The Olkiluoto 3 EPR plant unit started up
tvo.fi
tvo.fi
Also in this theme, even if material science has advanced I'm a bit curious as if it has really advanced enough that people trying to promote building molten salt breeders over and over again (that's the ones that are highly corrosive iirc? if not insert the ones with practical problems).
Reading about many of the early accidents in military and early nuclear industry, I'm not too sure that there wasn't quite a bit of "trying and failing" going on back then, and while that culture is not up to the NASA standards we see in space flights we've also seen how some of their contractors got slower and slower to the point where they lost the ability to finish things in time (and as time drags on the repeating of mistakes will come up again).
There is just too much money to be made for the corrupt people to stay away.
The honest and good offers are rarely taken, because they've realistic estimations - the dishonest one's only care about getting the contract, not finishing it... So they'll make the much better offer. And once work starts, the corruption keeps spreading. Everyone on every layer knows how unlikely their charges are going to be contested, so everyone just charges more for the same work, siphoning money from the project.
I'd consider that a cultural issue, because people at large have really started to only think about themselves and no longer identify with their work ethic. Which is understandable because the employers generally treat their employees like disposable tools.
I don't think there is any straightforward or easy solution, and it can get much much worse too. Just look at china's production issues for inland products, esp. food and consumable products.
But the “challenge” with waste storage is a big lie.
The French have all the waste ever generated by their nuclear program sitting under the floor of a single room. The quantities of “waste” generated by nuclear plants are not really meaningful even over long time horizons.
A couple km down the road from Olkiluoto is Onkalo which is basically ready with now going through final checkups and to be put into use in 2023.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repo...
This is the worst case scenario they thought about
> Posiva on arvioinut ydinjätteiden pahimpia mahdollisia seurauksia. Skenaariossa ydinkanisteri syöpyisi puhki tuhannessa vuodessa lasketun sadantuhannen vuoden sijaan ja samanaikaisesti sitä ympäröivä savipuskuri katoaisi selittämättömästi. Lisäksi pohjavesi kulkisikin ylöspäin ja paikan päälle rakennettaisiin kaupunki. Ihminen, joka eläisi kehdosta hautaan saastuneimmalla neliömetrillä ja söisi vain sillä kasvanutta ruokaa ja joisi saastuneinta vettä, saisi vain kolminkertaisen säteilyannoksen Tampereen Pispalassa nyt asuviin ihmisiin nähden.
Rough translation
> Posivat has estimated the worst case scenarios. In the case the vessels would corrode in 1000 years instead of the calculated 100000 years and the clay barrier would "disappear" (nobody knows how it would do that) and the ground water would move upwards (it moves down in that area) and someone built a city above it and ate from crops grown on the worst possible radiated land they would get 3x the lifetime radiation does of someone living in Piispala, Tampere
(the stuff in quotes is my additions)
All the waste?
https://www.nrc.gov/waste/llw-disposal/licensing/statistics....
"Approximately 1.01 million cubic feet and 40 thousand curies of low-level radioactive waste were disposed of in 2020"
High-level waste is the problem.
At some abstract factual level that claim may not be [that] wrong, but I'm not convinced that statements such as that help promote the nuclear cause.
https://hidex.com/ebooks/liquid-scintillation-measuring-proc...
https://www.journalofdairyscience.org/article/S0022-0302(96)....
I've visited this place and they have like historical monuments dedicated to the handling of the health issues: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monticello,_Utah#Uranium_minin...
Probably not the most boring kind of waste.
> "Approximately 1.01 million cubic feet and 40 thousand curies of low-level radioactive waste were disposed of in 2020"
It’s worth noting that even a million cubic feet isn’t a big quantity, this is something one guy with an excavator could feasibly bury. (Not that we should actually pursue the guy-with-excavator disposal strategy)
These are the estimates for decomissioning of all the Olkiluoto reactors[2]:
"The amount of decommissioning waste is around 32 000 m3, generated from Olkiluoto 1 and 2 mainly during 2068-2076. The amount of Olkiluoto 3 decommissioning waste is estimated to be around 11000 m3 before packing and generated during 2079-2085. Additionally there will be approximately 2000 m3 of waste from the spent fuel interim storage decommissioning to be generated around 2100."
1. https://www.tvo.fi/uploads/File/2009/OL3_Basic_Facts_2009.pdf
2. https://ec.europa.eu/energy/sites/ener/files/fi_2nd_nr.pdfAFAIK, Russia, for example, had got extremely good at cycling nuclear materials. I assume it is due to the fact that after Chernobyl they were actually forced to invest in nuclear energy due to safety reasons, rather then abandon it.
