[HN Gopher] Finland starts much-delayed nuclear plant, brings re... ___________________________________________________________________ Finland starts much-delayed nuclear plant, brings respite to power market Author : hhs Score : 456 points Date : 2022-03-12 17:51 UTC (5 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.reuters.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.reuters.com) | rdsubhas wrote: | What I find incredible is: Once this fully ramps up, this _one_ | power plant is expected to satisfy 14% of the entire country 's | electricity needs. 7 of these could power an entire country, | 24/7. | legulere wrote: | If you have 7 of these and you find a flaw in its design you | have to take down the power for the entire country. Something | similar happened in France recently: | https://www.euractiv.com/section/energy-environment/news/saf... | Aachen wrote: | If only we could have both types of energy source. Cover the | gaps in solar/wind with nuclear, cover the gaps in nuclear | with solar/wind. Sprinkle a small amount of pumped hydro and | battery storage on top and what a world it could be. | est31 wrote: | Nuclear can't be shut down / turned on on a short term | basis, there is a lot of inertia. It might be a solution | for seasonal issues only, but in Germany, there's usually | wind during the no-sun season, and sun during the no-wind | season. | ajsnigrutin wrote: | Yep! | | And let me be provocative (and probably downvoted here)... it | also works during windless nights! | LatteLazy wrote: | That's the average. But you'd need a few more for peak demand | and a few more for when these are offline for maintenance, | refuelling etc. | anonporridge wrote: | Ideally, you overbuild and have some flexible consumer of | electricity that can arbitrarily ramp consumption up or down | to suck off any excess supply whenever inflexible basal | civilization demand doesn't match supply, e.g. ramp up when | everyone is asleep and ramp down if a reactor needs to go | offline. | | This is called demand response, | https://www.energy.gov/oe/activities/technology- | development/..., and it's probably as important of a | component to future grid management as energy storage. | retrac wrote: | Right. A useful sink for surplus energy could be something | like surplus heat or electricity to synthesize carbon- | neutral fuels. We're not likely to get large electric | aircraft anytime soon. | kevinak wrote: | ...or maybe a censorship resistant peer 2 peer cash that | could also subsidise these plants | anonporridge wrote: | Electric aircraft doesn't really strike me as this kind | of customer. Aircraft has relatively inflexible fueling | demands based on customer demand that is reserved weeks | ahead of time. | | Bitcoin mining is commonly promoted as this kind of ideal | electricity consumer. Hydrogen production could be | another. | | However, I think more interesting for this community | would be to build some kind of demand response general | computing datacenter. Basically, sell computing resources | with poor availability guarantees, but at a cheaper rate | than standard datacenters. | | i.e. we'll run your batch jobs very cheaply, but we can't | give you strong guarantees about how long it will take | because we have to wait for excess grid electricity to | have the energy to run them. Best case that's every | night. Worst case we won't be able to run anything for | weeks because Texas is going through another freak winter | storm. | toast0 wrote: | If you have datacenters on multiple grids (and | applications that are favorable to being moved around), | you could direct traffic to where energy was abundant. | This is not uncommon for large commercial sites; you can | usually get a better rate from the utility if you commit | to demand response, and it's not too hard to shift load | if you're already doing multi-site for | reliability/continuity) | Gare wrote: | > Electric aircraft doesn't really strike me as this kind | of customer. Aircraft has relatively inflexible fueling | demands based on customer demand that is reserved weeks | ahead of time. | | I think you misunderstood. The parent comment implied | that excess electricity could be use to produce synthetic | fuels (via carbon capture) to power conventional | airplanes, ships or other machinery. | anonporridge wrote: | I did misunderstand. Thanks! | dahfizz wrote: | A bit of pumped hydro storage would also satisfy those needs. | sascha_sl wrote: | PSH could not bridge demand for long enough. Maintenance | cycles on nuclear reactors can be quite long. | krasin wrote: | Make it 8 stations instead of 7 to have an excess of | energy and then use the extra energy, when there's not | enough demand, to produce fertilizers or other energy- | intensive goods. | londons_explore wrote: | I suspect in today's world of maximizing capital efficiency, | and being able to contract in large numbers of people, the | very expensive power plant won't be offline for long for | maintenance. | | They'll probably shut the plant down, and have 500 workers | come in to replace everything that needs to be replaced, and | then power it up again within a few days, and let it run for | another 6 months or so. | | Everything will be planned on workplans, and most won't | require specialist knowledge... Eg. "Replace pump 205 in | building C with this pump. Required skills people: 2x | plumber, 2x electrician". | akiselev wrote: | Most reactor downtime is due to refueling, since that | requires cooling down the core through several stages. | AFAIK it's not practical to do it safely and economically | in under a few weeks. | | Most reactor maintenance is already done during refueling | so there isn't much more room to optimize that downtime. | (though that may change the older a reactor gets) | _n_b_ wrote: | Most reactor downtime is actually for maintenance during | refueling windows. As I mentioned in another comment, | there is experience doing refuelling-only outages in <10 | days. If everything goes well, you can startup a PWR from | cold shutdown to hot full power in 3 12 hour shifts | _n_b_ wrote: | That is exactly how nuclear outages work. Everything is | planned in a resource-loaded schedule and many of those | resources are just there for the outage. | | Finland is actually somewhat known for running short (1 | year) cycles with very very short (<10 days for refuelling | is not unheard of) refuelling outages every other cycle | alternating with slightly longer maintenance outages. A | more typical scenario in the US would be 18 month cycles | with a 30ish day outage. Some plants are moving to 24 month | cycles with slightly longer outages. | | Capacity factor for nuclear plants in the US is | consistently around 93% (similar figures in many other | countries as well), which is significantly higher than | other generation sources. | pavlov wrote: | What's depressing is that you'd need ten of these giant power | plants to power Bitcoin mining. | | And by the time you finally got those ten $10B plants online, | Bitcoin's energy use would have ballooned to some even more | absurd number, assuming we do nothing to stop the current | trajectory. | shaky-carrousel wrote: | You'll need three times more to power all the standby devices | in the US, and nobody is doing something as simple as to | powering down their tv/console when they stop using it. | People don't even unplug their chargers after their phone is | charged. | bamboozled wrote: | I know but... Bitcoin!!!!!! | mustyoshi wrote: | Due to usage fluctuations it's not quite that simple | logicallee wrote: | I found a link in its Wikipedia page: | | https://web.archive.org/web/20130116000447/http://www.hs.fi/... | | "Suomenkin uusi ydinvoimala maksaa 8.5 miljardia euroa" which | translates to "Finland's new nuclear power plant will also cost | 8.5 billion euros." | sandworm101 wrote: | It is more than 14%. It looks like this plant, all three | reactors together, might eventually cover a third of Finland's | needs. But those are 2020 numbers. Increased electrification, | especially EVs and moves away from gas, will probably reduce | that percentage. In that context, the third reactor is only | incrementally more powerful than those already running at the | facility. | | "The Olkiluoto plant consists of two boiling water reactors | (BWRs), each producing 890 MW of electricity, together | comprising 22% of the country's electricity generation for | 2020.[1] A third reactor, Unit 3, is expected to be online in | January 2022, and at 1,600 MW, will by itself satisfy 14% of | the country's electricity demand." | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olkiluoto_Nuclear_Power_Plant | cinntaile wrote: | It's 14%. The other reactors are from the 70s and that's not | what he meant even though he used the word plant. | seanmcdirmid wrote: | If those EVs are mainly charging at night, where does the | extra peak load come from? Or is this just a case of not | being able to shut off as much NG/Hydro generation at night | (since nuclear can't really be turned on and off at will)? | at_compile_time wrote: | Electrification goes beyond cars. Think of how much fuel | they need for heat in Finland. Electrification means | replacing that fuel with electricity. | | And many reactors are able to modulate their output, either | by absorbing neutrons to slow the chain reaction, or by | letting steam bypass the turbines. | | https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/3-ways-nuclear-more- | flexi... | pfdietz wrote: | Nuclear reactors could modulate their output, but they | would take a grievous economic hit if they do so, because | most of their costs are fixed, independent of the power | setting. | jdavis703 wrote: | Certainly this is cheaper than paying people to buy your | electricity (as sometimes happens in California because | of solar plants). | pfdietz wrote: | Since solar panels can go to zero output onto the grid | instantly, this is just a matter of improper design (of | the equipment, or of the regulatory regime.) | | In any case, the cost/kWh from nuclear is computed | assuming flat out (except for refueling outages). Reduce | that generation at the levelized cost increases. It's | already very much higher than renewables; curtailing | nuclear output would make that discrepancy worse. | arcticbull wrote: | Sounds like we could solve this problem for for nuclear | the same way we look to solve problems for renewables: | storage. | pfdietz