I’d gladly move elsewhere, as this discussion doesn’t belong in this thread.
In my opinion, this quote of yours confirms the general fear and risk that has indeed materialized, namely that EU legislation overrides local legislation, and local law is irrelevant if a directive or regulation stipulates otherwise. This has now been brought up in the context of nuclear power, but the EU risk could not be reduced by regulating local legislation.
You are right that more other waste is generated by weight, but this low-level waste does not need to be finally disposed of at the same time, and I still return to the original topic, namely your willingness to dispose of the world’s nuclear waste in Finland. In this context, nuclear waste specifically referred to spent reactor fuel, which is harmful for a long time, because the intention was to do business by disposing of it.
Good that it is. It seems that other kinds of sense are also being incorporated into the law, and the relief would not only concern small modular reactors, provided that the content of your quote is also realized in the final law.
The entire project is on very uncertain ground. A reactor designed solely for heat production may be simpler than a reactor focused on electricity production, and district heating is not used in many countries. So, even in the best-case scenario, achieving significant volumes seems quite doubtful, especially considering that numerous projects aimed at electricity production are also underway in Western countries. Several in the United States, Britain, Canada, France, etc. In addition, of course, the leading country in the field, Russia, which has been years ahead of all Western players, and China, which, if it wishes, can scale production to such an extent that it will likely beat others in cost-effectiveness.
I won’t go into interstate relations any further in this thread, but in international politics, it’s important to remember that states have no friends or allies. There are only interests. When these small reactors become commercialized on a larger scale, the playing field regarding friendly countries may look very different from what a large part of Finns currently imagine.
I criticize Pohjolan_Eka for wanting to do business with nuclear waste disposal, which in my opinion is as wise a business model as dumping any other waste into Finnish nature. Knowing the longevity and severity of the problems, perhaps even dumber than the former. Especially since the planned disposal of spent fuel is not necessary, but a problem created by politicians.
Nuclear waste disposal is a political problem, but when would this political problem ever disappear? We have found a solution to this problem and proven it to work, for the first time on the entire planet. Elsewhere, citizens and politicians just bicker about the topic. We invent the solution and build it.
Foreign technologies passing us by? When haven’t they? And they certainly will continue to do so if pessimism takes hold and eats away at passion. We have a huge amount of expertise in Finland, engineers ready to solve real problems and invent products from them.
In my opinion, there is enough pessimism among us. All business ideas should be scrutinized and tested to see if they would work. @Pohjolan_Eka excellent reflection and thank you for your optimism!
By fixing the law that created the problem in the first place. This can be implemented at any time, as far as I know, no EU directive regulates this. If you call digging a hole in the ground and dumping waste there a solution to the waste problem, then it fits extremely poorly with your later claim that we have a lot of expertise and engineers to solve real problems. Elsewhere, people act more sensibly; they understand that dumping waste into a hole is not a solution to the problem, but rather a sustainable way of putting things in order. We don’t even have any evidence of how well that hole will function over the thousands of years it is supposed to be in operation.
But there’s no point arguing about this. A closed loop is the solution, raping nature is not. Nature cannot be raped indefinitely, so at some point, a closed loop must be adopted anyway. Why not right away? You may disagree about the merits of raping nature, but ultimately it’s a matter of values. In my opinion, it should not be done unnecessarily.
It’s not necessarily wise to push money into hopeless projects if better targets can be found. Your article mentions that SMR, in this case, combined electricity and heat production with a small nuclear power plant, was not found to be a commercially sustainable solution for a heat-producing operator. I didn’t read all the details, but benefits were seen for small reactors for heat use. The issue is that the market for heat use is negligibly small because there are few countries that use district heating. So, the final production scale will remain small anyway. Secondly, if thousands of megawatts of thermal energy come to the capital region from data centers mentioned in another thread, will there still be a need for a nuclear power plant in this scenario? Well, there aren’t enough figures here, and they should be put into an Excel sheet, but based on just a 5-minute thought experiment, it’s clear that the project is risky and the ultimate profit potential seems weak. Technically, it’s certainly an interesting project, but I wouldn’t predict a large commercial potential because scaling would be difficult due to the lack of large markets. Unfounded optimism is foolishness. A business plan based on analysis, on the other hand, is a much smarter way to approach the matter. Optimism can also stem from that, which is an important driving force in any project.
