't really need more production. The issue is regional production, which fell off a cliff due to russian gas supplies to Germany being shut off and them deciding to continue with planned decommissioning of domestic nuclear generation during that period.
pyrale 3y ago
> (ignoring the fact that t takes longer to build than the available time to transition) We're reaching a point where anything we should do will take longer than the time we have to do it. That is a weak claim, given that the same is true for any solution we try to implement, and that late is much better than never.

troupo 3y ago

> Danish company Ørsted wants to build offshore wind farms that could power half of sweden. It will "power half of Sweden" in the ideal conditions of 100% wind always blowing.

nyargh 3y ago
It tends to be a bit windy there, so... yes.
- troupo 3y ago
  Right now Denmark which probably has the most windmills and the most wind: - 0.23% of installed wind capacity is available - luckily it's a sunny day, so 23% of Denmark's electricity is provided by solar (at 57% installed capacity) - Right now Denmark imports 30% of its energy from Germany, and another 16% from the Netherlands So yeah. Pretty windy.
  - troupo 3y ago
    It's a cloudy and rainy day today. - wind: 25% of installed capacity - solar: 2.37% of installed capacity - almost 50% of all electricity imported from Sweden and Norway

dybber 3y ago

Couldn’t it mean that closed down reactors, such as those at Barsebäck, could potentially re-open at some time in the future (after restoration, testing, etc.)?

troupo 3y ago
IIRC you can't just re-open a stopped nuclear reactor. You have to fully rebuild one from scratch.
- _nalply 3y ago
  s/stopped/closed down/ but yeah.
- Maakuth 3y ago
  It's technically not quite that way, shutting down a nuclear reactor doesn't destroy it like a blast furnace. However it might be practically true after a couple of years. The institutional knowledge is gone, many moving parts degraded due to stillness. And also a lot of relicensing to do. That must be way harder for a plant that's not currently operational.
  - troupo 3y ago
    There's also a good discussion here: https://engineering.stackexchange.com/questions/7394/why-does-it-take-so-long-to-restart-a-nuclear-power-plant https://engineering.stackexchange.com/questions/7394/why-doe...
fifilura 3y ago
Barsebäck was closed down almost 20 years ago. There is not much to re-use there. There may be something to salvave at Ringhals but not worth it more than for sentinental reasons. It would be like renovating a 50yo veteran car. Maybe fun for someone but not worth the effort. That was also one of the main reasons it was closed down. It was simply reaching its end of life and required a major overhaul that neither government or owners were willing to invest.

madspindel 3y ago

Vattenfall wants to double the lifespan of the existing nuclear plants: https://www.svt.se/nyheter/inrikes/vattenfall-vill-dubbla-livslangden-pa-karnreaktorerna https://www.svt.se/nyheter/inrikes/vattenfall-vill-dubbla-li... So instead of building 6 new nuclear plants, they will use the existing ones for another 40 years.

Gud 3y ago

> SMRs don't exist yet Sweden built their first SMR in the 60s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%85gesta_Nuclear_Plant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%85gesta_Nuclear_Plant Sweden intended to build 50+ of these, primarily intended for heating. Sadly, the anti-nuclear mania struck hard in Sweden during the 70s and our awesome nuclear industry never recovered.