wrote: | Except if I have batteries, why should I charge them with | expensive nuclear energy when I can charge them with | cheap renewables? The nuclear plant will be forced to | compete with those renewables for this market, which will | limit what it can earn with the otherwise curtailed | output. This is not as bad as losing it entirely, or even | paying for someone to take it, but it's still going to be | a net negative for the plant's economics vs. running all | out selling at the calculated cost. | thriftwy wrote: | Nuclear plant can provide heating for free. It has to be | located in Helsinki, though. | R0b0t1 wrote: | It's the incentivized/induced demand problem. Build out a | new freeway, suddenly it's full of traffic. Same thing for | power. If you make power cheap people find more ways to use | it. | | This is still probably a good thing, but something to | consider. | arrosenberg wrote: | I think you mean induced demand? | throwaway894345 wrote: | Does that suggest that one plant will satisfy 36% of the | country's electricity demand? | sandworm101 wrote: | Finland is an entire country, but it also has a population | smaller than Toronto or Dallas. | Cederfjard wrote: | This is if you count the Greater Toronto Area and the | Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex respectively, to be clear | (Finland has five and a half million inhabitants). | brianwawok wrote: | Finland has 5 million people. I am pretty sure there are | existing plants in the world that could satisfy the entire | country if moved to Finland. There are 10ish dams that | produce over 10k MW | tomcam wrote: | Finlands's population is about the same as the Cape Town, | Melbourne, or Boston areas | Aachen wrote: | > 7 of these could power an entire country, 24/7 | | ...if you continue to heat with gas, drive on petrol, fly on | petroleum... | | I don't want to be the party pooper but that renewable energy | has to cover more than current electricity consumption does get | overlooked continuously. Less by governments than by the media | and general public, thankfully, but still. | p_l wrote: | It's IMO an often overlooked reason to combine nuclear with | renewables, and instead of looking at scaling down energy | usage to match renewables' intermittent nature, design for | overproduction and push it into easy to switch on | electrolysers to provide green hydrogen feedstock for steel | production, fuels for systems that can't depend on batteries, | even CO2-neutral syntin for aviation and space where | batteries don't have the density or just don't work. | parksy wrote: | By population that's one reactor of this scale per million | people. To replace all other sources of electricity, 8 thousand | such reactors would feed the current world's population. We'd | need just shy of 500 more to keep up with population growth by | 2030 - or at least 500 new reactors globally per decade. | | (edit - assuming everyone uses the same amount of power | globally as the average person in Finland which - why shouldn't | they be able to - and - obviously they don't) | omgJustTest wrote: | 1.6GW is a pretty standard install in nuclear. For scale the | largest nuclear install Kori is the current largest in | operation at 7.4GWe installed capacity[2]. It achieved 74+% | capacity last year which is an important point missed when | looking at energy _delivered_ to the grid. By contrast US | plants achieve much higher capacity factors, with Diablo | Canyon in California producing 2.2 GWe at a _lifetime_ | operation capacity factor of 90+%[1]. Scaling up nuclear, at | high reliability is not such a stretch as some other energy | scaling problems. | | [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diablo_Canyon_Power_Plant | [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kori_Nuclear_Power_Plant | roenxi wrote: | FYI; looks like your early comments attracted too many | downvotes and your account was automatically shadowbanned. | acidburnNSA wrote: | 1.6 GWe is huge for a single nuclear reactor. EPRs are on | the high end. Most nuclear reactors are closer to 1 GWe. | Nuclear plants with multiple reactors on a site certainly | do often go well above 1.6. | YetAnotherNick wrote: | jddil wrote: | Next time start by not writing a comment that doesn't add | value and is against HN rules. What in particular is wrong | about their analysis? | Octoth0rpe wrote: | For one, it assumes the average human consumes as much | electricity as the average Finn. | somebodythere wrote: | The average human consumes much less energy than the | average Finn. (Though that number is likely to grow as | the world becomes more industrialized.) | parksy wrote: | That's a good point, people in Finland use more per | capita than 80% of the global population, so if everyone | were to have the same energy standards as Finland we'd | probably need more like 10k reactors and 600 per year | give or take. | | Or we stick with the status quo, force everyone into | their lane, and probably need like 3000 to 4000 reactors | to serve current needs, and 150 to 200 per year. Give or | take. | | I think that's still in the same ballpark orders of | magnitude-wise. | xupybd wrote: | You really could have added a lot of value here. Clearly | you know a bit about the situation. | | Please try and bring your knowledge to the table not your | offense at someone else's error. I seriously think you | could have a lot to offer. | parksy wrote: | I also would like to be corrected in what my error was, | for what it's worth. | dTal wrote: | The person you are replying to is not the same person as | the one who made the content-free reply. You might want | to follow your own advice. | Archelaos wrote: | How much more nuclear wast does that imply per decade? | | How many more meltdowns per decade? | belorn wrote: | Less radioactive waste than coal power plants, and | significant less devastation compared to continuing funding | wars by buying gas, oil and coal. | | Energy generation is always a trade off. Right now the | world is reacting to the fossil fuel funded wars created by | one such trade off. We are also in the middle of causing | irreversible climate change, which would cause more damage | than any amount of meltdowns or nuclear waste could ever | get near. | | Naturally there are alternatives. If money were no | objection then green hydrogen looks pretty nice, and one | could always extract heat from the core of the earth as | long the technology was safe enough to do so. As soon we | have a technology that get proven to be cheaper, safer and | more scalable than nuclear we should all switch to that. | Buying natural gas from Russia is for multiple obvious | reason not that. | pfdietz wrote: | > Less radioactive waste than coal power plants | | Less radioactive EMISSION during NORMAL OPERATION than | coal plants (and I think that ignores radioactivity | released in uranium mining). The amount of radioactivity | in the spent fuel rods of a nuclear plant is vastly | higher than that liberated by a coal plant. | belorn wrote: | It is estimated that around 1/5 of people living around a | coal ash lake has gotten cancer. Thankfully there are no | such number for people living near nuclear plants, or | around sites of nuclear waste disposal. The amount of | people who has died to radiation thanks to coal vastly | outnumber the amount of people who has died to nuclear | waste. If we including mining, coal mining is a symbol of | one of the most dangerous job a person could do, and it | has harvested many more souls than uranium mining. | pfdietz wrote: | Coal ash is nasty stuff, but that's very likely due to | chemical toxicity (things like arsenic, especially in | Appalachian coal), not radioactivity. | | BTW, your chance of dying from cancer in your lifetime is | about 20%, so I'm not sure that the 1/5 figure you gave | there means anything. | woodruffw wrote: | I don't think they were saying that the radioactivity is | causing the cancer in those 1/5 people. I read it as two | separate points: coal plants simultaneously emit more | radiation than nuclear plants, _and_ coal plants cause | more cancer via the other chemicals and rare earth | elements they emit. | pmorici wrote: | Alternatives like coal give off substantially more | radioactivity into the environment than a nuclear plant | does under normal operations. | pfdietz wrote: | That's only if you ignore the radioactivity in uranium | mine tailings. | nitrogen wrote: | That was already in the environment to begin with. | pfdietz wrote: | It was in the environment already in the same sense the | uranium in coal was also in the environment already. | | Maybe the problem is the uranium mine tailings are safely | off in some poor country, not in the US where the coal | ash would be? | vanilla-almond wrote: | _" How much more nuclear wast does that imply per decade?"_ | | The popular YouTube channel _The B1M_ has an interesting | video on how Finland is tackling nuclear waste: | | _Finland might have solved nuclear power 's biggest | problem_ (2021): | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYpiK3W-g_0 | R0b0t1 wrote: | Nuclear power's "biggest problem" has been solved for | decades. You can put everything in giant metal canisters | and sink it into bedrock. It's vastly more expensive than | doing nothing, but now that politicians are going to be | held accountable for their fuckups they'll allocate the | money. | | And even after all that it's still far less expensive | than remediating coal output. | BurningFrog wrote: | No remotely modern reactor has melted down. | | Just as you wouldn't factor Amelia Earhart's plane into | 2022 air safety prognoses, you shouldn't use Chernobyl | reactors for nuclear safety. | orlovs wrote: | I love this reply. We can go even further. If we would | approach air safety in such way as Nuclear, then de | Havilland DH.106 Comet would be first and last commercial | jet. | | Nuclear fision reactors safety technology have moved | further. There are challenges, but we havent even tried | to solve them fully (as we were busy improving gas | burning efficiency) | omginternets wrote: | What are the biggest safety improvements that have become | mainstream since Chernobyl? | polski-g wrote: | Control rods aren't tipped with iron. Iron has a positive | coefficient of reactivity. | stevage wrote: | That's a great analogy. | tuatoru wrote: | Everything has downsides, and it has to be compared to the | alternatives. | | In Finland's