The megawatts from the capital region’s data centers are waste heat. It is generated if there is electricity to run those IT equipment. Unfortunately, in winter there are occasionally long periods when there is no wind, which unfortunately means that even if the waste heat from data centers can reduce the average heating bill, one cannot rely on it to avoid freezing thanks to said waste heat.
The basic problem is the same as with everything else related to electricity: storing electricity is difficult and/or expensive. Batteries are far too expensive to be a solution for anything longer than an hour. Hydropower is not enough during frosts, no matter how much water is pumped upstream with cheap electricity. Storing heat in large caves might be a solution. Let’s wait and see what happens with Vantaa Energia’s project, then we will be wiser.
Could you clarify what you mean by this? Did you think that if there’s no wind, factories would be shut down, banks and hospitals closed, or what was the idea behind this? Data centers are one of the most critical places where electricity is used in society, because almost all critical infrastructure and economic life depend on them. So, heat will certainly come from these sources for as long as there is any kind of economic activity in this country. Heat is more of a byproduct of critical operations in a data center. In the same way that there used to be combined heat and power production, we can now talk about combined computing power and heat production.
Wasn’t the reprocessing of nuclear fuel done by France and England? As I understand it, they stopped due to cost reasons. What is different now?
MOX fuel is used even today, but that is probably not the question here. Of the reactors currently under development, these so-called breeder reactors (which could use this nuclear waste) are indeed far from commercial reactors. If we assume that SMR-type traditional reactors start to become commercially interesting around 2030, then those that use nuclear waste might be at the same stage perhaps much later, if ever. And if things go that well, Onkalo can be opened and the product returned to use.
The idea of bringing nuclear waste here from elsewhere does not sound very realistic to me. Onkalo can accommodate the waste produced by current Finnish reactors, but as I understand it, there is no room for others. However, nuclear waste requires intact bedrock and surprisingly large areas. If we consider that Finland’s five reactors already need so much space, and Sweden already has ten reactors… Would selling expertise and consulting be more likely?
Regarding those district heating plants, their technology is clearly simpler than those producing electricity. This is because temperatures and pressures are more moderate, and a turbine and its associated technology are not needed.
It’s precisely the case that when numerous data centers, exceeding Finland’s needs, have come to Finland primarily for cheap electricity, then when there’s no wind and it’s cold, it’s exactly those unnecessary data centers that came for cheap electricity that are shut down first when the market
It is absolutely true that nuclear-weapon states have practiced this, and continue to do so. Nothing has fundamentally changed, to my knowledge, in that mining new uranium and manufacturing fuel from it is easier and cheaper. But profitability could be improved by allowing import and export. As volumes grow, unit costs decrease. Uranium mining is harmful to the environment.
MOX is not used in Finland because spent fuel cannot be reprocessed here. But MOX, too, is not generally recycled multiple times, as that would require breeding. But MOX is essentially what is being discussed here.
The problem in this discussion is that we have a nuclear technology superpower as a neighbor, which has had breeder reactors in commercial use for decades. In this very discussion, breeder reactors have been mocked as science fiction and compared, for example, to fusion, without understanding what is being talked about. However, these have not been built much for electricity production, and volumes have been kept low because they haven’t been necessary for the Russians in larger quantities either. They are experimentally interesting technology platforms, but they don’t produce any more electricity than other reactors, and since Russia has had cheap uranium to mine domestically, and environmental issues weren’t really a concern before, why bother? Furthermore, they have been technically more challenging to operate, and traditional light-water reactors are also structurally safer.
However, from an environmental and circular economy perspective, a breeder reactor is unparalleled. In theory, it allows for nearly endless fuel recycling. Russia, however, has announced its transition to a closed fuel cycle starting from 2030 in certain areas. It’s an unpleasant thought that before, in the Soviet Union, waste was dumped in the backyard, and here we tried to keep things clean, but now the roles have been completely reversed. Furthermore, this is being attempted by misleading citizens who don’t understand the matter.
This is true. In theory, it’s enough to start a sufficiently powerful, steady reaction and push water through so that temperatures rise close to the boiling point. After that, heat is transferred to the network simply via a heat exchanger.
Would it be possible to explain in simple terms, at about high school physics level, what that reuse means? How does it work chemically/physically, what does it consume and what does it produce?