But I have to say that the part where you concentrate a substantial mass of an unholy mix of medium-lived actinides to be burned into a fairly large structure seems kind of scary. I'm not sure I'd like to work in that part of a nuclear fuel processing plant. Fortunately it's almost certainly an academic question because the probability of this coming into fruition is very low nowadays.
My point was what the same fast reactor can be used as both breeder and burner without specifying "at the same time". And I am pretty sure (though not 100% confident) that you can mix both breeder and burner rods, thus changing breeder/burner ratio at will.
>the part where you concentrate a substantial mass of an unholy mix of medium-lived actinides to be burned into a fairly large structure seems kind of scary
Yeah, fuel and waste handling is probably the most difficult part of a breeder/burner system, not the reactor itself.
And other countries have much higher volume of waste stored, how about 40000m3? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morsleben_radioactive_waste_...
The less radioactive fraction will indeed stay active for thousands of years, but its level of radiation will be closer to natural sources than to an atomic bomb.
(The HLW is what people mostly worry about)
Even in a weird scenario where we don’t start recycling our nuclear “waste”, storing 100000x the current amounts would not present a particularly huge challenge.
We tend to conflate the two, and assume that the waste is both highly radioactive AND long-lived, but this is not the case. It is highly radioactive for a reasonable amount of time, and then low-level radioactive for a really long time.
The challenge is only how to handle it while it is incredibly radioactive, but the timescales involved are not at all impossible to deal with. Once it has cooled down, just leaving it buried is perfectly fine. There's very little long-term risk.
(Let's say, as an oversimplification, that the time of high danger is maybe two hundred years - a long time to be sure, but not unprecedented in terms of large-scale engineering projects. Around that time, the radioactivity starts dropping very sharply.)
Original estimate for the start of electricity production was 2009. Full-scale commercial production is now on track to start in mid-2022. This project has been absolutely harrowed by a seemingly infinite string of delays, and is now believed to be one of the world's most expensive construction projects ever undertaken: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olkiluoto_Nuclear_Power_Plant#...
Not very surprising when you see that Areva/Framatome was involved :^) /s
All jokes aside, having worked for a manufacturer of nuclear equipment, delay are usually the result of two factor: One is that the sales department of the companies involved are "very optimistic", and by that I mean, they ask engineer to do an estimation for the time/cost of designing/manufacturing one part, and then ask them to slash it by half (talking from experience, sadly, ...). They want to make sure that they get the contract so they make unrealistic proposition and then make sure that the contract is made so that they can still profit when the project will take twice the time and money.
The second is the level of standard for this type of construction and equipment which is, thankfully, extremely high. A single small scratch could mean that you had to scrap and redo a lot of part of a thermal exchanger or tank. So, even the tiniest of manufacturing defect, or even slight damaged made when testing of moving the piece, can mean months of delay to redo and qualify the piece.
Construction and operation teething issues are nothing surprising, but Areva was definitely… way over-optimistic about the EPR.
I still can’t believe they advertised a 4 years plan when the first N4 (previous generation) took 12 years to build, and needed an additional 4 before it started operation.
Hell, going down the list of reactors on the wiki, even the 900MWe class never went from first stone to operation in 4 years, the shortest looks to have been Blayais 1 which took a hair short of 5 (January 1st, 1977 to December 1st, 1981), and taking somewhere between 5 and 6 was much more typical for the 900MWe class. The P4s were a bit worse (7-9) and the N4s were way worse (the shortest time between build start and start of operation was Civaux 2 at 11 years, the Chooz reactors took 16).
This is due to turbines being designed to spin constantly not sit still for years.
> The waste heat, an output common to all thermal power plants, which heats the cooling water (at 13 °C) is utilized for small-scale agriculture before being pumped back to the sea. The power plant hosts the northernmost vineyard in the world, a 0.1 ha experimental plot that yields 850 kg Zilga grapes annually. Another use is a pond for growing crabs, whitefish and sturgeon for caviar.
Hmmm not sure these paranuclear farm products will sell all that well…
Hence they had to build one ginormous reactor, facing numerous issues caused by venturing into the limits of maximum power per reactor.
Had they permitted 4 * 400MW instead of 1 * 1600MW, the plant would have been in production for years already.
Paradoxically this large-reactor approach was intended to reduce costs but has spectacularly failed to do so with cost overruns of factors of 3 (in this case) and over 5 (from Flammanville).
I would think building another one like this should be less of an ordeal. Too bad the sister project at Flamanville was started too early after this one to benefit from the lessons learned.
There have actually been quite a few new reactors brought online in the past two decades in France, the UAE, Russia and Belarus. This is a brand new design though, and construction was started in multiple countries at similar points in time.
Uh? Not a single one.
https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-energy-...
For Hinkley Point C, another EPR we have the following, a guaranteed strike price of $140/MWh.
