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.
We had this "too slow to build" -argument 15 years ago, but no other renewables have delivered. We built 67 new windmills in 2020. That number would have to be double for your argument to start being plausible in our environment.
France has 56 nuclear plants that provide roughly 73% of the energy needs of the country. ~73% of this capacity was finished between 1980 and 1990.
Modern regulation and the scarcity of new builds has made building slower, but it should be expected that Areva, the builder of Olkiluoto 3, should be able to pump out new facilities and significantly faster rate compared to the last decade.
https://www.ge.com/renewableenergy/wind-energy/offshore-wind...
https://www.vestas.com/en/products/offshore/V236-15MW
> Modern regulation and the scarcity of new builds has made building slower, but it should be expected that Areva, the builder of Olkiluoto 3, should be able to pump out new facilities and significantly faster rate compared to the last decade.
Went so swimmingly that Areva went into bankruptcy a couple of years ago. The company only exists to shield EDF and the French state from any remaining risk they still can from Olkilouto 3.
These nuclear plants haven't delivered. Meanwhile, renewables have become cheap and mainstream, and their market keeps improving constantly.
> Areva, the builder of Olkiluoto 3, should be able to pump out new facilities and significantly faster rate compared to the last decade.
They should but do they? I hear it's not going so well in their new project in the UK either.
He basically says that France is currently or close to be facing a industrial failure for the whole existing nuclear plants which means the nuclear safety cannot be guaranteed. The ability to build anything nuclear is out of reach for France who lacks engineers and technical know how which is the consequences of decades old political decisions to outsource to China, there is a lack of anticipation and no plans which is leading France in a probable dead-end.
The current French EPR in flamanville has confirmed what happened with Okiluoto, hundreds of failures, lack of planning, huge delays, low quality with forged document, going over budget by several times.
You may be interested in reading Marc Endeweld most recent book "L'Emprise. La France sous influence" it covers the current state of nuclear in France and it depicts an even bleaker picture than what the head of ASN publicly acknowledges.
[1]: https://www.lemonde.fr/economie/article/2022/01/19/la-poursu...
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/nuclear-renewables-electr...
You can see that the total share of renewables has climbed significantly, but production is heavily weighted on summer months when there is no shortage of electricity. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/nuclear-renewables-electr...
These numbers are all insignificant, tho. Finland needs to build roughly 22-35GW of renewable/nuclear power to get rid of carbon based energy, and we're nowhere near.
The clear answer is that we need both wind and nuclear – a LOT of both, but I doubt we'll do neither in sufficient quantity.
Understood, thank you!
More minor points:
> You'd need to build 1300+ 3MW wind turbines
Modern offshore ones develop 12MW, and their load factor peaks at .6
> We had this "too slow to build" -argument 15 years ago, but no other renewables have delivered.
Nuclear isn't a renewable source.
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.
Yes there are unremplacable parts in a nuclear reactor, but if it's measured to be safe to continue, then there is no reason to respect the initial EOL.
Fukushima Daini did not have those problems, and thus not much drama happened at it:
* https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Comparison-of-flood-dama...
* https://hbr.org/2014/07/how-the-other-fukushima-plant-surviv...
The two plants are 12 km apart and got hit with the same tsunami.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beznau_Nuclear_Power_Plant
In don't know the situation in all of Europe, but there could be potential to buy us quite of lot of time to really ramp up alternatives.
> In November 2012 it was discovered that over 5,000 small components used in five reactors at Yeonggwang Nuclear Power Plant had not been properly certified; eight suppliers had faked 60 warranties for the parts. Two reactors were shut down for component replacement, which was likely to cause power shortages in South Korea during the winter.[23] Reuters reported this as South Korea's worst nuclear crisis, highlighting a lack of transparency on nuclear safety and the dual roles of South Korea's nuclear regulators on supervision and promotion.[24] This incident followed the prosecution of five senior engineers for the coverup of a serious loss of power and cooling incident at Kori Nuclear Power Plant, which was subsequently graded at INES level 2.[23][25]
> In 2013, there was a scandal involving the use of counterfeit parts in nuclear plants and faked quality assurance certificates. In June 2013 Kori 2 and Shin Wolsong 1 were shut down, and Kori 1 and Shin Wolsong 2 ordered to remain offline, until safety-related control cabling with forged safety certificates is replaced.[26] Control cabling in the first APR-1400s under construction had to be replaced delaying construction by up to a year.[27] In October 2013 about 100 people were indicted for falsifying safety documents, including a former chief executive of Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power and a vice-president of Korea Electric Power Corporation.[28]
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_in_South_Korea
I'm curious how many scandals are involved with similar projects taking twice as long to complete in Europe. Or projects taking 4 times as long to complete in the USA? Fewer scandals? More scandals? Worse scandals? I have no idea.
https://reporterre.net/Stress-peur-pression-le-difficile-quo...
You'd need huge amounts of capital with big risks and little profits foreseen. The track record from the latest western projects is horrible so I don't see how it would be possible to get the backing now.
Your implication is "cut corners" which is a misunderstanding.
Ok, so nationalize it. Problem solved.
Even if we reach 0 in 13 years, the road to flipping the magnitude will be long, and I estimate longer than the time to build a reactor.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03014...
Reactors take 5-10 years to build.
South Korea is good place to learn from
Also we already have a similar level of wrongdoings with the French EPRs.
You also don't seem to realize the other reason, and the primary reason, to lockdown is to lighten the peak load on hospitals, in response to waves of infection.
And it's a fraction of the price of nuclear.
The only climate compatible way is not an alternative on demande source of energy, but the other way around: adapt our energy consumption to its availability and significantly lower our energy use. (see this 2009 piece by low tech magazine[1])
This is the real issue with dealing with climate change: we have to drastically change our way of living, in ways that most of us have not properly grasped and are not ok with.
But it is not a matter of choice, this will happen. It is a matter of choosing to do it in a somewhat controlled manner over the few time left, of to be subjected to this change in a brutal way.
[1]: https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2009/11/renewable-energy-i...
We need energy equivalent of grains: renewable and storable.
If yes, they should do that. If no, they should take the website down and stop misleading people.
But yeah, neither are the Swedish river valleys (so far).
But defects were found that would jeopardize the current evaluation to renew the certification for using them for 10 more years, so the decision was made to stop several reactors for forced maintenance and repairs.
Renewables are usually cheaper per W, but way more expensive in real world usage (battery storage + full life cycle costs)
The area around Finland and Eastern Europe is one of the worst in the world for renewables, though.