Thursday, May 25, 2023

Green Energy - Nuclear

 The Finns finally got their new nuclear plant turned on to full capacity. Yup, It caused a national disaster. In fact the output from the plant drove the price of electricity in Finland into negative numbers, necessitating throttling back the plant so the rest of national power grid could actually show a profit.


The low, flatt(ish) area on the right is when the reactor was running in test mode. The green circled area is when it went full time on line.

The article also mentions that the plant was 14 years late getting going without mentioning why, exactly, but given that this is almost certainly a government project, I would be surprised if it didn't come in about 2-4 times the estimated time, and 10 times the original estimated cost. 

1 comment:

Mad Jack said...

I worked at the Davis–Besse Nuclear Power Station in 1986 and learned a lot about nuclear power generation. In particular the Chernobyl disaster and subsequent consequences was explained to me by experienced nuclear engineers.

Davis–Besse is in the midst of a scandal just now, which is no real surprise. There have been several incidents at D-B, one being the discovery of an American football size hole in the lid of the reactor vessel. Other problems involve money and the contracts with contract companies.

This being Finland I can only guess at the cause of the construction delays, but anti-nuclear activists would play a huge part of the problem. If the anti-nuc crowd weren't a group of ignorant idiots, people might take their cause a little more seriously.

Anyway, nice post. Thanks for putting this one up!