Iceblade02

Iceblade02 , 9 months ago to asklemmy in Are you a mod(or inspiring to be) ? If so, how is your community going ?

Moderator of !askmen, not particularly active, but that’s fine with me.

Iceblade02 , 10 months ago to world in Sweden All In On Nuclear Energy, Dumps Renewable Target

*10 nuclear reactors, not 10 plants. There are currently 6 reactors in operation in Sweden and another 4 were shut down by the previous government.

It’s essentially a plan to modernize and renew the Swedish nuclear fleet.

Iceblade02 , 10 months ago to world in Sweden All In On Nuclear Energy, Dumps Renewable Target

It’s a recent development, and not by a huge amount, but it has been big new here since the so-called Karlshamn Power Plant (oil fired), generally reserved for shoring up the electricity supply during shortages returned into commercial service during the summer of 2020 due to the owning company determining it to be profitable (something which hadn’t happened in decades and as such made national headlines). Since then it has been active increasingly often. It is currently the only active fossil-fuel powered plant in the country AFAIK.

(Articles in Swedish, feel free to use a translator, or ask me to get it translated for you if you have trouble.)

di.se/…/lonsamt-for-kraftjatten-att-elda-olja-i-s…

www.svt.se/nyheter/lokalt/blekinge/experten-16

www.nyteknik.se/energi/…/965489

uniper.energy/…/allt-mer-frekvent-drift-pa-karlsh…

Iceblade02 , 10 months ago to world in Sweden All In On Nuclear Energy, Dumps Renewable Target

Our world in data has excellent stats on the topic, and I am quite familiar with the electricity production of Sweden (my home country). Excepting 2003 and 2010 (both quite cold winters) the share of electricity from fossil fuel sources has been sub 5% since 1997. Thus, for my own country I tend to look more at the share of all energy that comes from fossil fuels (currently 26%) rather than just electricity, but below is a chart detailing the shares of electricity produced by each category.

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/e5e5c46d-e371-48cd-9bc9-e8f2dbe49df8.png

As you can see, investments in wind have been massive, adding 30 TWh of production (~15%) since 2010. However, in the meantime, nuclear energy has not only been neglected, but actively dismantled. Since 2010, some 15 TWh of production has been removed from the grid. Whilst this isn’t an issue in isolation, import demands for electricity from continental Europe have increased noticeably during the same time period. In 2010, we had net 0 power flow, whilst 2021 saw a net export of ~16TWh (mainly to a country that completely dismantled their fleet of nuclear reactors instead of their coal power plants and shall not be named)

What this means is that in a decade, with a population increase of 10% and a GDP increase of 20%, electricity availability has actually declined, which is becoming a serious problem now that some of the most energy intensive areas of society are starting to electrify in earnest (transports and heavy industries).

Iceblade02 , 10 months ago to world in Sweden All In On Nuclear Energy, Dumps Renewable Target

Care to elaborate on this?

Once we’ve phased out fossil fuels, then nuclear will be important. But right now nuclear only serves to sustain our dependency on fossil fuels.

The two largest economies with the low reliance on fossil fuels for energy (Sweden & France) get significant portions of their energy production from nuclear power. Iceland relies on geothermal, and the others (Tajikistan, Switzerland, Costa Rica, Norway) have lots of hydro capacity, which are all excellent, but also largely dependent on geography.

Iceblade02 , 10 months ago to world in Sweden All In On Nuclear Energy, Dumps Renewable Target

Below is a news article from Swedish Television (SVT) translated to english using LLM. Couldn’t find it in english. Original article

New Stringent Environmental Requirements Threaten Small Hydropower Plants

Published on May 10, 2022

Over a 20-year period, around 1,800 small hydropower plants in Sweden are set to have their conditions re-evaluated by the land and environmental courts to ensure they meet the requirements of the EU’s Water Framework Directive. According to hydropower plant owners, these evaluations entail strict demands and increased costs that threaten the existence of culturally significant small hydropower plants.

Located along the Alsterån River in Nybro Municipality, one of Magnus Edvinsson’s hydropower plants has been in operation since the 1800s. He, like many other owners of small hydropower plants, is facing upcoming re-evaluations of environmental conditions to determine if they comply with environmental legislation.

According to Magnus Edvinsson, the measures and court costs could spell the end for many small hydropower plants.

“We’ve seen costs of 10 million Swedish Kronor for a single small hydropower plant. That completely shatters the economy of a company like this,” he explains.

Ensuring Fish Passage

The aim is to establish modern environmental conditions for all watercourses in Sweden. This includes promoting biological diversity, which might involve requirements for fish passages to be built, allowing aquatic organisms to move freely in the waterways.

The Water Authorities have determined that each water body must achieve good ecological status. According to Magnus Edvinsson, the environmental quality standard imposes excessively high demands and could result in costly reconstruction efforts.

“In our industry organization, we’ve already received indications that 30 percent of the small hydropower plant owners in the initial review group are considering dismantling their facilities even before the court review takes place. It’s not unlikely that it could reach up to 50 percent choosing to decommission once they are in court. It’s a shocking figure, and this is happening at the same time as we are experiencing the worst energy crisis in modern history,” says Magnus Edvinsson.

Iceblade02 , 10 months ago to world in Sweden All In On Nuclear Energy, Dumps Renewable Target

Your own assertion is that the need was for a handful of hours when the nukes failed.

Don’t put words in my mouth, that is quite rude.

Capacity factor isn’t reliability.

It is a useful comparison figure to examine reliability. Your inability to comprehend the connection clearly highlights your incompetence on the subject.

Please, either spend some time educating yourself, or refrain from commenting further on the topic of nuclear power. Your lack of knowledge is causing you to (possibly inadvertently) contribute to the spread of disinformation.