EDF has negotiated a guaranteed fixed price – a "strike price" – for electricity from Hinkley Point C of £92.50/MWh (in 2012 prices),[25][83] which will be adjusted (linked to inflation – £106/MWh by 2021[77]) during the construction period and over the subsequent 35 years tariff period. The base strike price could fall to £89.50/MWh if a new plant at Sizewell is also approved.[25][83] High consumer prices for energy will hit the poorest consumers hardest according to the Public Accounts Committee.[86]
In July 2016, the National Audit Office estimated that due to falling energy costs, the additional cost to consumers of 'future top-up payments under the proposed HPC CfD had increased from £6.1 billion in October 2013, when the strike price was agreed, to £29.7 billion'.[87][88] In July 2017, this estimate rose to £50 billion, or 'more than eight times the 2013 estimate'.[9]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinkley_Point_C_nuclear_power_...
There in lies the issue, the total cost for newly built solar and wind is lower than the OPEX of existing plants.
On a yearly basis these are the average wholesale prices in Finland:
2020 - €28,02 /MWh
2019 - €44,04 /MWh
2018 - €46,80 /MWh
2017 - €33,19 /MWh
2016 - €32,45 /MWh
2015 - €29,66 /MWh
From that we can see is that the average price during the years was about equal to the OPEX we've seen from several sources. Other years you might make some back compared to OPEX.
https://www.nordpoolgroup.com/services/power-market-data-ser...
2020: $0,024 per kWh.
2019: $0,045 per kWh.
2018: $0,050 per kWh.
Nuclear are $0.13 - $0.204 per kWh to build. Therefore, even with these fluctuating prices you would need to make back the average loss of the year during a few short spurts, not looking likely that.
Also there is no way OL3 actually costs that much to build. Lets say it runs at 90% of max output on average it gets you ~14 000 000 MWh of electricity per year and with 60 year planned lifetime that comes to 840 000 000MWh of electricity produced.
With your numbers (the low end $0.13 per kWh) it would come to ~100 billion euros building costs which is roughly an order of magnitude more then reality (somewhere between 5.4 to 12 billion to be paid by TVO once all the lawsuits are settled)
At the end of the day with operational and decommissioning costs the overall lifetime costs will go up obviously but I doubt in the tune of over 1 billion per year to reach your estimate costs.
Also getting the profitability number of OL3 is really difficult due to TVO not actually selling any electricity directly to the public/pool but instead at cost to the investors of each reactor. Some of it going directly to Fortum or Helen who just sell it to whoever but some of it goes to the big paper companies who use it to run their factories.
TVO is a "mankala-periaate" company which I can't really find a good english explanation of but basically it is a company that sells all of its product to its owners at cost allowing multiple players in the field to share a single supplier while stills staying in control of the supply chain.
EDF has negotiated a guaranteed fixed price – a "strike price" – for electricity from Hinkley Point C of £92.50/MWh (in 2012 prices),[25][83] which will be adjusted (linked to inflation – £106/MWh by 2021[77]) during the construction period and over the subsequent 35 years tariff period. The base strike price could fall to £89.50/MWh if a new plant at Sizewell is also approved.[25][83] High consumer prices for energy will hit the poorest consumers hardest according to the Public Accounts Committee.[86]
In July 2016, the National Audit Office estimated that due to falling energy costs, the additional cost to consumers of 'future top-up payments under the proposed HPC CfD had increased from £6.1 billion in October 2013, when the strike price was agreed, to £29.7 billion'.[87][88] In July 2017, this estimate rose to £50 billion, or 'more than eight times the 2013 estimate'.[9]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinkley_Point_C_nuclear_power_...
Also the current price for the plant is 5.7 billion euros (in the last "official" statement from TVO). It might go up to 7 to 8 billion after the lawsuits etc. Basically the plant was built at fixed cost contract with the builders (Areva and Siemens) taking a huge hit but that is not TVOs problem.
The biggest investors in OL3 are paper companies more interested in some guaranteed max price than paying the least by getting as much of their electricity from their own production (the nuclear plants by TVO, their own hydro, etc). Basically they want to be able to say 1 year in advance that paper/paperboard will cost X without taking a huge hit when fulfilling their contracts due to electricity price jumping up. If they happen to find cheaper electricity from somewhere else then it is just a happy accident and more profit for them.
Basically OL3 got built as the investors were so happy with the previous 2 reactors at the site so I would think they know how to do it in a profitable way.
We are however also talking about two very different kind of prices. My numbers are what the customer is paying, which can be seen either on the website by the electric company or sites dedicated to it (https://www.eon.se/el/elpriser/aktuella and https://elen.nu/dagens-spotpris/se4-malmo/#). What you are describing is the price on the energy market Nord Pool, like those that can be read at (https://www.energimarknadsbyran.se/el/dina-avtal-och-kostnad...).
