After 18 Years, Europe's Largest Nuclear Reactor Starts Regular Output (reuters.com) 129
Finland finally began regular output Sunday from its first new nuclear power plant in more than four decades. Reuters reports that the Olkiluoto 3 (OL3) nuclear reactor is also Europe's first new nuclear plant in 16 years. Construction started in 2005, with the plant due to open four years later — but it was then "plagued by technical issues" which continued to the very end.
OL3 first supplied test production to Finland's national power grid in March last year and was expected at the time to begin regular output four months later, but instead suffered a string of breakdowns and outages that took months to fix.
The reactor will be Europe's largest, the article points out: OL3's operator Teollisuuden Voima (TVO), which is owned by Finnish utility Fortum and a consortium of energy and industrial companies, has said the unit is expected to meet around 14% of Finland's electricity demand, reducing the need for imports from Sweden and Norway. The new reactor is expected to produce for at least 60 years, TVO said in a statement on Sunday after completing the transition from testing to regular output. "The production of Olkiluoto 3 stabilises the price of electricity and plays an important role in the Finnish green transition," TVO Chief Executive Jarmo Tanhua said in the statement.
"News of OL3's start-up comes as Germany on Saturday switches off its last three remaining reactors, while Sweden, France, Britain and others plan new developments."
The reactor will be Europe's largest, the article points out: OL3's operator Teollisuuden Voima (TVO), which is owned by Finnish utility Fortum and a consortium of energy and industrial companies, has said the unit is expected to meet around 14% of Finland's electricity demand, reducing the need for imports from Sweden and Norway. The new reactor is expected to produce for at least 60 years, TVO said in a statement on Sunday after completing the transition from testing to regular output. "The production of Olkiluoto 3 stabilises the price of electricity and plays an important role in the Finnish green transition," TVO Chief Executive Jarmo Tanhua said in the statement.
"News of OL3's start-up comes as Germany on Saturday switches off its last three remaining reactors, while Sweden, France, Britain and others plan new developments."
Germany off, Finland on. (Score:4, Informative)
Saturday Germany retired their last three fission plants. Sunday Finland puts a new one online. No matter which said is looking at it, it's been a "win some, lose some" weekend.
Re:Germany off, Finland on. (Score:5, Insightful)
Germany would rather buy power from Finland than deal with domestic politics surrounding nuclear energy.
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Saturday Germany retired their last three fission plants. Sunday Finland puts a new one online. No matter which said is looking at it, it's been a "win some, lose some" weekend.
Germany would rather buy power from Finland than deal with domestic politics surrounding nuclear energy.
After a watching Finnland spend 4 years constructing this thing and then another 14 years weeding out 'technical issues' I can't really blame the Germans for taking a closer look at practically any other method of generating electricity on time and in a cost effective manner.
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Except that Germany's plants were already running and producing electricity. Nobody is suggesting that they build new ones. But to shut down one that is working well and not at the end of it's life is bonkers.
Except I wasn't talking about Germany's worn out and dilapidated legacy nuclear plants which, incidentally, have their own history of cost overruns and subsidies. I was commenting on why the Germans weren't building new ones and why Olkiluoto 3 isn't exactly a shining triumph of nuclear technology and a vindication of the business case behind it that is likely to encourage Germany to build more of the damn things (hint: 4 years in construction, then another 14 years weeding out 'technical issues' and a 11 b
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. I was commenting on why the Germans weren't building new ones
Nuclear plants being hard to build is not why they don't build new one in Germany. Also you can expect, next plants being built in a more effective way. 75% of Germany's energy comes from fossil fuel which is not great especially when you are the land of the so called Green party.
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. I was commenting on why the Germans weren't building new ones
Nuclear plants being hard to build is not why they don't build new one in Germany. Also you can expect, next plants being built in a more effective way. 75% of Germany's energy comes from fossil fuel which is not great especially when you are the land of the so called Green party.
I did not say nuclear plants are hard to build you can build them quite easily if you don't care about economics, don't give a shit about safety and pollution and are willing to dump the radioactive waste in the nearest body of water like they did in the USSR. I said that Germany isn't building new nuclear plants because they take a long time to build, very few of them seem to get into operations without significant delays and massive cost overruns, they are expensive to run, cannot produce electricity at c
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Also keep in mind that I haven't even opened the can of worms otherwise known as 'nuclear waste disposal'.
