They are not. The plant may not survive beyond 2030 without this order.
It's important to be able to read through PR in planted pieces. There's no indication that Loviisa was actually going to struggle. It's a guaranteed revenue stream which removes some risk for them, but Finland has seen a boom in data centers and such which is why Fortum went after the 2050 extension in the first place. They even wanted to build a third reactor which the government declined to authorize. That doesn't speak to them wondering if there's enough demand to keep the plant alive. It's highly unlikely Loviisa was going to close down even without the Google deal.
Planted pieces? how about directly from the operator:
Without the lifetime extension investment program, the plant – which currently employs approximately 580 people and provides 10% of Finland’s electricity – could not continue operations beyond 2030. - [0]
That is not just year over year discussion. Of course it's PR, but do you happen to have insider information that contradict that?
More details:
Fortum has an ongoing, approximately EUR 1 billion investment programme in Loviisa with the aim of extending the lifetime of the power plant until 2050. To date, approximately 80% of the projects and EUR 700 million of the capital expenditure required to keep the power plant operational through 2050 are still pending investment decisions.
The PPA with Google will provide the revenue certainty to continue the investments associated with 100% of the lifetime extension of Loviisa. Furthermore, the agreement is expected to enable a new 10 MW power increase of the plant, in addition to the already planned 38 MW uprate which is expected to be live in 2028.
> That doesn't speak to them wondering if there's enough demand to keep the plant alive. It's highly unlikely Loviisa was going to close down even without the Google deal.
You know that because?
[0] - https://www.fortum.com/media/2026/09/inside-information-fort...
You should read all news skeptically, doubly so for press releases.
That's not the case, because in EU (and thus Finland) electric production is under cap-and-trade. There is just no way to increase dirty electricity production in EU. Apart from political pressure to change rules, which for example Italy is doing because Italy built their grid on gas...
Of course, would the latter happen, political actions would be done before people freeze. It will be unpredictable what the would be - allow fossil fuels "temporarily" or order datacenters to shut down during dunkelflaute? Interesting times (I would prefer less interesting times).
Generally speaking cap and trade is the most sure way to reduce emissions (emissions drop exactly at the pace the CAP drop annually) and the most cost-effective way also - the TRADE part ensures emissions are cut first by those who it easiest, while hard-to-decarbonize sectors have most time to sort their plan.
The only problem is "carbon leakage" where co2 emissions simply move to asshole countries like USA and China that do not utilize cap-and-trade. That should be dealt with hefty carbon tariffs. Oh wait, even china is building their own cap-and-trade system. Well, anyways, tariffs against the climate assholes.
For example, gas heating is exempt from the EU carbon trade, so people are encouraged to use that rather than electric heating. In countries like Germany, gas heating is popular largely for tax reasons.
carbon leakage is mostly industrial and data centers (why do so many europeans run code at us-east-1 ?)
The EU has a carbon tax on electricity but not gas. This pushes people towards gas heating. Germany has much higher taxes on electricity, although it does at least have a carbon tax on gas.
If a carbon tax on electricity makes people use gas heating, that's carbon leakage.
It's great for marketing and, you're right, that's why they are doing it but the reason it's good for marketing is that their customers care about the environment. This is the exact invisible hand mechanism in action. It's their preferences changing the behavior of one of the biggest corporations in the world and all they can do is act like it doesn't count because they don't actually care
Also, unlike solar and wind, nuclear is a very important anchor source to prevent fossil fuel use in the grid. Solar and wind only absorb growth but so far have never managed to actually compete on baseload power requirements.
I don’t think that’s been true for some time now, batteries have fallen in price very quickly. LCOE for solar+storage was below nuclear a few years ago and batteries are cheaper still now. An estimate from 2025 put storage cost at $125 per kWh.
CATL estimates 10 usd per kWh from their sodium batteries, and just installed one in Germany.
At 10/kWh, batteries will make any other option seem fiscally senseless by comparison.