In reality, a significant fraction of the cost comes from interest. Sure, the 1-month LIBOR rates may be 0.1% nowadays, but construction started in 2005. The 10-year treasury rate in 2005 was closer to 5%. Nobody would be willing to lend money for the construction of a plant like this for anything less.
(Of course the current price is a bit of an anomaly.)
Demand from gas in Europe remains the almost the same, but supply isn't.
- Do not fill storage assuming lower prices in autumn.
- Intentionally delay certification of a pipeline from one of your main suppliers.
- Act very surprised when the aforementioned supplier does nothing to stop spot prices explosion due to the external circumstances and even fans the flames a bit.
- Make questionable remarks which accelerate the rise of gas prices even further.
- Demand (sic!) from the supplier additional gas not covered by existing contracts, even though it's clearly not in his interest.
I wonder why does the EU has gas supply issues?
The pipeline is not certified because it breaks existing legislation. It is up to pipeline developers/owners to fix this issue.
So if this does not look to like an intentional delay, then I don't know what to say.
Nord Stream 2 AG is a subsidiary of state-owned Gazprom. They probably think that if they put enough political pressure, they could negotiate an exception.
Assuming a fixed interest rate of 5%, construction costs including interest is about $16 billion = €14 billion. Assuming an availability of 95% (maybe unrealistic for a brand new reactor) it will generate 13TWh/year. Assuming an electricity cost of €100/MWh (higher than usual but lower than current extreme prices) and a marginal cost of €26/MWh, the income/year is €0.99 billion. From this you have to deduct the interest of the loan of about €0.70 billion. So for the first year you have €0.29 billion in profit that you can use to amortize the loan.
So when the plant becomes profitable is highly dependent on what future interest rates are and how high future electricity prices will be. While current interest rates have been very low for the past few years, it may be very hard to get an investor to lend you money for a nuclear plant for only 5%. A discount rate of 7% or even 9% is often used for many commercial projects. Using those rates Olkiluoto 3 will never generate any return (barring insane electricity prices).
Neither solar nor wind works during these cold winter days when power usage is at its highest. There’s nowhere to build new hydro. Coal is being banned.
Note that due to the fixed-price nature of the original supply contract, the total cost of the plant was "only" €5.7B ($6.4B) to the owner/operator (TVO).
The $10B-$11B is the estimated cost to the plant supplier (Areva NP/Framatome), i.e. they made a huge loss.
Finnish source of numbers: https://www.kauppalehti.fi/uutiset/olkiluoto-3-alkaa-tuottaa... (paywall)
> Four independent emergency cooling systems, each providing the required cooling of the decay heat that continues for 1 to 3 years after the reactor's initial shutdown (i.e., 300% redundancy)
> Leak-tight containment around the reactor
> An extra container and cooling area if a molten core manages to escape the reactor (see containment building and core catcher)
> Two-layer concrete wall with total thickness 2.6 m, designed to withstand impact by aeroplanes and internal overpressure
The alternative is fossil fuels in combination with wind/solar, the most cost effective grid that currently exist. During optimal weather conditions renewables are the cheapest energy on the planet, and during non-optimal weather conditions fossil fuels is usually the cheapest energy that can meet demand.
Living in Sweden, I am slightly hopeful that the nuclear plant in Finland might reduce the need to run the oil power plant located in southern parts of Sweden. The oil power plant is the single highest contributor for carbon emissions in the south of Sweden, despite the fact that Sweden mostly operate on hydro and nuclear. 70 tons of oil per hour goes up in smoke in a time where the oil need to stay in the ground. More solar/wind will not have much of an effect on this oil power plant since it only operates during non-optimal weather conditions. Currently we are several weeks in with a weather of low wind conditions, with energy prices skyrocketing as a result. The Finish project had some good luck in term of timing by turning on the nuclear power plant right in the middle of exceptional high energy prices.
And, as you mentioned, having fossil in reserve for edge cases is definitely a viable option.
Wind can work but also partially has the same problem but to the same extent. Usually the colder it gets the less windy it gets. Basically in Finland during the winter it gets cold when there is no wind bringing warm air from the Atlantic (gulf stream) usually as a result of a high pressure zone parking itself over the country.
It does mean you depend on processes you have little say in. Somebody else specifies and builds much of the transmission line, and all of the generating capacity.
https://www.fingridlehti.fi/en/ja-kantaverkkokeskuksesta-soi... (this article is from summer about moving it the other way but the same happened now during the winter but other direction)
This is one of the reasons why the electricity prices hiked up as high as they did here. Basically Norway and Sweden do have some electricity available for cheaper then running reserve gas plants in Finland but they can't get that electricity from the south all the way up north.