The Finns have. They have been very forward-thinking about the issue: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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> Also you can expect, next plants being built in a more effective way
Can we?
OL3 was the first EPR to start construction. The second, Flamanville, is even further behind and over budget. The third, Hinckley, is about the same price as OL3, but it still has some time to go so who knows what is left to occur.
It would indeed be nice if they did get cheaper every time, but history shows rather clearly that this is not the case in this market. I will let you select the reason why.
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75% of Germany's energy comes from fossil fuel
If you mean "electricity" the. simply: nope!
If you mean "energy" in making Germany look bad, as in needing gas for heating houses, then you are lying to yourself. There are not many countries that have an over all -- electricity + industrial use of fossile fules + household use of fossile -- better performance than Germany. Because: everyone else -- except a few selected examples -- is worse, and is using the same or more energy based on fossile fuels for indus
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But to shut down one that is working well and not at the end of it's life is bonkers.
Only if you ignore the democratic will of the voters, it is bonkers.
You know nothing abut Germany, why give your stupid opinion about our exit from nuclear power?
Hint: where is our nuclear waste? Any idea?
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One reactor is 12% of the power for 5 million people. It is a very rich country that is the definition of the welfare state. It has probably the highest per capita oil consumption in Europe. 20% more than Germany.
In the US and other places there are simply better
Re:Germany off, Finland on. (Score:5, Insightful)
Certainly in free markets there is simply no capital for returns 20 years out.
As it is in space, so shall it be in nuclear energy. The US private sector is redesigning plants so they can be mass produced to type approvals in factories, like airplanes, rather than one at a time, like airports.
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Not that for space none of new players are producing other than for themselves. SoaceX, unlike traditional aerospace, is not selling rockets, they are selling cargo space. It is completely different.
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I'd suggest that that is semantics. Rockets before SpaceX were disposable. You'd buy your rocket on the basis of what you wanted to launch to space.
SpaceX lowering costs and increasing capacity enough that they could sell fractional shares of rockets, along with the reusability, is a game changer, but not a context changer.
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> I'd suggest that that is semantics. Rockets before SpaceX were
> disposable. You'd buy your rocket on the basis of what you wanted
> to launch to space.
I would suggest this does not match what actually happened in the nuclear market.
SpaceX put a new product in the market, take it or leave it. That would seem to be the way it should work.
The nuclear industry pretended much the same, but unfortunately, there were terrific amounts of nationalistic protectionism at every level. Every country made their
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And they've been doing that for at least twenty years so far. In the meantime China, which only started on this relatively recently, is already putting the first unit into production [world-nuclear-news.org].
My prediction: China will be selling finished units around the globe while the US is still re-re-re-re-redrawing their plans.
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The US private sector is redesigning plants so they can be mass produced to type approvals in factories
Except they won't be. The myth of the small modular reactor is just that. To get economies of scale you need ... scale. Scale does not come in the form of building hundreds. It comes in the form of building 10s of thousands.
The US private sector is hitting the market with their designs. They are currently proposing plants 3-4x more expensive per MWh than conventional nuclear. This industry is a stillbirth.
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It's not about making thousands for economies of scale, but rather building the reactors in a factory as a standardized process rather than one-offs every ten years where you lose the expertise in the meantime.
Everyone estimates all sorts of numbers but what will be the reality is another matter and the best way to find out is to try it.
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> Everyone estimates all sorts of numbers but what will be the reality is another matter and the best way to find out is to try it.
Unfortunately, there is a downside to this. If the FOAK goes high, there is no confidence that the subsequent plants will scale down as stated. The only way to demonstrate THAT is to do THAT. And so the line moves. It's like they have to demonstrate the production before they have production. It's not an enviable position.
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than one-offs every ten years
No one is building one-offs every ten years. There are only a couple of nuclear contractors in the world and despite the west's disinterest these contractors have been busy continuously constantly building reactors, for (and let me very clear about this) what is *ALREADY* a standard design.
Everyone estimates all sorts of numbers but what will be the reality is another matter
I'm not estimating anything. The first contracts have already been awarded. The money has been signed. And it's fucking expensive.
