Finland Nuclear Plant Fiasco

Subtitle:  Huge Delays and Cost Overrun are Nuclear's New Normal

The new nuclear plant in Finland at Olkiluoto, known as Olkiluoto 3, is finally nearing completion and perhaps a startup.   This is a 1600 MWe single-reactor, pressurized water design using the European Pressurized Reactor (EPR) by Areva, the French company.   If completed as now contemplated, the construction will have taken 14 years start to finish.  That's a big IF.   The cost has soared to almost triple the original amount, from €3.2 billion to  €8.5 billion.  In US terms, that is $10 billion for a cost/kW of $6,300.    One can be confident that the stated costs do not include interest on construction funds. 

UPDATE: 3-19-19, Finland issues operating license for the Olkiluoto plant, for anticipated startup in 2020.  That's 11 years later than the initial plan, and fifteen years start-to-finish, and cost is almost 3 times the original cost.   - - end update

The Financial Times article, "Nuclear plant nears completion after huge delays," has this to say:  see link

"Areva, the French reactor manufacturer, began building Olkiluoto in 2005 with a target for completion by 2009 at a cost of €3.2bn. The latest timetable would see it open almost a decade late at the end of 2018 and nearly three times over budget at €8.5bn.

The project is the most extreme example of the delays and cost overruns which have become commonplace in the nuclear industry, plunging reactor companies such as Areva and Toshiba’s Westinghouse subsidiary into financial crisis.


Areva’s ability to complete Olkiluoto over the next year and learn lessons from the fiasco as it presses ahead with similar projects in France and the UK will go a long way to determining the industry’s chances of recovery."

The financial impact of the long delays and huge costs is that power price that must be obtained is in the $120 per MWh range.  Of that, $80 is for capital recovery and $40 is for operating costs.   That presumes, of course, that the plant actually runs every year at an average of 90 percent of nameplate capacity.   If the output slips to just 85 percent, the power sales price must increase to $127-130 per MWh.  

Nuclear power via these new, supposedly safe and efficient plants is some of the most expensive power on the planet.   This EPR design is also under construction in France, and was selected in a twin-reactor design for the UK at Hinkley Point C.   

Meanwhile, electricity via offshore wind power, supplemented by onshore natural gas load-following plants, is far more cost-effective, much safer, and has zero chance of a reactor meltdown. 

Roger E. Sowell, Esq.

Marina del Rey, California
copyright (c) 2017 by Roger Sowell - all rights reserved

Topics and general links:

Nuclear Power Plants.......here
Climate Change................here  and here
Fresh Water......................here
Engineering......................here  and here
Free Speech.................... here

Renewable Energy...........here 

Hinkley Point C Nuclear Plant Approved - For Now

UK has given approval to build the controversial, and very costly, twin-reactor nuclear power plant at Hinkley Point C in the southwest of England. 

The plant is reported to cost $24 billion US, which will quickly escalate to more than $32 billion.  That brings the cost per kW to $10,000, and this in an era with very low interest rates for financing costs, and very low inflation for escalation. 

Proponents are claiming the plant will last for 60 years, but there is reason to doubt it will ever run at all.  The thick steel in the reactor heads has questionable toughness and may not be approved by regulators. 

 Stay tuned, sports fans.  The fiasco at Hinkley Point C is just beginning.   This blog will chronicle the sad, sorry saga.    Those will include, without doubt, cost over-runs, delays in construction, squabbling between designer, owner, builder, and regulators. 

Roger E. Sowell, Esq.
Marina del Rey, California

copyright (c) 2016 by Roger Sowell, all rights reserved.

A Week That Was July 2016

What a week.  So much happening, and much of it already impacting, or will impact, topics that are of interest to me.  In no particular order, then, 

o  Hinkley Point C nuclear power plant in the UK is having another look for viability by the new government under Theresa May; seems the cost to construct is a bit too high and subsidies also too high; see link

o  California survived a second heat wave, with a second FlexAlert issued, even though the natural gas shortage is still in effect - Aliso Canyon gas storage system is not yet fixed; 

o  Meanwhile, California's solar power production broke all-time records at more than 8,000 MW; a very good thing to have when the grid is struggling to send power to the people; even more solar power is under construction in California; see figure at right from CAISO website showing 8,132 MW produced on 26 July 2016;

o  Pacific Ocean surface temperatures are plunging fast and are already in the La Niña condition (the El Neutral didn't last long, as the ocean switched from hot El Niño to cool La Niña very quickly); 

o  Sunspots disappeared completely a few days ago, for approximately 7 or 8 days; this is rather early in the sunspot cycle for a week or more of spotless days to occur; see link to Spaceweather.com and refer to left column of that site. As of today, 30 July 2016, the sun has had 18 spotless days in 2016. 