And being that reliant on another nation is not good for the national safety of a country. Imagine if a significant portion (like lets say 30%) of the electricity used in US came from solar farms in Mexico (or even further south being transmitted through multiple countries). This would make US economy and national defense really vulnerable (both require massive amounts of energy to really function)
> "It does mean you depend on processes you have little say in. Somebody else specifies and builds much of the transmission line, and all of the generating capacity."
Overcapacity has its issues. It does not remove the dependency on fossil fuel, and you still need to have independently the same capacity in fossil fuel plants. A big part of the fossil fuel cost in term of economics is have them standby and operational, which today is paid primarily through subsidies. Having a bunch of wind turbines running at 20% efficiency while at the same time paying a fossil fueled power plant be ready to step is not cheap. Is it _still_ cheaper than nuclear? Hard to say. All the comparisons I have seen are done on the theoretical cost per watt produced, not what the grid costs to operate on a year to year basis in order to provide the service of a stable grid.
Looking at the day prices per local zone around Sweden and Finland, the prices goes down the closer you get to hydro and nuclear and goes up the closer you get to wind and fossil fuels, with as high as 10x. Economically that makes the case for wind + fossil fuels a bit harder to buy, through I am not blind to the fact that its previous generations that enabled it. Living next to wind+fossil fuel is right now very expensive, with industries moving north as a direct result.
The fact that China, which is an absolute leader in nuclear power, wasn't able to scale up this energy source as fast as wind and (soon) solar (in terms of GWh delivered) and the planned 150 reactors will barely catch up with renewables speaks volumes.
I mean, it's a safe and environmentally friendly technology, but it just can't be built fast enough.
I see: <<The country ranks third in the world both in total nuclear power capacity installed and electricity generated>>
Can you please explain what you mean by <<The fact that China, which is an absolute leader in nuclear power...>>?
https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-and-fu...
By leadership I mean that they're one of the few countries which in the last 20 years managed to consistently deliver new nuclear capacity on time and (roughly) within budget.
The US generally ranks first, but delivered what, one power plant in the XXIth century so far?
And as if this was the only problem and it hadn't a lot of huge others, nuclear proponents will use this now as an example how nuclear is the way out of the climate crisis, and how comparing nuclear with renewables is wrong..
No, the best future would be neither fossil nor nuclear.
nuclear is the highest density of energy available to mankind. Refusing to using it is kind of a huge missed opportunity.
In Finland, the coldest weather is experienced when, during winter months, there is a persistent anticyclone parked overhead. Those can cover the entirety of the country, and inside them there is negligible wind. For example, on 8th of December it was -20°C, and the average output of wind power (nominal installed capacity ~2800MW) over the day was 330MW. The average output of grid-connected solar was <1MW (It's December in Finland, what did you expect?).
Anticyclones can remain in place overhead for weeks. The value often used to calculate the cost of renewable+storage is 3h. This is a reasonable value for California, where solar production correlates well with use. If you built the grid in Finland based on that, we would just die when it gets cold.
There are no renewables that work well in Finland. Water power is fully built out. Solar only produces power when we don't need it. Wind reliably does not provide power when we need it. Compared to renewable with enough storage, even with all it's overruns, OL3 is remarkably cheap.
Many current heating fuels are fossil and not great either, but they can be replaced with renewable fuels which solves storage vs renewable-produced electricity.
Do you propose to build so many nuclear plants that you can provide peak electricity including heating in cold winter months? Do you have numbers for that? (I imagine that'd be the most expensive solution ever, as nuclear plants are high in capital costs and you're basically proposing to have lots of nuclear plants that only run on very cold winter days.)
I guess what many nuclear proponents seem to forget is that you need flexibility no matter what source of electricity you have - because even if your plant runs 24/7 (which it doesn't), energy needs aren't constant.
France's EDF takes more nuclear reactors offline after faults found - 2021-12-17
https://www.reuters.com/markets/europe/edf-extend-civaux-nuc...
Next year, I think, they're building a storage not far from where I live with 200.000 m³ capacity.
For individual house heating it is some combination of pure electric, heat pump, wood and oil.
Gas in general is used very little for electricity here (only ~7% of total energy production) and gas cooking stuff is also relatively rare.
If you get it too wrong, the money runs out without a working nuke constructed. That can be OK if enough money is extracted first, as in South Carolina, where they sucked out ?$30B without delivering a promised 2 GW plant. That ended up with criminal indictments, but only for a few people. Almost everybody got to keep the money, Carolina ratepayers of course excepted.
The same process is seen in metro transit projects. It is an interesting topic in governance design how to avoid starting the process. One essential component appears to be easily priced subunits, such as solar panels or wind turbines, and early production. It is not easy to do that, with a nuke, but we don't really need nukes. Sometimes we do need transit projects.
Finally after decades of sending the Finns our energy it's time for the Finns to fold up their sleeves.