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Except they won't be. The myth of the small modular reactor is just that. To get economies of scale you need ... scale. Scale does not come in the form of building hundreds. It comes in the form of building 10s of thousands.
Anything. that is site-built becomes orders of magnitude more economical hen it can be mass produced in factories. If aircraft were built one by one on site, would anyone be able to afford to fly?
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If that were true, buildings would typically be mass produced in factories.
There's a point where shipping is impractical and building on site becomes necessary.
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Buildings by their very nature are differentiated and matched to particular sites - except for low-cost mass housing units, which we can and do build in factories.
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Anything. that is site-built becomes orders of magnitude more economical
False. There's a reason oil fired powerplants aren't simply made of 10000 car engines next to each other. There is far more to this equation than just the ability to produce something in a factory.
Critically: Economies of scale is not there. Efficiency of production is well and truly offset by efficiency of scale. And above all you don't get away from any site based building. You don't get away from local regulatory requirements. You don't get away from the handling of fissionable material.
Nuclear is not ex
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> The only one that is beyond the paper design stage is NuScale,
> and their SMRs are rubbish.
No.
The BWRX-300 is designed and supported by GE and Hitachi, both of which are well over 100 years old. The design is basically just a scaled down, passively safe version of existing designs. They are far ahead of NuScale by every measure; they have cleared most licensing in Canada and have completed site selection. If both projects were to progress "perfectly" according to their stated plans, the Darlington B
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BWRX-300 is a paper design. No prototype, no decision on building one until next year.
I haven't looked in detail because it's late, but I'd be amazed if it lived up to its claims. Build one and prove it works and is cheap.
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Given their lack or land
WTH are you talking about ? Its one of the least dense countries
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Finland EPR was the first one of its kind, so a lot of experiences and feedback were taken from it. Which is why the one put in production in China in 2019 was built in a shorter timeframe, despite starting later: it learned from OL3.
It is interesting to note that even at 3 times the cost (11b euros total), it is expected to generate between 6 to 8 times more in revenue over its lifespan (which might be extended once you retrofit new security features during the life of the plant). With an LCOE per MWh at 4
Re: Germany off, Finland on. (Score:2)
Also the first time Areva built a whole nuclear plant, before that, and also in China, Areva only built the reactor, if I've understood correctly.
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> Which is why the one put in production in China in 2019 was built in a shorter timeframe
Nine years is hardly impressive, especially in China.
Hinkley will be the real litmus test I think.
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In the US and other places there are simply better solutions. Certainly in free markets there is simply no capital for returns 20 years out.
Like what? Finland brought the CO2 emissions per kWh down to about 100g, the US is around 400 and Germany even higher. So where are these great options? Why hasn't the free market fixed it yet?
https://i.imgur.com/cwQFmPN.pn... [imgur.com]
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> Finland brought the CO2 emissions per kWh down to about 100g
Actually, it's down even more now, around 70 for the last couple of years.
But most of that is new wind, which went from 0.2% of their supply in 2005, to 14% last year. Every new watt from wind replaced one from natural gas, pretty much 1:1.
Nuclear only went up 3% during this period and is not the reason for their numbers. Hydro is actually *down* over the last two years, with the new wind coming online they're using it as a hot backup.
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In fact Finland cancelled the planned Unit 4 reactor at the same site. They initially issues a licence, but it expired because of delays and declined to renew it. The reasons cited included the massive delays and cost overruns on Unit 3.
Areva took on construction at a fixed price of â3bn, but it quickly spiralled out to â11bn. They tried to sue the operator TVO, and it was eventually settled out of court. Exact details are unclear but clearly someone lost out big time.
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Certainly in free markets there is simply no capital for returns 20 years out.
Utilities don't belong solely in the free market. They represent basic human needs and should be guaranteed by government whatever the market cost might be.
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Saturday Germany retired their last three fission plants. Sunday Finland puts a new one online. No matter which said is looking at it, it's been a "win some, lose some" weekend.
Sounds like a win some win some. We should not be running old decrepit nuclear facilities 40 years past their design life. That is a recipe for literal disaster. We should have been doing what we did this weekend for the past 40 years, building new reactors while decommissioning old ones.
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well... nuclear power is 10 to 20 times more expensive per produced kwh, you should ask yourself : what the fuck is finland thinking ?