Iceblade02 , 10 months ago to world in Sweden All In On Nuclear Energy, Dumps Renewable Target

The capacity factor for nuclear power in Sweden (including losses from curtailment) was 83% of installed capacity during 2022, which exceeds the global average for that year (80%), by comparison wind had a capacity factor of 26% for the year. Hence, the issue is not reliability, but rather a lack of capacity. 1700MW (20%) of nuclear has been decommissioned since 2018 (which is why those stats are entirely irrelevant to the current situation). Hence that a the unexpected outage of a single reactor (1160 MW or 17% of total capacity) could have such a large impact.

Even with that outage, nuclear power remained the energy source with the greatest capacity % during the 22/23 winter (80%), despite being lower during peak demand. “Kärnkraft” is nuclear power.

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/830d4f0a-ffa6-4f4e-8844-d0e2f83e0f0b.png

So, in summary, you are either clueless regarding our situation in Sweden (I sincerely hope that is the case) or actively spreading misinformation (which would be the more unfortunate option).

Iceblade02 , 10 months ago to world in Sweden All In On Nuclear Energy, Dumps Renewable Target

Since you couldn’t be arsed to check for yourself before throwing out baseless accusations, here’s a translation of a relevant part from the linked article. I doubt you’ll read it, but it’ll be here for anyone else that stumbles across this thread.

The past winter was at times dramatic, for example when several nuclear power reactors were shut down for repairs. But thanks to the fact that mainly households had previously reduced consumption clearly in step with the rampant electricity prices, Sweden managed to maintain the power balance even in the worst hour, the so-called peak load hour.

“But if we had maintained the consumption, we would have had to cut down.”, says Lowina Lundström, Division Manager Systems at Svenska kraftnät.

The electricity had not been enough

At that time, the import would not have been enough to cover the electricity demand during the peak load hour on December 16, 2022, between 09:00 and 10:00. The import was then at a maximum of 3,290 MW, approximately equivalent to three nuclear power reactors, which was the highest level to date.

(Svenska Kraftnät a.k.a Swedish Power Grids is our national power distribution agency)

Btw, your source is 4 years out of date, and accounts for neither daily nor hourly power balance.

Here’s an up to date source on monthly power balance.

Here’s a report on peak loads in various northern european countries.

Here is an actual relevant source on the topic (again, in Swedish).

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/6a7406ee-fbc2-49cb-8a0f-125d4ed3dc55.png

The above figure is taken from this report by SVK.

Iceblade02 , 10 months ago to world in Sweden All In On Nuclear Energy, Dumps Renewable Target

Just to refute a simple statement for you, please stop spreading disinformation.

“we will”, but we haven’t. We’re creating a problem now and leave the solution for later which is exactly what got us into this mess. Always kicking the can down the road.

Nuclear waste is solved. Probably one of the most solved kinds of waste on the planet, unlike the waste your smartphone or pc will become in a few years.

Video Essay for your education, better than anything I could write up in five minutes.

Iceblade02 , 10 months ago to world in Sweden All In On Nuclear Energy, Dumps Renewable Target

Renewables aren’t being cancelled. What is being done is creating a target to construct nuclear power, which inherently means that Sweden is no longer aiming for 100% renewables, but instead a target where 100%=renewables+nuclear.

Iceblade02 , 10 months ago to world in Sweden All In On Nuclear Energy, Dumps Renewable Target

Funnily enough, projects for green steel and the construction of new massive factories in Northern Sweden mean that the power surplus is expected to be gone by 2030. We need more electricity production, from all carbon neutral sources being built everywhere, ASAP.

Iceblade02 , 10 months ago to world in Sweden All In On Nuclear Energy, Dumps Renewable Target

Sweden had fully displaced fossil fuels from its power grid with the help of a combination of Nuclear and Renewables. However, a policy of phasing out nuclear power by the previous gov:t has caused the reintroduction of fossil fuels into the grid. Of all the options, this is truly the most stupid timeline.

Iceblade02 , 10 months ago (edited 10 months ago) to world in Sweden All In On Nuclear Energy, Dumps Renewable Target

Sweden already has a significant surplus of electricity production, to the degree that we are one of the largest exporters in the EU and have had several bouts of negative spot prices this past summer.

However, we also have an effect deficit for the colder part of the year. Two-thirds of simulations by SVK (our national power distributor) find that the peak-load hour during the winter 26/27 will have a deficit equivalent to three gen-II nuclear reactors running at 100% (10’000MW), and 10 continuous hours of blackouts due to power shortage. This is during the coldest part of the year when solar is ineffective, and additionally is often combined with high-pressure fronts, which means low wind speeds.

In Sweden upwards of 75% of homes get their heating from electricity, and potentially a full day without power in temperatures of beyond -30°C would literally mean people freezing to death.

Our power bill for December was 800€, and we both have geothermal heating and reduced our indoor temperature significantly, averaging 14-18°C indoors for the month. This was more than January, February and March combined. Meanwhile, the bills for all summer months put together (May, June, July and I expect also August) cost less than the bill for April (100€).

The most viable short-term solution they’re looking at is (unfortunately) reopening old oil plants from the 60s & 70s however, this might not be possible either, due to newer EU legislations. Bringing them into compliance in time could cost 100’s of millions of SEK, which ironically is more than the “prohibitively expensive repairs” that the previous gov:t cited when they shut down 4 nuclear reactors 2015-2020.

Link to article for the doubtful - It’s in Swedish, so you’ll have to use a translator.

Iceblade02 , 10 months ago to world in Sweden All In On Nuclear Energy, Dumps Renewable Target

We do, but enviromental regulations pushed through during the past two decades is essentially preventing any new or expanded hydro projects. In fact, a lot of smaller hydro plants are instead being demolished due to being incompatible with these laws.