Not strange the Swedish prime minister always visits Helsinki first after being elected.
It's going to be interesting to see how the relations with the US changes as the US hegemony dissipates.
I think Russia is going to be the main trading partner of Scandinavian countries before the decade is over.
It’s not a coincidence that Russia is only around the 15th largest trading partner for Sweden.
Nobody cares about who is in office when they are freezing or starving.
And the US is too far away to even be able to trade with Europe with sail ships.
Russia also needs European money, since most of their budget is energy export, that’s why even at the peak of cold war they kept selling gas to Western Europe. Sure, they can use gas to bully smaller countries and manipulate the gas market, but at the end of the day, they’ll keep the pipelines flowing.
This is not new either, Russia’s used gas to threaten/pressure their neighbouring countries for 2 decades now. Yet almost all of them have consistently reduced imports/exports with Russia.
Like the US uses financial system to threaten/pressure countries all around the globe since Bretton Woods? Every country has its own tools to promote its interests.
And funnily enough you often hear that Russia "pressures" countries in the form of simply demanding payment for already supplied resources, finding middle ground in the form of political solutions with countries unable to pay a fair market price, refusing to supply more than agreed by prior contracts, or simply by having a nerve to select a route for transportation of its resources.
I don't see how it's relevant to the discussed gas topic, but I will play along.
How exactly is it fundamentally different from the numerous US sanctions? Also this "pattern" is far from being a Russian invention.
>Or cranking up gas prices at random.
How exactly does Russia crank those prices "at random" if they are mostly determined by long term contracts tied to oil prices? At least it was the model preferred by Russia since it's allowed to properly plan investments into infrastructure. And BTW this model is a European invention (see the Groningen principle) with a very good reasons behind it.
If you want "free market" spot prices, then supplier is in his full right to decide a price at which he's willing to sell his stuff (as well as a buyer has right to abstain from buying it), be it at random or not. Or do you think that other countries are somehow entitled to cheap Russian resources without striking a mutually beneficial deal? Though judging by some Western officials' statements, it looks like there is a lot of those who think that they indeed are.
And while we are talking about prices, it's quite interesting how European courts retroactively change mutually agreed contract conditions to make them "fair" at the expense of the Russian side. Though those changes has backfired quite hilariously in this season.
>Also harassing ships that are laying undersea power cables with unannounced military drills.
Again I don't see a connection to the gas topic. And I haven't heard anything about such events and a cursory search hasn't showed any news like this. Care to provide a link?
The topic originally was whether Russia could realistically become the main trading partner for Scandinavian countries and how unpredictability is the number one reason why it won't happen.
> How exactly is it fundamentally different from the numerous US sanctions?
This is just Russian whataboutism, this is not about the US.
EU has done a lot to limit Russia's monopolistic behavior in recent years, but not long ago gas prices in neighbouring countries could differ 2-3x because of political decisions and artifical contractual limits, not any market forces. To this day, Russia can manipulate gas prices by reducing their throughput, since they're still the single largest provider.
> Care to provide a link?
Literally the first search result, https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-bullying-undersea-baltic-cabl...
Russia is a predictable Germany trading partner since Soviet times unless third countries get involved. You will not hear from German business that Russian side was unpredictable or irresponsible. You only hear it from third countries and politicians who actively interfere with "market forces".
Russia has a fine relationship with Finland and luckily there are no middle-man between them. And as the Hanhikivi plant shows Finland is not paranoid about Russia either.
>This is just Russian whataboutism, this is not about the US.
No, it's a clear demonstration that Russian behavior is not unique, only the tool set is different. You don't hear much about US, EU, India, or China "unpredictability" when they apply pressure on other countries using their tool set, do you?
>not long ago gas prices in neighbouring countries could differ 2-3x because of political decisions and artifical contractual limits, not any market forces
Did Russia somehow prevented buying gas from other sources? But the problem was that alternatives were 5-10x more expensive. So you had either pay in cash the "fair" 3x price or pay 1x in cash and rest in non-monetary forms. Looks like a fine market to me with agents playing the cards they've got.
>To this day, Russia can manipulate gas prices by reducing their throughput, since they're still the single largest provider.
EU pushed for "market forces", it got them. Why are you not happy? Why are you act surprised that after you forced long term contracts to be tied to spot prices Russia does not want to supply more than it contractually obliged? It's a perfectly rational behavior for a market agent in current conditions. Especially so, when result of significant investments literally lies on the sea floor unused enduring politically motivated delays.
>Literally the first search result, https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-bullying-undersea-baltic-cabl...