o  A serious doubt for the future of manned space exploration re-surfaced this past week, with evidence and a report that lunar astronauts suffer (and some have died) from much higher incidence of cardio vascular disease; almost none of the non-flying astronauts, nor the low-earth orbit astronauts have this; the explanation is exposure to intense deep-space radiation and ionizing high-energy particles (galactic cosmic rays) by those astronauts that flew past the Earth's Van Allen Belts and went to the moon.   This has deep implications for the proposed moon-orbiting manned space station, any manned Mars missions, and especially a Mars colony.   The long-term orbiting astronauts on the International Space Station provide valuable data on some medical aspects of space life, but that is all within the protective shield of the Van Allen Belts.  see link to Nature article on deep-space radiation effects on astronauts, "Apollo Lunar Astronauts Show Higher Cardiovascular Disease Mortality: Possible Deep Space Radiation Effects on the Vascular Endothelium"


o  As always, it is amusing to read the derogatory comments on other blogs, and find irrefutable evidence that the commenters are wrong; in this case, EIA published a nice map of the US' regional electrical grids that show multiple states tied together to share electricity; some idiot challenged a piece I wrote by his statement that a good utility never purchases power from outside its own geographic area.    Ronald Reagan's quote remains so true: "It's not that our ... friends don't know anything, but that so much of what they know just isn't so." see link to EIA article on US grids, and graphic nearby.   

o  In US politics, we have the unusual fact of a billionaire businessman outsider, Donald Trump, as the official Republican Party presidential nominee, and a rich, old, scandal-plagued, white female, Hillary Clinton, as the official Democrat Party presidential nominee.   Their respective views on climate change, energy policy, immigration, foreign affairs, and national security could not be more different.  

o  In the oil markets, world crude oil price is low and headed lower as the summer driving season ends; I tend to scoff at most so-called experts that tell us what crude oil price will be because they are almost without exception very wrong.  The fact is that oil production world-wide is much greater than oil demand, with recent reports showing huge inventory increases world-wide to support oil production rates.  Economic malaise and improved technology reduce oil demand, which will cause oil prices to plummet.   Just yesterday, pundits predicted prices of $30 per barrel after this summer ends.   I will be surprised if oil does not fall to $25 or even lower.  

 I hope to have time to write a full article with links to sources and explore each of these in more detail. 

Roger E. Sowell, Esq.
Marina del Rey, California

copyright (c) 2016 by Roger Sowell - all rights reserved

Hinkley Point C Nuclear Plant with Yet More Troubles

Subtitle:  Reactor Design In Question - Finances a Fiasco

The proposed nuclear plant at UK's Hinkley Point C has had substantial issues with approval as written about earlier on SLB (see here and here).  The plant is to consist of two reactors of 1600 MWe each of the EPR (European Pressurized Reactor) design.  An EPR inludes a single reactor with four steam generator loops.   Such EPR projects are having serious schedule and cost overrun issues at Flamanville, France and Olkiluoto, Finland.  Another is to startup soon in China.   From a recent article in The Guardian (UK), titled "EDF’s top managers tell MPs that Hinkley Point should be postponed - Senior figures at French energy company declare in letter that delay is needed until issues including reactor design are solved"   see link: 

"Outstanding problems highlighted by the senior managers at EDF include:

Areva NP, the designer of the European pressurised reactor (EPR) planned for Somerset (Hinkley Point), “is currently facing a difficult situation”.

The French nuclear safety authority (ASN) may not give the green light to the EPR being constructed at Flamanville in north-west France due to various anomalies (falsified inspection reports).

There may be “identical flaws” in an Areva EPR being built at Taishan 1 in China.

The scandal over falsification of parts from Areva’s Le Creusot (the steel supplier) that potentially put safety checks at risk.

Multibillion-euro litigation between Areva and the Finnish energy group TVO over delays to an EPR scheme at Olkiluoto remains unsettled.

An EDF offer to purchase Areva expired on 31 March, leaving “governance uncertainties upon the implementation of the Hinkley Point C project”.

Commentary

The nuclear cheerleaders are loud and emphatic about the new generation of plants being economic and safe, and of course they claim they will last for 60 (some say 80!) years.  One must wonder, though, why such economic and safe plants (they say) have such horrible records of construction, why the very steel in the reactors themselves are not sufficiently strong to meet the safety standards, and now why there is so much opposition to the financing of yet another EPR, this one in the UK.  

To review: Olkiluoto is years behind schedule, and billions of Euros over budget.  Flamanville also is years behind schedule, billions of Euros over budget, and the reactor steel is alleged to be too weak to be safe (that is the "identical flaws" in the Guardian article above).  The steel safety issue is still under investigation.  The problem is that some of the molecules that are used to increase the alloy's strength did not remain properly dispersed in the thick steel, but congregated into clumps where they actually weaken the steel.   That is a serious and very expensive problem that will likely kill the project because casting a new reactor blank, then forging and finishing will cost far too much and take far too long.   

The French financial fiasco is in addition to the French steel strength saga.  

Roger E. Sowell, Esq.
Marina del Rey, California

copyright (c) 2016 by Roger Sowell, all rights reserved