MOX is not used in Finland because our reactor types do not support its use. The OL3 EPR seems to be the only reactor type where MOX use would be possible, but TVO does not consider it reasonable to purchase plutonium-containing fuel, even due to reputational damage. The current configurations of VVER 440 and OL 1&2 do not support MOX. Or well, OL 1 and 2 could probably be made to use MOX after extensive testing and engineering work, but that would mean changing all the license conditions and everything, so in practice, it’s impossible.
This is an exaggeration. In an optimal situation, considering the losses throughout the cycle, the same amount of uranium can yield 30 to 100 times more energy compared to the current situation, depending on the source. That is a lot, but not limitless. Nuclear waste is still generated, albeit a fraction of the current amount, so final disposal solutions like Posiva are still needed even in your utopia.
Indeed, uranium reserves are sufficient for hundreds of years, and building nuclear power plants is currently unprofitable without state subsidies. You would suggest making massive additional investments by building enormously expensive and technically complex reactors and converting the entire rest of the nuclear power industry to a closed cycle at a high cost.
Why? So that hundreds of years of nuclear fuel reserves could be stretched to thousands of years, and a few fewer rock caverns would need to be excavated for nuclear waste? Of course, there is no sense in this, and no one will pay for such an unprofitable project, which is why no market-driven nuclear power country has undertaken it. This is not some political conspiracy to bury superior technology; there are other uses for that money. Scientific research and experimentation will continue, and the situation will be re-evaluated in, say, 50 years, when the matter is more topical.
In Russia, of course, there is oil money to squander, and the well-being of citizens doesn’t matter as much, so capital allocation doesn’t need to be efficient. That nuclear waste deep underground inside the rock doesn’t bother anyone, nor is it dangerous to humans or the environment. If it feels so bad that there are barrels containing spent fuel rods in a small area deep within the rock somewhere in Finland, and you can’t get over it, then the best cure for that is a visit to a psychologist.
In practice, plutonium is separated from spent fuel, and then mixed with uranium in a suitable ratio to create usable fuel. A breeder reactor could do more, but this is the idea of MOX in a nutshell.
So, what would be the benefit of MOX if we cannot reprocess our own waste? If we knew how, were capable, and the big players allowed it, then it would certainly have been utilized here too, but plutonium deals are not meant for countries like Finland. That’s why the export license would be so important. But to my knowledge, MOX is not currently recycled much, except in fast reactors, which is another reason why the export license would be important.
The reputational damage theory sounds far-fetched, to say the least. At the same time, we produce plutonium and are ready to bury it in the ground, but it shouldn’t be “burned” in a reactor?
Uranium and plutonium can be recycled almost indefinitely, but of course, a small amount of slag is produced in each cycle, which must be dealt with. However, the amount is negligible compared to the waste currently generated. If we consider that an amount closer to 100% than 90% of existing nuclear waste could be processed and recycled, then the nuclear waste discussion regarding reactor waste could largely be ended with this process. Even the final waste is such that it can no longer be fissioned, but not all generated waste requires final storage. However, we are already quite far from real-world matters. In practice, energy supply could be solved for perhaps hundreds or thousands of years with this process and the available fuel resources. After that, energy supply solutions will probably be found from technologies other than those currently known.
I suggested that we change the law first and allow exports. After that, the market could help with this matter. I will not return to why construction is currently unprofitable. The reason is largely political, and a result of historical development. If more power plants had been built earlier, wind power would be unprofitable.
Why do we recycle any other raw materials? Mining new ones is usually cheaper, and some recyclable materials would last indefinitely, yet they are recycled because people care about their environment. Uranium mines and their surroundings are not exactly health resorts, and few people want them as neighbors.
If nuclear technology could only be developed with oil money, then Russia would hardly be the only place with the expertise and capability to implement nuclear projects. In fact, technological pioneers in this field are generally united by entirely different factors than oil money, so I recommend looking for an explanation elsewhere. Russia currently has the world’s most advanced nuclear power expertise, and that should be accepted. If you can’t get over it, then the best remedy is a visit to a psychologist, as you yourself wished to express.
The situation is simply that almost all interesting technology in the world has been developed under state leadership and later scaled commercially. So, it’s pointless to talk about capital allocation in this context. The risk of technological leaps is often too great for commercial actors without state support for projects.
For Russia, nuclear weapons are a strategic project, and as long as Putin is alive, they will spend money on such projects that boost national self-esteem and support the nuclear weapons industry. However, as always and in all Russian showcase projects, the scale is missing, and the results remain local, as there are not enough resources to replicate achievements for wider use.