And where exactly does it mention "unannounced military drills"? Even if we are to fully trust the source (Latvian minister) a Russian ship was somewhere in the region and asked over radio some nonsense, after that it simply left. But, personally, I am quite sure that this story got significantly overblown by the Latvian side since I couldn't find an independent confirmation. All coverage gets back to Latvian ministers (either foreign or energy), which are quite known for being light with Russo-phobic declarations.
Now compare it to Polish boat literally ramming one of ships building Nord Stream 2 [0], Polish Navy "patrolling" [1] the same vessels, and Danish Navy "visiting" the area of the pipeline construction [2]. You may say that those claims are exaggerated or even lies, but at the very least they have photo and video confirmations, which can not be said about the Latvian story.
[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSJnIdbsywQ
[1]: https://forsided.com/2021/04/01/foreign-warships-planes-subm...
[2]: https://en.news-front.info/2021/06/30/danish-navy-monitors-c...
That infrastructure will never be possible at scale because battery energy density is too low.
Trains will eventually become the primary transport but they can't replace trucks the last mile.
Norwegian oil and gas discovery has peaked, exctraction EROEI is going down VERY fast and that is accelerating.
Only Russia has any conventional coal, oil and gas left in the proximity.
Reduced? I guess that's why they built Nordstream 2? Why do you think Germany has not started using Nordstream 2 yet?
Also, Germany is not Russia's neighbour.
After years of indecision as to what to do with Polish coal plants, they got too expensive and underinvested to produce the required quantities of coal. The rest is imported from the East.
So the whole "ah but we need coal for energy independence" is mostly a song and dance nowadays.
Russia is also 3rd largest trading partner for Finland, sitting above both China and US.
For comparison, Estonia is 3.5% import and 3% export, but has about 1/50th the size of Russia's GDP and shares no land border.
Not if you count the Astravets plant in Belarus and a bunch of reactors in Russia.
A lot of the modern confusion stems from the tendency of EU to refer to itself as "Europe" (see: European Council, European Central Bank, European Parliament etc.)
With Brexit, the complicated security situation east of Poland and the fact that the Swiss, the Norwegians and the Icelanders seem to be OK with staying outside, this ambition is no longer realistic to fulfill short- to mid-term, but it survives nonetheless.
No, not “the non-Russian part thereof”, the entire Europe “From the Atlantic to Ural”[1]
https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2019/08/20/russia-is-deeply-e...
Realistically, though, Russia would have to change a lot internally before joining the EU.
I am slightly more optimistic about Turkish membership, if Erdogan bites the dust and someone more Western-like (Imamoglu?) comes to power and rewrites the constitution again. Turkish industry is very much integrated into European supply chains.
Before 2007 (see the Munich speech) Russia sincerely tried to join the EU and the collective West. But the condition "proposed" at the time and attitude towards Russia fundamentally collided with that deep culture, resulting in the situation which we see today. If you want to learn more about it from a non-Western perspective, I recommend watching https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8X7Ng75e5gQ
Russia is definitely part of the Western civilization by any means if you don't limit this definition to what happened during the second half of the twentieth century… What on earth would make Russia less part of “Western civilization” than Slovakia or Greece?!
And the OP was not only excluding Russia from Europe in their post, but also Belarus which is unambiguously in Europe. It's a former part of the eastern block which is still under Moscow's influence so in must not be “Europe” because this word has been preempted by the American block.
Excluding Russia from Europe is a really recent trend actually, it appeared even after the fall of the iron curtain, during the late 90 s, early 2000s as an attempt to marginalize Russia.
It's an EPR[1] - a third generation reactor design. But so far it's been plagued by massive cost and schedule overruns and of the two reactors of this design to become operational, Taishan 2[2] has already been taken offline after less than a year in order to investigate problem with the fuel rods.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPR_(nuclear_reactor)
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taishan_Nuclear_Power_Plant
10 years ago it was 101%.
Net-exporter is just a political tool to hide the aspect of dependency.
The reason why net-exporter does not mean anything is that the product people buy is not just the joules, it the service of getting the energy at the right time in the right place. Buying energy when the excess is so large that the price is close to zero is not the same as buying energy when supply is so low that people will do anything just to prevent a blackout. Net-exporter only has meaning if one buy and sell at the same time, and then only if the energy produced comes from the same type of energy, ie trading non-fossil fuel energy for other non-fossil fuel energy.
It won't happen earlier with nuclear kept alive and it wouldn't ever have happened as the reason for keeping coal alive is primary those jobs which get lost in already troubled regions.
Bringing up Germany in the nuclear debate is ridiculous. There is no useful argument for nuclear there but it still comes up over and over again. The main reason for that is Michael Shellenbergers Astro-Turf campaign which got loose on social media and which lead to hordes of knowing and not knowing participants who parrot those false and easy to disprove phrases which got prepared by Shellenberger and his "Institute". Not even HN is safe.
They actually were early adopters. As they often are.