I guess they, and other countries with a recent interest in nuclear plants, base their decisions on actual numbers [wikipedia.org], which shows that nuclear is usually less expensive than solar/wind if:
- you don't take into account renewables subsidies
- you take into account the baseload capabilities of nuclear
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I guess they, and other countries with a recent interest in nuclear plants, base their decisions on actual numbers, which shows that nuclear is usually less expensive than solar/wind if:
- you don't take into account renewables subsidies
- you take into account the baseload capabilities of nuclear
I wonder if these numbers take into account the costs of dismantling a nuclear power plant, including handling all the radioactive waste and the long-term storage of it, once it has run its course.
Which I'm told, are pretty high costs.
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Costs associated to the dismantling of a nuclear power plant are covered by provisions [iaea.org]. This is a normal step in the lifetime of a plant, and is planned from the beginning.
At least this is how it is done in France, with several nuclear plants already dismantled. It is actually written in the law for energy transition that provisions must be made to not push those costs to future generations. You might find that information interesting to read [www.irsn.fr] if you want to look deeper into it (google translate needed if yo
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Also, Finland has long-term nuclear storage sorted [yle.fi].
As opposed to long-term storage for coal power plants, which is in your lungs, and the in atmosphere.
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well... nuclear power is 10 to 20 times more expensive per produced kwh, you should ask yourself : what the fuck is finland thinking ?
I guess they, and other countries with a recent interest in nuclear plants, base their decisions on actual numbers [wikipedia.org], which shows that nuclear is usually less expensive than solar/wind if: - you don't take into account renewables subsidies - you take into account the baseload capabilities of nuclear
That article states that in France, the cost of nuclear energy (2017) is:
Meanwhile in Germany (2018/2021):
Finally, keep in mind (1) most of the numvers in that Wikipedia article are pretty old, and (2) 'state-covered insurance costs' for nuclear plants is a 'subsidy'. So it would seem, if you take a l
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It is interesting to look at those numbers in details, there are a few keypoints:
1. There are no EPR in service in France at the moment (Flamanville will be the first one, when it finally is finished). So the cost of electricity in 2021 in France is at 50€/MWh.
2. Nuclear plants in France are expected to go into LTO mode (long term operations: retro-fitted with latest security measures, after a slightly longer maintenance period). This means that they will run for 20 more years at least, bringing the pr
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Subsidy free wind is much, much cheaper than nuclear. Recent auctions in the UK were down to £27/MWh for offshore wind, compared to around £130-140 for new nuclear (exact price TBD).
Base load is no longer a big deal. The UK's National Grid CEO recognized that back in 2015: https://energypost.eu/intervie... [energypost.eu]
Because nuclear is so reliant on this disappearing need, it is finding it harder and harder to get funding for its expensive energy.
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Because nuclear is so reliant on this disappearing need, it is finding it harder and harder to get funding for its expensive energy.
Yet nuclear industry is booming, and more countries are planning to build new plants. Including Japan, even with its nuclear history.
Tell that to China too, I am sure the leader in renewables deployment has no clue, and is building new nuclear plants just because they look pretty.
There is no point arguing with you though. You provide numbers without any actual source, and most of them are wrong (like the £130-140 figure you threw, which is just absurd). You are a liar, and rely on fear-mongering to ma
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> Yet nuclear industry is booming
It is? Most of the companies in the industry either left or went bankrupt. What's left are a handful of state-supported players and a bunch of tiny companies with lots of press releases. I mean, right off the top of my head:
1) AECL was sold off for negative 100 million dollars and immediately broken up
2) Siemens sold off its entire division and all IP to what was then Areva for zero dollars
3) Westinghouse went bankrupt and nearly took Toshiba down with them
4) Framitome/Ar
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> base their decisions on actual numbers [wikipedia.org], which shows that nuclear is usually less expensive than solar/wind if:
The page you link to has nuclear at 6700 to 8000 including grandfathered systems, while wind is 1450 to 1700 and PV *with* storage is 1750 to 2000.
Moreover, the statement immediately below the values actually uses OL3 as an example that the real cost of nuclear is dramatically higher than the estimates.
There is a second table later in the document that compares historical values
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The page you link to has nuclear at 6700 to 8000 including grandfathered systems, while wind is 1450 to 1700 and PV *with* storage is 1750 to 2000.