case, the realistic alternatives are burning | coal or burning Russian gas. (If the Finns dedicated a | substantial chunk of their forests to this one generator, | they could maybe use biomass.) | | Coal kills two orders of magnitude more people per GWh than | nuclear--and it does that when operating nominally, not | when malfunctioning--and it produces three or four orders | of magnitude more waste and more environmental harm from | mining. | | Russian gas has geopolitical/national security problems. | | Biomass is a roundabout way of burning diesel fuel and gas, | while degrading and eroding forest soils and polluting | watersheds. | | The number of new meltdowns per decade rounds to zero, to | five significant figures. | trulyme wrote: | > The number of new meltdowns per decade rounds to zero, | to five significant figures. | | That's a weird metric (one meltdown is quite a | catastrophe) and the calculation seems suspicious too. | Between Chernobile and Fukushima I don't see how this | could be correct. | | I do find your other points more convincing, though with | some "citation needed" wrt. coal. | woodruffw wrote: | I can't speak to the meltdown statistic, but for coal: | just the burning alone is responsible for hundreds of | thousands of premature deaths annually[1]. | | And that's before we consider the environmental and | health risks of ash ponds[2], which can (and have caused) | heavy metal pollution in nearby groundwater supply. The | largest industrial spill in US history happened barely a | decade ago, and was an ash pond[3]. | | Edit: I can personally recommend "The Buffalo Creek | Disaster" (ISBN 9780394723433) as a writeup by a lawyer | involved in a similar coal ash accident (one that | directly killed over 100 people). | | [1]: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2017936118 | | [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ash_pond | | [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingston_Fossil_Plant_ | coal_fly... | acidburnNSA wrote: | WHO has particulate air pollution from fossil and biofuel | killing just about 8 million people per year (a Chernobyl | of people (short + long term) every 7 hours). Add in that | they also cause climate change and non-combustion sources | like nuclear, wind, solar, hydro all look pretty darn | awesome. | | https://www.who.int/health-topics/air-pollution | pishpash wrote: | And heat-polluted waste waters? People keep pretending | there are no externalities. | lazide wrote: | If the biggest externality is heated water in a subarctic | climate, or nuclear waste that gets stored on-site | indefinitely in casks and produces no notable leaks or | accidents (like has been done in the US for a long time | now), the externalities are way less than literally any | other form of energy production. That includes Dams, | solar power, geothermal, wind, you name it. | rsynnott wrote: | > And heat-polluted waste waters? | | That's hardly unique to nuclear plants; in particular, | coal plants typically have lower thermal efficiency. | seanmcdirmid wrote: | What prevents heated waste water from being used | for...heat? Surely Finland uses central heating plants | that pump hot water throughout the city (or maybe that's | just a Chinese/Russian thing?). What makes waste heat | water less suited to heating, higher entropy? | Ekaros wrote: | I think it just not hot enough after electricity | production. So temperature is not high enough after it | passes through turbines. Specially due to distances | involved. | ProblemFactory wrote: | Combined Heat and Power in Finland is very common, much | more so than in rest of Europe. 80% of the fossil fuel | power plants output both electricity and heated water. | Compared to (quick googling) 8% in the US and 11% in EU. | kortilla wrote: | No, people aren't pretending that. Heat pollution in | water is a tiny local issue compared to global warming. | | It's like complaining that a wool blanket is itchy so it | might be better to catch hypothermia and die. | T-A wrote: | > assuming everyone uses the same amount of power globally as | the average person in Finland which - why shouldn't they be | able to | | Finland's climate is an outlier: | | _One-third of energy consumption in housing was electricity | in 2018. [...] 47% of electricity was used to heat indoor | areas and 36% to household appliances. The remainder of | electricity was used to heat domestic water and saunas._ | | https://www.thenomadtoday.com/articulo/finland/energy- | consum... | parksy wrote: | Here in Perth a good third or more of my electricity is | keeping the house cool so some of that is going to average | out. We don't have saunas but we do have hot water. | | There's going to be an obvious error of margin either side | of my napkin calculations but I think the order of | magnitude is in the ballpark. | neoromantique wrote: | Cooling a house is more energy efficient than warming one | rhn_mk1 wrote: | Isn't it the other way round? | krallja wrote: | It's a question of temperature difference. Cooling a | house from 40deg to 20deg uses approximately the same | energy as heating it from 0deg to 20deg. But it gets much | colder than 0deg C in Finland, while it is very rare to | have temperatures above 45deg C anywhere in the world. | rhn_mk1 wrote: | It's not just that. To make something colder using a heat | pump, you must heat up something else by the equivalent | amount. Actually more, because of losses. | | Whereas making something warmer can be done without a | heat pump, by releasing stored chemical energy, at nearly | no losses. | stavros wrote: | Heat pumps are more energy efficient than resistors, so I | guess it depends on the method. | [deleted] | xyzzyz wrote: | It's not that extraordinary. For example, one power plant in | Poland provides 20% of all electricity consumed in Poland. | Sadly, it's a coal plant, one of the biggest in the world. It | also burns lignite, which makes it even worse. | mikaeluman wrote: | Finland has no other good source of energy. In Sweden and Norway | we have hydro capacity that covers more than 50% of need. Then we | can cover the rest with nuclear and a small portion of wind | power. | | In Finland nuclear is the only option. Happy to see it come | online. | tuukkah wrote: | Define a good source: there is no silver bullet to stop the | climate crisis. Traditionally, there's a big share of hydro in | Finland too (23% of electricity production in 2020), and the | market has been building a lot of wind lately (share 12% in | 2020, capacity growth 30%). | | In heating, heat pumps (geothermal and others) are growing fast | (market share 16% in 2021). | hackerfromthefu wrote: | Is wind not possible? | Aachen wrote: | Depends how much area you want to repurpose (note that it | includes roads, power lines, and regular tree trimming near | those power lines in addition to the turbines themselves), | but I'd estimate that with current and projected Finnish | population density, this would actually be a realistic | option, yes. | | Now that I think of it, I've never anyone speak of the impact | on wildlife, nor seen a wind turbine in a forest (only ever | on open farmland). Considering both noise and large shadows | moving constantly, I assume it will have some impact. (I did | hear that bird strikes are a non-issue in relative terms.) | Even Wikipedia has no info on anything but birds/bats for on- | shore installations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environment | al_impact_of_wind_p... | | Edit: double checked that Finland is actually mostly forest: | [PDF] https://www.eea.europa.eu/themes/landuse/land-cover- | country-... Screenshot from relevant part of PDF: | https://snipboard.io/KFDEIr.jpg | | The 9+5+4=18% water bodies, arable land, and pastures/mosaics | (respectively) might also be a good target. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surface_power_density says 1.84 | W/m2, so at 18% of 338'662 "hundreds ha" = 61 billion m2 you | get 112 GW which translates into 983 TWh after a year (8760 | hours). Looking at | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_Finland that's 2.6 | times more energy than they used in 2013 (this includes | heating, driving, etc. but not things like imported clothes, | plastic products, etc.). All this is considering only the | land area, not sea. | | Future work: calculate how many years of monopolizing the | world's steel production it takes to get these things | produced, much less built in the middle of nowhere with | frozen winters. | lazide wrote: | Forests are a hassle to work in, and add a lot of extra | costs. It's often cheaper and better in many ways to clear | the land first if you're going to do wind there. | | 1) wind moves faster/freer the higher you are above the | ground. the height of the trees moves the 'ground' up, | without actually moving it up from a foundation or | structure perspective. So you spend the money for a 300 ft | tower, but only get 200ft of usable height. Not fun. | | 2) trees grow into things, fall on things, burn at | inconvenient times, and are generally a maintenance | headache. | | 3) many types of trees are very, very strong and require | expensive heavy equipment to clear at large scales, | especially if you need to remove a lot of stumps. So it | adds extra cost above some already significant costs of | land. | | If you already have some cleared land somewhere, assuming | all other factors are equal, it will definitely be | preferred. | Aachen wrote: | That sounds like a world of pain. Between the displaced | wildlife and released carbon from all those trees, I'd be | quite curious if that's even worth it. | lazide wrote: | It probably isn't, which is why you don't see it happen | much I imagine. | | If the only land they have is trees, it does restrict the | options quite a bit. I also forgot to mention, in most | climates trees are a hassle this way, they also grow | naturally, so even if you clear the land you need to go | back and keep it clear every couple years. | | Solar has similar drawbacks but worse - you can't just | clear the trees around where you'd put the windmills and | roads, you'd need to clear pretty much everywhere | including from where they would shade the panels. Which | greatly increases the footprint. | | Trees can of course be burned for heat and energy, but | it's a time consuming, dangerous, and inefficient process | (time/land/manpower) compared to petroleum extraction. It | tends to only