Fossil fuels need to stay in the ground and coal is the worst offender. Germany has caused more cancer deaths by using coal than Chernobyl and Fukushima combined, deaths that the German government should officially recognize. The government should issue an planned decommission of all existing fossil fueled power plants, with laws that prevent new ones to be built. Coal, oil, and natural gas.
Once they done that they can continue to be anti-nuclear if they want. How nations want to go forward in a world free of fossil fuels is their choice. They can invest in the yet-to-be-economic-viable green hydrogen plans, rust-batteries, lithium batteries or what have you. What they can't do is simply dumping massive amount of excess wind power to nearby countries in order to obscure the fact that they got a large fleet of fossil fueled power plants. The world doesn't work that way. They either burn fossil fuel or they don't.
They (and the rest of Europe) will always depend on gas from Russia as there are many uses for Gas. Things which can't be replaced by nuclear. This is again something which is just another derailment within this topic.
FYI: France, THE nuclear nation now needs that gas because their rotting nuclear fleet is failing it's citizens...which is a winter tradition in nuclear France.
> Germany has caused more cancer deaths by using coal than Chernobyl and Fukushima combined,
Please spare me the theatre. Nobody needs that. Nobody who's against nuclear is pro coal and as I mentioned above: there is a law to phase out coal COMPLETELY! Imagine that. No coal at all. The current Government wants it by 2030. This is faster than you could build a single nuclear reactor.
> deaths that the German government should officially recognize.
What are you talking about? German government does recognize that. This is why the law is there.
This coal derailment is the most funny thing about this Astro-Turf campaign because it originated in the USA. A country which just last year had a president who talked about "clean coal" and does not have a law to phase out coal completely. So think again: why are you always talking about Germany?
> Once they done that they can continue to be anti-nuclear if they want.
Why should they? You can do both and this is what Germany is doing right now. Nuclear today has a negligible impact. We'd be able to turn it off tomorrow. It has nothing to do with coal. The only reason coal is still there has been outlined in my previous comment. You chose to ignore that. What I got instead is more from the uninformed Astro-Turf. Are you even aware how embarrassing that is for you?
Please don't make light of people who died to an preventable disaster. Germany is releasing toxic air into the environment that causes cancers today. If nuclear plants was releasing their waste into the air, causing deaths around them, would you call that theater? I know people here would call it murder. A law to phase out existing practice of killing people in the name of energy is a very low bar in modern society, especially since the only reason is cost savings.
Whatabout USA. Whatabout china. Whatabout France. whatabout India. So much whataboutery. We have global warming! I really do not care about any whatabout. If a country is using fossil fuels, if they are continuing today with releasing toxic waste into the air, then they should be called out on it. Coal, oil and gas should not exist in the energy grid. If you have surrendered to the idea that gas must be burned for energy then you are not part of a future without fossil fuels, and long term that means mass extinctions, deaths, famine and ruin.
Its clear that you are turning to ad-hock attacks simply because you feel bad for supporting an industry built on death and destruction. Its typical when people feel shame. Maybe in the future you can join the movement that want to remove fossil fuels from the world. Until then all I can hope is that you will start to see the harm fossil fuels does to the world.
As I have explained several times already, not a single death there has anything to do with nuclear. Germany would have exactly the same amount of coal plants with all nuclear plants still there.
> So much whataboutery
Funny since this post is about Finland and you prefer to talk about Germany while refusing to talk about X.
> Maybe in the future you can join the movement that want to remove fossil fuels from the world.
Oh so now you are part of a movement to remove fossil fuels? Why don't you applaud Germany for the law to phase out coal COMPLETELY?
My guess is: because you don't care at all. You just hopped on the Astro-Turf-train and faced with the facts, you chose to ignore those and scream even louder.
Here is even more for you to ignore: https://news.bloomberglaw.com/environment-and-energy/why-nuc...
Here is article by researcher for you to ignore: https://www.cfr.org/article/tackle-climate-change-keep-fossi...
The only people who advocate for natural gas is those that either is ignorant or has economical motives. Climate researchers know it, most people are aware of it, the facts has been know for several decades. Replacing coal with natural gas is not a solution.
Slowly phasing out coal will result in many more people that will die, blood that will be on the hands of the German government. I don't applaud when people simply plan to, at some time in the future, stop murdering people. Being slightly less of a murderer this year isn't something you get a medal for, stopping being a murder is.
The research includes extensive geological surveys and every possible simulation you can run on a cave system.
Beats hands down the option which would be to burn fossil fuels and let the planet enjoy the negative externalities (CO2).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onkalo_spent_nuclear_fuel_repo...
The main reason we don't do that is that most of the waste can be expected to be further used with future reactors.
Including the operators: https://www.wiwo.de/atomausstieg-rwe-chef-krebber-will-atomk...