This is the problem when people are too lazy to do their research, or to even correctly read a wikipedia page. You are looking at the capital cost, not the LCOE (I'll let you read the difference, if you don't understand why one is not equal to the other, I hope for you that you never buy a house or a car in your life).
PV drop from 107-167 to 31-57. In contrast, the nuclear data in the same row varies from 70 to 105
Of course, that would have nothing to do with the fact that PV panels manufacturing has been outsourced to China, whereas the building of a nuclear plant is one in the actual country that need
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well... nuclear power is 10 to 20 times more expensive per produced kwh, you should ask yourself : what the fuck is finland thinking ?
They're thinking and not pulling numbers out of their ass.
1.6GW (Score:5, Informative)
Construction of the 1.6 gigawatt (GW) reactor, Finland's first new nuclear plant in more than four decades and Europe's first in 16 years, began in 2005.
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And it sounds like the utility got it for "half price" due to a fixed price contract. Total cost $11B, but they paid about $6B and the contractor took a loss on the rest.
It will be interesting if they pursue the 4th unit again. It has been a long process, but it does a lot to improve grid stability for Finland and Scandinavia.
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Total cost $11B, but they paid about $6B and the contractor took a loss on the rest.
Not quite. The French government paid for the rest. This is Areva we're talking about. The company went bankrupt and was absorbed (bailed out via acquisition) by the government owned EDF.
18 years to complete (Score:2)
Re:18 years to complete (Score:4, Informative)
It's the same company Framatome. Olkiluoto 3 FInland 2005-2023 then Flamanville 3 France 2007-2024 (projected) are both built by the French consortium . Hopefully they now got the soldering process right and they'll be able to build Hickley Point C UK without such delays.
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Hopefully they now got the soldering process right and they'll be able to build Hickley Point C UK without such delays.
They are now government owned. Areva went bankrupt and was bought by EDF which also went bankrupt and was nationalised.
Add to that EDF has said they can't even find enough nuclear experts to keep their existing plants up and running when their own owners (French government) gave them projects to build more reactors in France, I wouldn't hold my breath for Hickley Point C.
If everything went well you could have expected that project to be a disaster, and things are not going well already.
Re: 18 years to complete (Score:1)
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In that 18 years solar panels went for 13% efficient to 22.5% efficient currently improving at 0.06% per year so in another 12 years sokar will be at 44% efficiency
In 50 years, efficiency will be over 100%, at which point they will be able to reach super-criticality, and generate power without solar energy at all. Profit!
Re: 18 years to complete (Score:2)
Efficiency doesn't seem very relevant fÃr Finland, since there's nearly infinite amounts of land available, so one might just as well use the cheapest available panels, efficiency damned when you can spam alot of them.
However the utility of solar is somewhat limited to the summer season, when there's actually 24 hours of sunlight in parts of the country. On the other hand, there's almost no summer AC power use. Overall electricity use during the summer season is around half that of winter. Solar gives
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So, in 2035, expect solar panel efficiency to be, maybe, 21-24% at the high end. If we're lucky.
Even improved, a huge solar panel production will use land once used by forest or fields.
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I agree.
Personal plan for the USA:
1. I'd like around 240GW of nuclear power (note, I used to use 200GW, might still do so in order to emphasize single digit accuracy). This is ~20% of the production in the USA. So it's not like I'm hostile to renewables or anything, it's just that I want a properly diversified grid and believe that nuclear should be part of it.
2. I'd like to see all the old nuclear plants retired.
3. AFTER all the coal plants are shut down
4. Natural gas/Oil plants are right after the c
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It's a French company so it's their fault :)
We haven't been building any new plants in decades so it's hardly surprising that a huge project like that goes over time and budget. Hopefully lessons can be learned from it and we go back to building a plant in five to six years.
So merely 14 yers delayed? Great job! (Score:2)
And how much more expensive than projected? Seriously. The only reason this project did not get scrapped is politics. Any other industrial installation would not survive such a massive overrun.
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The only reason this project did not get scrapped is politics.
Yeah but politics in the good sense of the term. This is infrastructure of public interest, why would anyone scrap it? Delays are not uncommon in complex infrastructure (like airports). Also technology does not progress fast enough to obsolete the project in 14 years, nor the needs have evolved to make the investment unnecessary. This just made it clear that Finnish politicians were clever to make a decision 18 years ago, knowing that such things take time and can suffer delays for unforeseen reasons.
