It will be interesting to see if Finland burns much (or any) coal and gas in the coming year.

[NNadir]

Here from Electricity Map is a snapshot of Finnish electricity production as of this moment:



This was recorded at 1:43 AM, Helsinki time, 3/14/22.

Currently the nation is producing 943 MW of electricity by burning the dangerous fossil fuel coal and dumping the waste directly into the planetary atmosphere. This is around 33% of capacity utilization.

Nevertheless, Finland, has decided to do the opposite of Germany, which is to phase out coal by using nuclear power. The announced date for the phase out is 7 years from now, 2022. Germany has decided, by contrast, to phase out nuclear power and thus as a defacto matter, rely on coal. (Germany's current carbon intensity, 337 g CO2/kwh is about double that of Finland, 163 g CO2/kwh, and more than triple that of France, (95 g CO2/kwh) as of this writing. (8:02 PM EDT, US 3/13/22)

Next week after very long delays, connected almost certainly with FOAKE (First of a Kind Engineering) delays, the Olkiluto EPR nuclear reactor will connect to the grid. This process took 16 years to complete, which is unacceptable, but hopefully a number of lessons have been learned that will not be repeated:

Olkiluoto 3 grid connection expected within days

Some text:

Commissioning tests are progressing well at Olkiluoto 3, with grid connection now expected to take place on 15 March, Teollisuuden Voima Oyj (TVO) has said.

Finland's fifth nuclear reactor reached first criticality in December and is now undergoing commissioning tests before being synchronised to the grid. TVO yesterday said it had "tested the production of the first megawatts on the electricity grid".

According to the company's latest production forecast, commissioning tests for the generator circuit breaker were to be performed in both manual and automatic mode, culminating in testing in auto mode, up to a maximum of 110 MW, for up to two hours. This took place on Wednesday (9 March).

The plant is now scheduled to be synchronised to the grid for the start of electricity production on 15 March, the company said. After this, commissioning will continue with further tests before the power level is raised to 60% reactor power, with "regular" electricity production to begin on 31 July...

At full power the reactor is expected to produce 1600 MWe. This is more than half of the entire coal generation of the country, 2.80 GW.

I suppose whether the Finns burn coal will be a function of whether the wind blows, as is the case in Germany, but unlike Germany, they are moving in the right direction.

[John ONeill]

1. Finland nukes

Last edited Tue Mar 15, 2022, 07:37 AM - Edit history (1)

They've announced that they're putting on hold the Russian VVER1200 that was due to start building in northern Finland. One more casualty of Putin's stupidity. The Estonian guy from Fermi Energia who's been interviewed on Decouple and Titans of Nuclear podcasts reckons the Russians have a rather dictatorial, top-down work style; maybe they'd be better going with a Korean design, now that the anti-nuke president there has been voted out. A site closer to the bigger cities in the south would also let them use district heating, as the Chinese are doing in Shandong with their AP1000s.
John O'Neill