happen for individual use, at small scale; | or when heavily subsidized from taxes on petroleum | products. | Aachen wrote: | > If the only land they have is trees, it does restrict | the options quite a bit. | | Just to make sure, did you see the edit of my comment | above? I checked out the land cover in Finland, it is | actually a fairly high percentage trees and I did some | math on putting wind in the other places. | | Now that I'm writing this I realized a major flaw: not | looking at https://globalwindatlas.info earlier. It turns | out that Finland looks about average (just eyeballing it, | I can't figure out how to use this area energy yield | tool, it just gives me a blank image instead of a simple | number). | estaseuropano wrote: | Finland has a vast and long coast that could be used to | build on or offshore farms. There are also wave hydro | systems and Finland has many rivers etc that could be used. | | Really a choice to go nuclear. Not a necessity. | hayksaakian wrote: | Will be interesting to see how a modern plant stacks up to the | aging ones running in most of the world | f_allwein wrote: | Handy reference on why nuclear power might not be such a good | idea as some people think: | https://www.wien.gv.at/english/environment/ombuds-office/arg... | Aachen wrote: | When an article starts with chernobyl as example of what | mistakes we're likely to make when building a new plant today, | it makes me itch to just close the tab and dismiss the opinion | of the person who linked it. | | Not sure why I even bothered digging into it, but for example | one later point is also misleading: "uranium resources will be | depleted by the end of this century". | | I think I found the source (not that they link it, that would | be too easy, but by ducking around for this number): | | > the total identified amount of conventional uranium stock, | which can be mined for less than USD 130 per kg, [was found] to | be about 4.7 million tonnes. Based on the 2004 nuclear | electricity generation rate of demand the amount is sufficient | for 85 years, the study states. Fast reactor technology would | lengthen this period to over 2500 years. | | > However, world uranium resources in total are considered to | be much higher. Based on geological evidence and knowledge of | uranium in phosphates the study considers more than 35 million | tonnes is available for exploitation. | | https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/global-uranium-resource... | | I'm not sure how the "city of vienna" can read this and | summarize it down to say that we'll plainly run out of uranium | by 2100. That's just not what the source says. Maybe that's | what makes this "reference" "handy" for people with a certain | preexisting opinion? | | The same bullet point continues with some other interesting | claims, let alone the rest of the page, but let me quickly | close that tab before I feel inclined to go down more of these | rabbit holes... | f_allwein wrote: | > Accidents in nuclear power plants can have disastrous | implications. As in the case if Chernobyl, large areas around | the site remain unusable forever | | What exactly about this do you not buy? | | And what is your solution for storing nuclear waste safely | for hundreds of thousands of years? | schleck8 wrote: | Before 100 thousand years have passed humanity will easily | be able to send nuclear waste. | | We got from horses to Lamborghini Huracan in a century. | Aachen wrote: | I should really make template comments. Being asked to | explain why Chernobyl is not a realistic scenario in the | 2020s, with all the available information and previous | discussions, has been getting really old... | | See https://whatisnuclear.com/chernobyl-main.html#again | | Or even just another comment in this very thread: | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30653778 | | Or the fact that it hasn't happened despite hundreds of | active nuclear power plants around the world (not all in | countries that you would expect to have high safety | standards). | | Or the safety statistics in general: | https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy | | Same with the waste issue. Nobody asks what the proposed | solution is for CO2 storage (it will remain for billions of | years! The horror!) when proposing to keep open coal/gas | plants a bit longer until we have solar/wind/hydro+storage | all set up, but with nuclear we need to find more reasons | for the phase-out. | | Here's another info page: | https://whatisnuclear.com/waste.html | | > If these materials are burnt in fuel through recycling, | nuclear waste would only remain radioactive for a few | hundred years | | And that's ignoring that we're also managing to deal with | the waste so far just fine, also without recycling. | | (The tally is at 40 minutes time wasted for these two | answer so far, also because most of the previous one was | 'researched' and written on mobile. How long did it take to | ask the question? This is why I contemplate templates.) | cipher_system wrote: | You put the waste into containers and bury them deep into a | geologically stable mine that you then seal shut. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_rep | o... | rsynnott wrote: | I mean, it seems a bit like using the Bhopal disaster as an | argument to not build any more chemical plants, or the | Herald of Free Enterprise disaster as an argument to stop | using passenger ships. Chernobyl was a flawed design | incompetently operated. | | > And what is your solution for storing nuclear waste | safely for hundreds of thousands of years? | | While it's a problem, it's actually a fairly tractable one, | because the volume of high level waste is small and it | doesn't leave the plant as part of normal operations. For | coal power, for contrast, we store much of the waste in | peoples' lungs. | exdsq wrote: | > Nuclear waste from power stations can be used as raw | materials for nuclear weapons. | | I imagine it's almost impossible to manufacture nuclear weapons | 'quietly' with waste and sanctions/agreements stop this | happening, while countries that go against these are able to | manufacture nuclear weapons anyway (North Korea). So I don't | think this is as big a risk as suggested. | | The rest seem solvable by focusing on better secure designs and | then moving from Uranium to another source. I don't know the | difficulty of this but I can't imagine it's insurmountable? | lizardactivist wrote: | Good job Finland. I respect the opinions of the environmentalists | and agree with most of what they say, but until we have something | more reliable that can put out power 24/7 year round, we need | more new, modern nuclear plants. | threeseed wrote: | It doesn't work in every country but renewables with storage | can provide 24/7 power. | | And it's a fraction of the price of nuclear. | arnaudsm wrote: | Do you have a source regarding your pricing claim? | | Renewables are usually cheaper per W, but way more expensive | in real world usage (battery storage + full life cycle costs) | pfdietz wrote: | See for yourself: https://model.energy/ | | The area around Finland and Eastern Europe is one of the | worst in the world for renewables, though. | cm2187 wrote: | Renewables with "magic" storage. Wind can be low for a month | for a whole country (cf UK last year). There is no storage | technology that can store that much power at scale. What you | need is an alternative on demand source of energy, which cost | is always omitted when looking at renewable energy cost. | jahewson wrote: | Outside of pumped hydro, storage is very expensive. Would | need something like a 15x reduction in storage costs to be | competitive with nuclear. | cm2187 wrote: | And where do you build that hydro? I hear some people | suggesting Europe using the valleys in Sweden and Norway. | Imagine the EU electricity grid at the mercy of one of | Putin's submarines. The rest of Europe doesn't have many | valleys left to flood. | tuukkah wrote: | Nuclear won't solve the climate crisis as it's too slow to | build. | orlovs wrote: | Nuclear is slow to build as we dont have much experience to | build it. More we will build it, the better we will become in | it | throw0101a wrote: | At the very least we should stop shutting down current | nuclear power plants. | | Any newly built renewable generation should be used to retire | fossil fuel plants _first_ , and once those are gone _then_ | we can consider retiring (current) nuclear. | rhn_mk1 wrote: | Nothing will solve the climate crisis in the time frame it | takes to build a nuclear reactor. If you start building now, | you get part of the solution in the future. | tuukkah wrote: | Finland is aiming to be carbon neutral by 2035. Do you | suggest that if we start planning now, we can rely on | having new nuclear plants operational in 13 years? Also | note that we wouldn't be buying them from Russia because of | the current war, and China would be risky in the same way. | There's a current project where the only offer was from | Russia and that one is being suspended indefinitely right | now. | liketochill wrote: | https://archive.ph/PVCeB | loufe wrote: | What I find shockingly absent in this article is any commentary | on budget and cost overruns. I'm definitely not anti-nuclear but | it stands to reason that a comparison vs other forms of energy | would've been wise to consider. | cipher_system wrote: | Something like this. The project started in 2000, construction | began in 2005 and should have been completed in 2010. Original | cost was 3 billion euro but landed on over 10 billion euro. | | It is the first nuclear reactor in Europe for 15 years so not | much working experience or available sub contractors. | | Apparently, China, South Korea, Japan and Russia can build at a | third of the cost and time of that. | | If nuclear energy should be considered, much more must be built | more continuously. | trenchgun wrote: | The Finnish customer paid 5,5 billion euros price for it. | | Rest was covered by Areva, since the cost overruns were of | their own failure. | afterburner wrote: | They're going to be recouping their costs somehow, I doubt | Finnish customers are done paying. | krono wrote: | > Apparently, China, South Korea, Japan and Russia can build | at a third of the cost and time of that. | | Any insight into the why? | cipher_system wrote: | I read a report on that a while back, can't find it now but | these are the highlights I remember: | | * The overall design must be done before construction | starts, also no room for regulatory changes. Waterfall is | better than Agile for nuclear. | | * Experienced project management, work force and supply | chain. | | * Build many reactors on the same site and don't use a new | reactor design. | | * Work force is overall cheaper and possibly also more | productive in Asia. | | More or less the same as for everything else, the more you | do it the better and cheaper it gets but it requires a lot | of upfront costs. | [deleted] | jpgvm wrote: | They didn't lose their nuclear capability because they kept | maintaining and building reactors instead of | decommissioning them. US and to a degree most of Europe did | not. | | China in particular plans to build ~250 new reactors over | the next few years, most like new HTG reactors based on the | pebble bed technology Germany sold to them when they | abandoned their next-gen nuclear plans. | | Russia has reactor building capabilities that are still | current but their domestic needs are stagnating so said | capability could decay as they don't actually need to build | modern reactors at this time. | | Japan has a similar problem to Russia in that post- | Fukishima there isn't domestic demand for nuclear reactors. | However they are building reactors for other countries, in | particular I think they are planning to build ~20 good | sized reactors in India. | ncmncm wrote: | This "250" number for China keeps being trotted out, but | nobody knows how we many of those will actually ever be | built or operated. There is anyway not fuel for that | many, at present. | | It would be more honest to cite the much smaller number | that have actually broken ground. Nobody knows how many | of _those_ will be completed, or how many of those | completed will be fueled or operated continuously, or | where operated actually mainly generate power, as opposed | to generating plutonium and tritium for weapons. | rsynnott wrote: | To a large extent, because they're building established | designs. An EPR plant (that is, the same design as this | one) was completed in China in about half the time of the | Finnish one, but that would have been informed by the | problems in building the Finnish EPR, which was the first | in the world. Another EPR, being built by EDF (a French | company) in the UK is broadly on-track, and should have a | much shorter time to switch-on than the Finnish one. | | This isn't new; historically, the first couple of examples | of any given nuclear power plant design have typically seen | major overruns. | cbhl wrote: | Probably large fixed costs (engineers, builders learning | how to do the thing) amortized over building a large number | of plants. | | China has been constructing a lot of new nuclear power | plants over the last 15 years -- estimated at ~12 GW in | 2013, but now closer to 50 GW as of 2021. Wikipedia says 50 | plants as of 2021: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_China. | | Anecdotally I've heard that temporary pollution control | measures during the 2008 olympics gave the populace and | decision makers a taste of reduced air pollution, and gave | increased political willpower to invest in solar, wind, and | nuclear power generation. | estaseuropano wrote: | EDF (France) keeps building nuclear reactors around the | world. Not sure whether they are the only EU company active | in that market, but I doubt it. Either way, _some_ expertise | definitely exists in Europe. | | Germany had spectacular delays and overruns for a new airport | for Berlin That too doesn't mean Europe forgot how to build | airports. | Godel_unicode wrote: | I think this is vastly misunderstood in the (artificial) | renewables vs nuclear conversation. We keep building | effectively one-off complex machines, and then flushing all | that knowledge down the drain by saying it cost too much and | took too long. Like yes, the first one always takes longer | and costs more... | bobthepanda wrote: | The difference is that nuclear is the only one where the | first one's cost is measured in the the tens of billions. | | Nuclear is just too big for a privatized energy market's | participants. | cpill wrote: | what happened to the micro nuclear? | thedrbrian wrote: | We're doing it | | https://www.rolls-royce-smr.com/ | https://www.theengineer.co.uk/rolls-royce-smr-to-begin- | regul... | afterburner wrote: | You mean the theoretical ones? | epistasis wrote: | There's no reason to assume that building the same nuclear | reactor design multiple time will maintain the same cost or | decrease. Even with the supposedly successful French | nuclear program, costs increased over time, there was | negative learning: | | https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0301 | 4... | | There's huge huge risk in choosing a particular design and | building even one of it, because we don't know if it will | be constructible the first time, and we don't know if | future builds of the first design will be more or less | expensive. | | When each build is a $10B roll of the dice with variance of | 2-3x of initial estimates, it's a bit difficult to find | rational financial backers. Especially when there's not | that much profit to be had from even a successful build. | The risk reward is completely out of whack compared to the | other options for carbon neutral energy. | roenxi wrote: | The negative learning rate is a strong signal of | interference by the regulators. More than anything else | it shows how excessive safety regulations are strangled | the industry. | | 1970s nuclear safety standards, despite it all, were | still better than the energy strategy the world adopted | from 1970-2020. Killing off nuclear in search of a | perfect power system was a stupid strategy, and failed. | The only unfortunate point of karmic justice is that | Europe ended up reliant on Russian gas and in an energy | crisis as a reward for their stubbornness against making | the technically obvious choice. | | Well done Finland for even managing to get a reactor | built in the face of all that. | belorn wrote: | The other options for carbon neutral energy that does not | rely on using fossil fuel as part of the energy strategy | are few and far between. The few suggested solutions tend | to rely on battery solutions for wind power (at least for | countries this far up north). | | It would be great to see an attempt to such battery | solution that would cover the same amount of capacity as | this plant, that can operate for at least several months | without recharging, in Finish winter, and cost less than | this plant and be built faster. That would check all the | boxes, and if such technology already exist, people here | should really put their investment money into it. | Godel_unicode wrote: | Of course there is, it's happened exactly the way I said | in South Korea, Japan, and American naval reactors. These | projects take a long time to complete and there have been | relatively few of them. It therefore stands to reason | that the cycle of learning from them and making their | construction more predictable would take longer than for | e.g. cars. | | Far too many people are generalizing from the French and | American nuclear programs, both of which built lots of | reactors in a comparatively short time and then were | fear-mongered into a standstill by the fossil fuel lobby. | | https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030142 | 151... | | """In the third era of nuclear power construction in | Japan, from 1980 to 2007, costs remain between | Y=250,000/kW and Y=400,000/kW, representing an annual | change of -1% to 1%. This period experienced relatively | stable costs over 27 years.""" | forty wrote: | It's not only the first one. It's at least the first ones | plural. The same one, being built in France in Flamanville | by the same company was scheduled to be finished in 2012, | and is currently planned for 2023 (11 years delay), and | with crazy over cost like the Finish one. | | I don't think there is any reason to think it will be | different for future ones if any. We'll see what happens | for the British one (Hinkley Point C), but they already | know there will be large delays and cost overrun. | sharken wrote: | The Wikipedia page on the plant has a very detailed timeline | of this 22-year long endeavour. | | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olkiluoto_Nuclear_Power_Plan. | .. | epistasis wrote: | > Apparently, China, South Korea, Japan and Russia can build | at a third of the cost and time of that. | | When did Japan last build a nuclear reactor? I don't think | any time recently. | | South Korea used to be touted as a success at construction | without massive overruns, but it turns out that it was | largely a result or corruption and skimping on safety | inspections: | | https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/s-korea-jails-nuclear- | work... | | As for China and Russia, we don't really have much insight to | what they are doing as far as safety. China is seems to be | successful at large scale construction projects in a way that | we can not replicate in the west, so perhaps their numbers | are reasonable for construction costs. | | > If nuclear energy should be considered, much more must be | built more continuously. | | We would need entirely new designs unlike what has been built | in the past. Both France and the US have negative learning | rates when building the same reactor design multiple times, | and that was 50 years ago when construction was a much more | effective part of our economies. | | I do not believe that nuclear is a smart energy source to | pursue given our modern production capabilities. There's a | bevy of nuclear startups trying smaller reactors that might | be able to constrain construction costs. But in the past | these designs have been rejected because of the loss of | economy of scale, as being too expensive per watt. | | Of the potential carbon neutral energy sources of the future, | nuclear is one of the e least practical. It may supply a tiny | fraction of our future power, maybe 10%, but without a major | revolution _soon_ on construction, our aging reactors will be | shut down at end of life without any way to build more of | them. | cipher_system wrote: | Last one was connected in 2009 which isn't that recent but | there are also not that many projects of this size. China | and Russia might not be the most thrustworthy and I would | rather see more more western examples but then we have to | go back a couple of decades, most of which were excellent. | | I agree that a gigantic shift is required and put my hopes | into mass produced SMRs. It's gonna take time and money, | yes, just like the shift to EVs and renewables. | | Fossil fuels is still above 80% of global primary energy, | nuclear 5% and renewables excluding hydro 2%. | | I really don't think putting all eggs in the solar/wind | basket is good. They should of course also get heavy | investments but that doesn't have to exclude nuclear. We're | gonna need everything we have to end the fossil era. | jotm wrote: | > China is seems to be successful at large scale | construction projects in a way that we can not replicate in | the west | | Are they? Considering that their population is higher than | the whole of North America + EU + Russia combined, wouldn't | it be fair to compare it that way? Sure, it's one country | as opposed to several, but still, the population plays a | huge role in this "amazing construction at scale". | afterburner wrote: | Even worse, it was meant to be finished in 2009, not 2010. | | It took over 4 times as long to built as pitched, and over 3 | times as expensive. | | Everyone doing comparison calculations with renewables, | _remember that_. | yawaramin wrote: | What do you think would be the cost of depending on Russia for | energy? | lostlogin wrote: | The benefit is that it's likely quite cheap. Can you really | not think of a downside? | [deleted] | 8ytecoder wrote: | Yup. Energy independence is a cost that's not factored in. | (Then again, solar/wind could serve both factors well) | yakubin wrote: | _> solar /wind could serve both factors well_ | | Not 24/7. | threeseed wrote: | If you store it then it can be 24/7. | hackerfromthefu wrote: | Sure, but let's build 150% of total needed capacity as | renewables, and burn coal for the 5 days a year we still | need to. | realusername wrote: | You start to understand the issue of comparing the raw | cost of kWh of renewables to stable energy like nuclear, | if you have to build N times the capacity, the cost per | kWh is just N times more expensive. | afterburner wrote: | But unlike nuclear, solar/wind is _constantly_ getting | cheaper. Nuclear is, frankly, doing the opposite. | lazide wrote: | When you do the 2-3x (minimum) for wind and solar + keep | the coal plant around and ready to go at a moments | notice, including stockpile fuel and maintain it, it | starts getting really expensive really fast. | ncmncm wrote: | Gas plant. Coal is much more expensive than gas, by every | measure, and is much less adjustable to immediate | requirement. The only reason any coal is still being used | is installed base and market inertia. | thfuran wrote: | Where are the uranium mines? | mantas wrote: | A single shipment from wherever can last a looooong time. | It's not like gas or oil where you need continuous | supply. And there're deposits in civilised world. | hackerfromthefu wrote: | I think Australia has plenty. | | https://www.world-nuclear.org/information- | library/country-pr... | RobertMiller wrote: | Kazakhstan (under Russia's sphere of influence) is the | largest producer at 36% of the global supply (5% from | Russia itself.) It can be purchased from countries like | Canada (15%) or Australia (12%). The next two are Namibia | and Niger, each producing 8% of the global supply. | lazide wrote: | The US also has very large stocks on states like Utah and | Arizona. Generally hasn't been considered economically | worthwhile since WW2 however. | burmanm wrote: | Solar is not a viable solution in the north. The energy | usage goes up when solar generation goes down. | | For wind, we're too small country - there are always days | without any wind. There are even days without any wind in | nearby countries included. | zamalek wrote: | With the success of anti-nuclear rhetoric, we became pretty | incompetent at building these things. It's just like the space | program. | threeseed wrote: | What rhetoric ? Nuclear is objectively far more expensive | than renewables. | | That's the reason it has struggled for traction. | belorn wrote: | This is why nuclear does not compete with renewables during | optimal weather conditions. Nuclear compete with fossil | fuels when demand exceeds that of what renewables can | produces, usually during periods of non-optimal weather | conditions. Right now the price on the energy market is | determined by fossil fuel and Russia is using this fact in | order to fund their military invasion. Any period where | renewable productions dips below demand is an opportunity | to extract money from EU into that invasion. | lostlogin wrote: | The anti-nuclear crowd being successful might just be an | alternate spin on the failure of the nuclear industry. | Juliate wrote: | Or the actual spin/might of the fossil-extracted energy | industry. | bckr wrote: | ... which is in bed with the Russian oligarchy... who are | expert in disinformation ... | aunty_helen wrote: | The truth probably lies somewhere in the middle. | aaaaaaaaata wrote: | The truth lies in the resolution of the conflict in | Chernobyl, | | and in every place connected by water to Fukushima. | ncmncm wrote: | Or at either end. Or, nowhere near either number. When | you are making up numbers to announce, you pick according | to the audience, not any physical constraint. | rdsubhas wrote: | We have completely screwed up market price discovery for energy | with big govt involvement and subsidies. The numbers I see | everywhere are cherry picked to present a winner and loser. | | e.g. Depending on whose point of view you read, solar/wind | prices either includes or not: subsidies, storage, land, | weather, green label costs passed on to customers, interest | rates, etc. Coal prices either includes or not: labor, imports, | duties, mining, environmental costs, health costs, etc. | | Lately I've come to a conclusion that we can make any of these | methods appear equal, higher or lower by shifting the books. | | Atleast I'm happy that this article is focusing only on the | benefits and outcome, rather than invent winners and losers. | ZeroGravitas wrote: | I'm hoping all these comments on HN I see that follow the | pattern "I was wrong about something important, but rather | than admit that, I'm going to believe that the truth is | unknowable" are just the first step on someone's journey to | accept an unpleasant shock to their ego. | | It's depressing to think there's a growing army of geeks who | have given up on science, rationality and objective reality | just because they got sucked in by some propaganda and tied | their identity a bit too firmly to it to ever escape. | hackerfromthefu wrote: | I think the issue is not the geeks grasp of science and | objectivity, but the cultures democratization of the | talking space to include vast numbers on un-rational and | subjective thinkers on equal status with educated and more | objective thinkers. | | Politics and the funding of state actions seems to be | enacted highly subjectively according to power plays and | vested interests, with minimal impact from rational geeks. | | This is the defining issue of our times in my opinion, the | reason climate change is the barely mitigated disaster it's | turning into. | | We only get a small fraction of the possible benefits of | science as a race, because so much of our potential is | wasted or actively worked against. | skybrian wrote: | I don't see why it shouldn't be a reason for being hopeful? | Admitting ignorance is generally a step in the right | direction. No reason to be depressed about it. | ncmncm wrote: | Admitting ignorance is no indication that the number is | closer to what you wish it were. Increasing uncertainty | increases uncertainty. Increased uncertainty undermines | investment, which depends mainly on confidence. | | But literally every reactor ever built depended more on | government extraction and concentration of capital (i.e., | politics) than on market forces, making it all even less | predictable. | rectang wrote: | If we leave energy decisions to an under-regulated "free | market", we guarantee that market forces will select for the | most short-termist, externality-spewing choices possible. | | What do power execs care if they leave behind ruins decades | down the road? They will have already made their money and | enjoyed it. | Hikikomori wrote: | That isn't something you typically see from Reuters. | [deleted] | pstuart wrote: | Yep. I think the only chance for embracing more nuclear would | be to have smaller modular reactors that can be built on an | assembly line. And while we're dreaming, moving to Thorium as | the fuel. | [deleted] | sascha_sl wrote: | Very distinct things. China is actively deploying modular | reactors while thorium salt reactors have many unsolved | problems, mostly with durability that will need substantial | advancements in material sciences to become viable. | pstuart wrote: | Acknowledged -- I was smooshing thoughts together. | Brakenshire wrote: | It's not too distant a dream, the Rolls Royce small modular | reactor designs have just been submitted for approval: | | https://www.newcivilengineer.com/latest/rolls-royce- | submits-... | alvarlagerlof wrote: | I'm betting they don't get approved. | [deleted] | forty wrote: | It was shipped with 12 years delay, and has caused billion in | loss to the builder Areva/Orano. They are building a similar | one in France which will have at least 11 years delay, and also | billions of costs overrun. | | Areva/Orano being a french state owned (mostly) company, this | is probably largely paid for by the French tax payer. | firekvz wrote: | Comming from a country where nucler power is nowhere near the | radar, what is the case against nuclear power? it seems such a | nobrainer for me to use | iso1631 wrote: | Extreme cost (money and time) to get it built | | Difficulties in managing waste | | 20 years ago I was all for nuclear, then I looked at terrible | projects in Europe, like in the Finland and the UK, and | realised that it's too little too late. Europe can't build | nuclear, so rather than trying to fight a losing battle for | another 20 years, Europe should be massively investing in what | it can do (offshore wind, tidal, solar, pumped hydro) | hackerfromthefu wrote: | Plus proliferation of material for nuclear weapons. | fsflover wrote: | https://whatisnuclear.com/non-proliferation.html | Ekaros wrote: | I'm thinking proliferation as positive. Just think of | countries recently in war had nuclear deterrent. They might | not have been invaded in first place. Everyone having | nuclear weapons would make world much more peaceful and | safer place. | | That is unless we sanction all nations that have nuclear | weapons and blockade them from international trade until | they get rid of them and subject themselves to being open | to inspections for couple centuries. | rhn_mk1 wrote: | > Everyone having nuclear weapons would make world much | more peaceful and safer place. | | That's the happy path. | | The failure path with an unhinged dictator causing global | destruction also gets much more likely. | Ekaros wrote: | Then again the so called "rational" actors would be less | likely do bad things. Just imagine how much better place | world would be if in response to drone strike by Obama or | Biden the NYC or Washington DC was hit by nuclear weapon. | That would surely put end to those antics. | crote wrote: | - Time. This one took over a decade and a half to build, and | that's pretty normal | | - Cost. Literally billions of dollars, all upfront. This one | was budgeted at $3B and ended up costing $10B+. | | - Inflexibility. Almost all of the cost is in building one, so | if you aren't running it basically 100% of the time at 100% | capacity you are losing money. | | When it comes to $/MWh, nuclear simply can't compete with | fossil or renewable when demand is low. And you can't run it to | pick up high demand because it gets even _more_ expensive. The | private market is simply not interested in them, unless they | get a government guarantee that forces their production to be | bought at a fixed price. | | And there's of course the whole safety and waste argument, but | I consider that to be secondary. All in all, nuclear is a | could-have-been and mostly a side-effect of nuclear arms | development. Neat technology, but there are way better options. | fsflover wrote: | All these arguments are moot, see the research: | | https://whatisnuclear.com/economics.html | | https://whatisnuclear.com/fukushima.html | | ...etc. | freemint wrote: | See this nuclear positive website that doesn't have an | imprint (I can find on mobile). I wouldn't bcall it | research either. Summary would probably be fair. | fsflover wrote: | It contains links to the research. | Krasnol wrote: | Yeah but only where it fits the narrative which in the | question of cost for example leads to this: | | 1) If markets valued the low-CO2 nature of nuclear, | they'd be doing better | | 2) Multiple hypothetical approaches to reduce nuclear | costs are ongoing. No one knows for sure if any of them | will work, or which one will work best | | 3) Factory-produced large reactors on floating platforms | is a surprisingly intriguing idea to make reactors cheap | | or: 1) make everything else more expensive so we look | better | | 2) let me consult the magic orb because I have nothing in | my hands | | 3) I have a nice idea | | Meanwhile we have HERE just another example of | hilariously expensive reactor. Actual facts. Waved away | with theories like "we don't have the people with | experience anymore" which leaves you with the thought: | should inexperienced people build nuclear reactors at | all? | threeseed wrote: | No the arguments are still the same. | | We have to build lots of bigger, standardised reactors | which will then reduce the cost due to experience and | economies of scale. But then of course someone has to | subsidise the tens/hundreds of billions in upfront | investment to get to that point. | | Where as with renewables this was all done decades ago. And | we are now at the point where it is orders of magnitude | cheaper than nuclear. And getting cheaper by the day. | Andrew_nenakhov wrote: | It usually goes like this: | | _Chernobyl! Fukushima! Radiation! Waste! Death! Death!! DEATH | TO ALL HUMANITY!!!_ | rectang wrote: | You left out proliferation of dual-use technologies. The | fewer countries with advanced nuclear capabilities, the more | thinly spread the expertise necessary to build nuclear | weapons. | | If Russia didn't have nukes, its imperialistic ambitious | would be curtailed. The ability to shield conventional | assaults behind a nuclear threat is destabilizing for the | rules-based world order. | fsflover wrote: | https://whatisnuclear.com/non-proliferation.html | qwytw wrote: | Is this also sarcasm? So you're saying that building this | plant has increase the chance Finland will try to acquire | Nuclear weapons? And Russia has nukes purely due to | political and military reasons, they'd still have more than | enough of them if they mostly started closing/stopped | building new plants after Chernobyl. | rectang wrote: | No, it's not sarcasm -- I would appreciate it if you | would be a little more generous when interpreting my | remark. The proliferation problem is exacerbated | incrementally by every additional plant in every | additional country -- including this one. The issue is | not Finland in particular developing nuclear weapons, but | _any_ country developing nuclear weapons -- especially a | country governed by an autocracy. Or a country that might | be governed by an autocracy in the future -- the last few | years have raised the urgency of the problem of | democratic backsliding, which we need to figure out how | to avert. | yakubin wrote: | The countries which are least trustworthy wrt nuclear | weapons are the ones that aren't going to ask the | public's permission. An autocracy doesn't need to power | itself by nuclear plants in order to have nuclear | weapons. On the other hand having a sustainable, clean | source of power not tied to autocratic regimes lowers the | leverage those regimes hold over democratic countries. | | In my particular country, a major chunk of the public | budget goes towards paying fines to EU for use of coal, | all while our government periodically passes bills | allowing it to borrow more money from the central bank, | increasing inflation. Negotiations with neighbouring | autocratic countries can be pretty tough, when they can | threaten us and rest of Europe, which is going to put | pressure, with stopping energy transmission. Energy | shortages in some parts of the country were a regular | occurrence for decades, even before the current political | problems. | | Lack of nuclear plants does nothing to prevent a nuclear | war, while it harms us on many very tangible levels. | rectang wrote: | See https://whatisnuclear.com/non-proliferation.html#how- | is-nucl... for one of the mechanisms whereby dual-use | technology presents issues: obtaining fissile material is | difficult, and while nuclear power plants are not a | prerequisite, they make it easier. | | I agree that dependence on geopolitically and | environmentally problematic fossil fuel sources is a | pressing concern. | jrockway wrote: | I don't think it's sarcasm. Maybe North Korea is a better | example. It would probably just be "Korea" if they didn't | have nukes, but you can't exactly go in and overthrow the | government when they can just wipe out all human life on | the peninsula in an instant. | | (People get upset at the implication that one country | would take over another country, but the people of North | Korea would probably not be worse off if that happened. | Instead they suffer greatly because nobody can help | them.) | RobertMiller wrote: | > _It would probably just be "Korea" if they didn't have | nukes_ | | Their first nuclear test was in 2006. Even their | production of refined uranium and plutonium only began in | the 80s, decades after the war came to a standstill. | Andrew_nenakhov wrote: | Russia imperialistic ambitions would be far more modest if | Europe and US wouldn't fill Putin's coffers with hundreds | of billions of dollars and euros in exchange for oil and | gas. You know, the things they use instead of Nuclear | energy. | rectang wrote: | Indeed, we are left with (from my perspective) all bad | choices in the short-to-medium term. In the US, we made a | least-bad calculation when choosing the environmental | cost of fracking over the geopolitical costs of depending | on dictator oil. Now Europe gets to make similar | calculations. | | I'd sure like it if less inherently dangerous | technologies were further along. But every year they are | gaining. | Aachen wrote: | And if you manage to convince someone this is an airplane | crash type of problem, they start about the finances. | | And they're right about it not being the cheapest option, so | what can you say? They win the argument. | | Next time you meet the person is at a protest where they | don't want a solar farm where there is now a nice forest or | pasture, no 24/7 moving shadows from huge wind turbine blades | and that's after they pushed for a law to require more space | between the edge of town and the nearest turbine, protesting | for fish rights when hydro is being proposed (if that's | possible in their area in the first place)... | | People also love to gloss over that electricity is 10% of the | problem. Whenever you see a headline about Germany having run | on 90% renewable power last month or whatever, mentally | replace that with 9% because energy used in transportation, | building heating, etc. don't count towards this. And then we | haven't even touched upon the problem of cement/steel/plastic | yet, we're going to need breakthrough materials or negative | emissions with capturing plants that, you guessed it, also | require electricity. | | It's apparently very hard to understand that we need to work | on all fronts, not pick a partial solution and wait until | that's exhaustively implemented (all reasonably available | space occupied) 15 years down the road, then wonder why | emissions are at record highs (see 2021). | manquer wrote: | It is less about being cheap and more about being | predictable. | | Getting consistent funding for new projects is hard when | every other project in history has over run both costs and | time widely. | Aachen wrote: | If mere cost/time predictability were the problem we | could double any worst-case projection. Even at that | price point it's something I think we should pursue | _alongside_ the more renewable sources. That electricity | has been dirt(y) cheap in the past decades was great, but | that 's just not sustainable. | | But yeah if we argue for another five years before | getting started on at least