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I don't follow the point you want to make. If they had a 18 years delay on solar it would be a thing, but they had a 18 years delay on nuclear and the technology has not changed in the meantime. The designs that are going to be built next years in UK and France are the same as those started 18 years ago in Finland. Finland needs both solar and nuclear, as they need baseline production (nuclear) for the long winter nights and solar as a source of diversification.
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Do you know how much those 14 additional years cost? The loss form interest alone is staggering. The loss from not being operational and having to run other _temporary_ replacements is worse.
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Any other industrial installation would not survive such a massive overrun.
Unless you want to argue about semantics:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
https://www.airport-technology... [airport-technology.com]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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None of these are industrial installations. Seriously. Stop lying.
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As I said, if you want to argue about semantics of what is an industrial installation as if that mattered.
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Good Job Finland (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Good Job Finland (Score:5, Insightful)
Why did parent get moderated as troll?
It is true that Finland has one of the best educational system in the world [wikipedia.org]. Also the difference between the low-end and the high-end in Finland is amongst the lowest too, which means they don't have a lot of dropouts for instance.
Parent was saying "The smarter you are the more likely you are to support nuclear energy.". This is similar to saying that the more you base your decisions on science, and not on wishful thinking or beliefs, the more likely you are to support nuclear energy.
This doesn't mean you can't at the same time support renewables... All low-carbon energy sources (solar/wind and hydro/nuclear for baseload) are needed in a future functional energy grid.
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Europes largest reactor (Score:2)
I thought that Europes largest reactor was in Ukraine. Of course since it was in the middle of a war zone and the russians were shooting at it, it was shut down for safety a few months ago...
Re:Europes largest reactor (Score:5, Informative)
Largest plant is in ukraine (6 reactors), largest single reactor is in finland.
The plant in ukraine is currently occupied by the russians, and shut down for safety reasons.
Something missing in the history. (Score:3)
ASEA ATOM (later ABB ATOM) was the supplier for units 1 and 2. Both of those units were delivered under budget and ahead of schedule; a very proud history.
In the 90s, ABB ATOM bid for the 3rd unit, but lost to AREVA. If I remember right, the year was 1992. The loss was the death knell for ABB ATOM. ABB ATOM went out of business, and I left the company and the industry.
But Wikipedia says that OLKI-3's history started in 2005in the Finnish government. What happened between 1992 and 2005?
p.s. As a side story, ASEA ATOM also designed SECURE. SECURE was an intrinsically safe reactor designed to make hot water (PIUS was the name for the sister design that made electricity.) They signed a contract to put a SECURE reactor in downtown Helsinki Finland for district heating. It would have heated the whole city in winter. But the final contract signing ceremony was scheduled for April 27, 1986, one day after Chernobyl blew up; very unfortunate timing. That was the death of the SECURE concept.
Great! I Like Studying Nuclear Accidents! (Score:2)
Re:What a success story for nuclear energy! (Score:4, Insightful)
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yes, frozen windmills and solar panels for a country that receives less than 30 monthly hours of sunshine for a quarter of the year, two very great investments
No one is asking Texas to build windfarms in Finland. They are getting *competent* people to do so. Windmills don't freeze unless they were improperly designed. They already have over 6GW of production in Finland and they are targeting 30% of the entire country's generation within the next 2 years. They have 18GW of projects already past approval stage or in construction.
Also you don't need sunshine for solar to be effective. Most of northern Europe is fucking cloudy most of the year and yet solar PV still
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They have heaters to prevent windmills freezing. They use a tiny fraction of the energy generated.
Same as nuclear plants have heaters to keep stuff working and the staff comfortable.
Re:What a success story for nuclear energy! (Score:5, Insightful)
For the same money the Finnish government could have put solar panels on every roof
I do not know if you heard, but in the winter (and parts of spring and outum too) findland gets very, very little sunlight... That's 4~5 months with no meningful solar power output to speak of from said pannels.
For the same money the Finnish government could have put [...] wind turbines in every single Finnisg garden.