If there was a desire to widely adopt MOX or a closed cycle, the entire Western nuclear power plants and industry would have to be rebuilt, and currently, the trend is rather towards renewable energy.
If we lived in some Star Trek world with unlimited resources, then of course we could throw a few hundred billion into such a technocratic science project, but in the real world, money is limited.
We do not disagree on whether this is purely economically sensible. Almost all projects aimed at environmental protection are unprofitable purely in economic terms.
Have you considered where your need to write about topics you know almost nothing about comes from? You are talking about a country that has the most nuclear power projects directed abroad, and Rosatom, for example, was, according to Jukka Laaksonen, an almost superior operator in its field.
Nuclear power or the energy sector, for that matter, does not change overnight. Whatever is done, we are talking about decades of plans. Nuclear power is still the best way to produce base load power, and it will be needed if the looming visions of AI and other electricity-consuming technologies are to be realized.
It is true that Europe has invested in renewables, and the current planned economy for energy production does not direct capital elsewhere. Electricity in Europe is generally so expensive that it does not allow for a competitive economy even now.
I have visited Russia more than any of our neighboring countries, and I am also among the small group of Finns who have been inside their nuclear power plant. Have you? Laaksonen, on the other hand, according to his own words, hasn’t done any field work for a long time, but apparently focused only on examining documents and speaking beautifully, while accepting a hell of a lot of cabbage-smelling money and selling his soul to lobby for a questionable nuclear power project in Northern Finland.
I find your stubbornness admirable in a perverse way, but we are not living in a planned economy. Renewables are winning markets on market terms, and the nuclear power sector has been knocked out, except in Russia and China, where market logic can be bypassed by state leadership. The nuclear power sector must develop and get rid of the worship of those large plant monuments and modern billion-dollar Manhattan projects to pursue a technological breakthrough, or else the entire sector will have no future in a market economy. Our nuclear power plants are already becoming so old that large numbers of them will soon be decommissioned. Unless small modular reactors succeed, the engineering expertise in the field will gradually disappear from Western countries altogether.
Indeed, no extra space has been excavated in Onkalo for additional waste, although technically more waste could be buried there. For example, Lapland has vast granite areas that are now going to waste as they are not utilized in any way. There are no people around there, and Elokapina (Extinction Rebellion) won’t bother to go protest there either, as it’s so far from Helsinki. Finland’s bedrock is one of the world’s most natural places to bury nuclear waste because the conditions for it are so excellent. Elsewhere, there is either human habitation or an unstable political or geological environment. There, the nuclear waste will remain safe, protected in a copper capsule, properly disposed of.
As an observer from the sidelines, I recommend that the esteemed writer internalize other comments a bit more and argue less from their own trench. Although this topic seems to cause a considerable amount of passion, there are limits to everything. Any defense of Mordor receives silent disapproval and a raised eyebrow.
In practice, a nuclear power plant uses nuclear fuel → as “waste” ~95% Uranium-238, a little plutonium, a little non-fissionable other elements (i.e., final waste), as well as a miscellaneous group of various elements with an atomic number greater than uranium that are still suitable for fission. The essential thing is that uranium and plutonium, as well as some of the other residue, could be reused as fuel in the right type of reactors.
The plutonium produced in this process is processed and can then be mixed into MOX fuel rods together with uranium, in certain proportions, to obtain fuel suitable for the power plant. And yes, in this process, plutonium continues to decay, producing energy and other elements, some of which are more and some less active.
I don’t have a clear-cut answer to the latter at the moment, but activity is measured in Becquerels, and heat generation is also an essential quantity for reprocessing and final disposal. It’s been too long since I studied these, but the main points haven’t changed.
That’s what leadership-level jobs tend to be like. Sometimes, when you go to check on the achievements and ensure things are progressing as promised on paper, you can focus again on leadership and studying documents.
As I said, you clearly don’t know the subject and the energy market when you present something like this. There is a market mechanism in the EU, but through planned economy means, it has been made to look exactly as desired.
As I have already pointed out, nuclear power is emerging in market economy countries. It depends entirely on the regulation of that particular market and the already installed capacity which energy production model is most profitable.
You have already been told why individual reactors have become maximally large, and why construction has become so difficult. Things wouldn’t have to be this way, and the industry will certainly develop a lot. However, in light of current prospects, it is unlikely to happen under the leadership of Western countries.