the legislation/planning | stages (after which we could still declare it a sunk | cost, based on how the situation looks in 2027), we might | as well forget about it. | thow-58d4e8b wrote: | As a rule of thumb, greenhouse gas emissions are roughly | equally split between electricity production, | transportation, heating, agriculture and industry, about | 20% each. Transportation is electrifying rather quickly in | Europe, heating at a bit slower pace. So it's a bit better | than "10% of the problem" - it's about 20% now, becoming | ~40% in 10-15 years, eventually lowering total emissions by | ~60% probably some time around 2050 | | Agriculture and industry are tough nuts to crack. With | electricity, transport and heating, it's a problem of | scaling out. With agriculture and industry - we don't even | have a blueprint yet | Aachen wrote: | Fair enough. My figures are from 2013 and even then it | was better than 10% (namely 12.7% in the Netherlands | where I'm from; that's the latest info Wikipedia has). | I'll use 20% as a rule of thumb going forwards because | that's indeed more future-proof. | theshrike79 wrote: | Fear based on feeling, not on facts. That's it. | | By any objective metric, nuclear is by far the best choice for | stable base power generation. | | "But what if it explodes" - and there goes all rationality. | | Humans will take constant death from coal power plants rather | than a minuscule chance of a larger catastrophe in a nuclear | plant. | pfdietz wrote: | "But what if it explodes" is actually a valid question for | fast reactors, since they can potentially go prompt fast | supercritical in a serious accident. Edward Teller was | famously suspicious (in 1967) of fast reactors for this | reason. | ljf wrote: | As soon as private industry is funding and running nuclear | power including the decommissioning costs, plus selling their | energy at market rates (in the UK we have guaranteed the new | nuclear plants rates that are higher than the next most | expensive generators costs) then I'll believe that. | | The only way these are remotely economical is when they are | funded by the tax payer before the are built, while they run, | and after they close down. | | Any examples that goes against that? I'd be very interested | to learn about them. I think as a way to ensure energy | independence and remove fossil fuels they are good, but we | cannot pretend they don't come with massive costs, and don't | yet pay their own way. | p_l wrote: | The problem is that markets are supremely bad at building a | stable electricity grid. So on one hand wind and solar are | getting cheaper per MW, but it doesn't include the effect | they have on destabilising both the grid _and_ electricity | markets - in fact, solar getting cheaper is probably going | to cause a stop on buildout in some places, because the | price of solar MW is going to be too low to deal with all | the time you 're not producing - either due to lack of sun, | or due to curtailment. | | And we do not really have any storage available - the only | systems that are 1) not experimental 2) usable for anything | other than frequency stabilisation; are the pumped hydro - | and those are geographically limited. At least when it's | windy, you can use wind turbines as sinks for stability. | Intermittent nature of solar and wind is too intermittent | for most industrial sinks. | | Meanwhile unpredictable nature of generation from wind and | solar push the grid to buildout LNG/petroleum powered gas | turbines, due to their very short delay on ramping up/down | (IIRC, second only to hydro). So you end up in situation | where market approach to electricity is going to prevent | decarbonisation, unless you hugely upend what is being | bought on the market. | | Personally I've been thinking of electricity market paying | only for predictable (aka "dispatchable") low-carbon power | plants, or at least with huge priority. Solar and Wind | could still compete on such market by being paired with | storage systems into Virtual Power Plants (something that | already exists), and the rest of the generation would be | sold on spot market during peaks, or preferably to | dedicated sinks like green hydrogen production. | londons_explore wrote: | * Plants are very expensive to build. Due to massive upfront | costs, it cannot beat wind/solar today unless you use very | unusual financial models. (ie. assume interest rates are zero | for 50 years). If nuclear plants were built more frequently, | cost would come down a lot - it turns out making everything | bespoke is hugely expensive. | | * Lots of public opposition due to the public being scared of | nuclear waste, nuclear accidents, etc. The public far prefers | taking on invisible risk (like the lung cancer risk from | coal/oil/gas emissions) than the huge event risk of a nuclear | meltdown, even if the overall harm to human lives is higher. | cipher_system wrote: | Keep in mind that Finland is on the same latitudes as Alaska | so solar doesn't work that great when needed the most. | liketochill wrote: | It is only producing 100 MW of 1600 MW which they should achieve | by July. Congratulations to all of the engineers there! | cbmuser wrote: | It's actually been built by SIEMENS/Areva which is ironic | because Germany is on the brink on shutting down all of its | nuclear power plants. | mrits wrote: | Is it a possibility to ramp them back up? | legulere wrote: | Siemens dropped out of the project and constructing nuclear | power plants because of how much of a failure this reactor | was. | hnarn wrote: | I'll avoid the tiresome linguistic debate about what | qualifies as "irony" and instead point out that sure, while | Siemens is a "German" company, giving a _multinational | corporation_ a national identity very often does not make | sense. Siemens has ~300 000 employees, and while it 's one of | Germany's biggest employers with ~100 000 employees in the | country, that still means two thirds of the company does not | work in Germany. | | Also, Areva is French and Siemens hasn't held any shares in | the company since 2009. | dry_soup wrote: | Electricity prices are through the roof in Finland right now. | This was even the case before the war started. We import an | incredible amount of LNG from Russia, a lot of which is used for | electricity production if I have it correct, which we would of | course like to be independent of. But for the time being we have | spikes of 60-70 cents/kWh electricity prices. Hopefully OL3 will | help this somewhat. | | Finland has another nuclear power plant under construction as | well... or at least we did, until the war started, now I don't | know what will happen. Rusatom was supposed to supply the reactor | for Hanhikivi nuclear power plant, which was also severely | delayed. | | Russia is also an important supplier of nuclear fuel to Finland. | burmanm wrote: | We don't import a lot of LNG from Russia. Gas coming from | Russia comes through the pipes, not LNG. However, we don't even | use gas a lot in Finland (it accounts 3% of the total energy | production). | | The electricity prices are through the roof for other reasons | (and have been for almost a year now) and are not related to | Russia at all. | dry_soup wrote: | Care to elaborate? | Ekaros wrote: | Finnish market is tied to other Nordics that are tied to | central Europe. So it is cascading effect. Main culprit for | Nordics really is poor levels of hydro reservoirs. And high | prices in Central Europe leading to prices also increasing | here. | dendrite9 wrote: | This is surprising to me, I found this number for | Finland: 22.5% comes from hydropower. I suppose I'm stuck | associating Tampere, Finland (Nokia) with hydropower as | well as the Venmork plant in Norway that was sabotaged | during WW2. I realize that doesn't mean much however. | | I have to do some reading, but my understanding was that | the Finnish plant is using an alternate funding structure | from many of the existing nuclear installations. Less | direct subsidies or more risk directly on the commercial | entities? | AlexAndScripts wrote: | Couldn't you buy nuclear fuel from e.g. France instead? | belorn wrote: | For a while, Russian nuclear fuel was cheaper. There are | alternative sources if the political interest to not fund | Russian exceed the economical interests. | roschdal wrote: | blibble wrote: | at that point we're already in a nuclear war due to the EU | collective defence provisions | oblak wrote: | what are you talking about? | RobertMiller wrote: | It's a BWR, the worst case failure mode looks something like | Fukishima. Certainly a mess, but "set on fire" makes me think | you're imagining another Chernobyl. BWRs don't catch fire like | that. If something went very wrong, the reactor and containment | buildings might pop and make a big mess, but it's not as though | there's _a thousand tons of graphite_ there to catch fire. It | 's not an RBMK. | | Edit: Actually it's a PWR, the other two reactors at this plant | are BWRs. Still, similar worst-case scenarios. | rectang wrote: | The possibility seems remote right now and I dislike the | inflammatory framing, but I think this touches on one of | fundamental drawbacks of nuclear power: it is hard to engineer | plants to guard against catastrophe because there's a lot of | energy stored in an inherently dangerous form. | | Hydroelectric power is often similarly vulnerable: you can | engineer the dam to hold, but when something outside of | tolerances appears, the downstream consequences are severe. | Compare with solar or wind, where the energy source is not | concentrated and so plant machinery is comparatively inert. | | We are continually reassured by proponents that today's designs | are invulnerable, but both history and the fundamentals of | energy storage bespeak the limitations of such assurances. | orangecat wrote: | _We are continually reassured by proponents that today 's | designs are invulnerable_ | | Not invulnerable, but the expected harm is far less than | fossil fuels under any reasonable assumptions. | zh3 wrote: | I'm pro-nuclear, but having been following this for a long time | and it's not exactly a model that's leading the way. | | Especially as I'm in the UK, and we decided to build a copy of it | (Hinckley Point) even after all the flaws become known. | mrlonglong wrote: | We're doing it a lot better though. Progress has been good. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-03-12 23:00 UTC)