I do not know if you heard, but to generate meaningfull ammounts of energy, wind turbines have to have very large wingspans, I think that if you put one in every finnish garden, they would interfere with power cables and utilities, the roofs of the houses, trees, or nearby buildings... no wonder most sane people put windturbines in empty terrain. Yes, there are developments for smaller wind turbines, but those are intended for buildings, not individual homes (they are horizontal)
And not even to start thinking about what to do with the nuclear waste this power plant generates and what to do with it after it needs to be demolished.
Lucky for Findland, and the world, the Finns DID start thinking about what to do with the nuclear waste. And they are even offering their services to other countries too:
https://hardware.slashdot.org/... [slashdot.org]
Also, is not like, after their ussefull life (25~30 years) we do not have to deal with the solar panel waste and the wind turbine's waste. The composite materials of the Wind turbine's blades in particular is very challenging right now
https://hardware.slashdot.org/... [slashdot.org]
https://hardware.slashdot.org/... [slashdot.org]
Ditto for solar pannels:
https://www.google.com/search?... [google.com]
Of course, radioactive waste is more complicated and dangerous, but, still, Finnland is way ahead of you... :-P
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Lucky for Findland, and the world, the Finns DID start thinking
You are right, the Finns are thinking. And the only reason they commissioned this nuclear plant is because it was so far along. The only other nuclear plant proposed after OL3 was cancelled last year. They have zero current nuclear in the pipeline.
They have already applied planning approval for some 18GW of additional wind though, and are planning to generate 30% of their country's needs through Wind and Solar (yeah Finland is quite a long country and does get financially viable solar in the south, which is
Re: What a success story for nuclear energy! (Score:3)
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OL4 was cancelled in September 2014 when it was still going to be EPR. They left the license alive, but TVO declined to re-up it in June 2015.
The Russian plant was another line of development, at Hanhikivi. That deal was signed in 2013 based on Russian financing. That never appeared (hey, dachas cost a lot!), and the project was moribund for the next ten years before they finally stuck the fork in it last year.
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And yet Finland still cancelled Unit 4 because this one, Unit 3, turned into such a debacle. Nearly 4x over budget, two decades to build.
Finland's experience has served as a warning for the rest of Europe.
Re:What a success story for nuclear energy! (Score:4, Insightful)
Framtome EPR (a model of pressured water reactor) has a service life of 60 years. A solar panel with an official lifetime of 25 years can realistically go about 40 at some reduced capacity and some failure rate. I'd be interested to see a real cost per kwh analysis between the nuclear and your proposed solar panel on every roof proposal. (wind turbine in every garden is problematic, they're usually huge. and the bigger they are generally the more efficient)
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Framtome EPR (a model of pressured water reactor) has a service life of 60 years. A solar panel with an official lifetime of 25 years can realistically go about 40 at some reduced capacity and some failure rate. I'd be interested to see a real cost per kwh analysis between the nuclear and your proposed solar panel on every roof proposal. (wind turbine in every garden is problematic, they're usually huge. and the bigger they are generally the more efficient)
Like Norway and parts of Sweden, it's far to the north - meaning that during the winter the demand goes up a lot (it can get really cold) and there isn't a lot of sunshine. The parts north of the Polar circle don't get any sun at all for some of the winter. To make it even more challenging, the coldest periods are usually low on wind. Solar power makes sense in that it allows you to use less hydro power during other seasons - at least for Norway, where most of the hydro power can be regulated - but in the
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Uh, 6-8 acres isn't even close to one tenth of a km2. Did you perhaps mean 6000-8000 or even more?
Re:What a success story for nuclear energy! (Score:4, Insightful)
Less than six hours of daylight in December. If it's clear.
https://www.timeanddate.com/su... [timeanddate.com]
You could look this stuff up before you blather on and make a fool of yourself.
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Southern latitudes doesn't help as long as they're still in the country. Hell, can hurt because that means that the open territory for alternate energy is further north.
And when wind "blows like crazy", they have to shut the wind turbines off to protect them. So no power if the wind is too strong, oddly enough.
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> Also they are super easy to recycle
Pretty much. They are about 90% glass by weight, and most of the the rest is aluminum, with some copper, PET, silicone and similar glues, other plastics mostly HDPE, and trace amounts of lead and silver (on the order of less than a gram).
The first four items on that list are all in the top six recycled materials, excluding only steel (mostly from cars) and paper.
Recycling of panels is widely available and mostly free. There are large companies handling this for years.