Great interview. I'm sure the transcript has a typo, "...our ground, it's mainly graphite..." I'm sure the word should be 'granite' not 'graphite'. Well done Finland, and congrats to the Greens who recognize the low carbon footprint of nuclear energy. Wish I could say the same for our province of British Columbia which puts much of the hydroelectricity it produces in to LNG production. Crazy!
By the way, the vote share of greens has been dropping dramatically lately, but not because they went for nuclear. Attribution is hard of course; I'd say they gradually forgot the core environmental agenda and went further left and then woke, and ended up being somewhat without clear identity in our multiparty system. (At their peak, greens were around 15% at the country level and clearly more popular in Helsinki.)
Nuclear was controversial for a long time, especially after Chernobyl, but now the discussion is more about base load vs. elasticity and renewables, and in this context the main negative attributes of nuclear are not so much around safety, but on price, slowness and centralization.
I'm from Finland, not an expert but have been following the energy landscape over here. The podcast was quite accurate as far as I can tell... maybe overall concentrated on positives.
As Kim said, Olkiluoto 3 was expensive and late. We have got a lot of wind now; yes our electricity is clean and probably cheapest in Europe, but also price variation at the spot market is highest. After imports (maybe 1GW max, or ≈10% of average consumption) from Russia were cut, we have been living somewhat at the margin. Every winter there is a small probability that production and imports are not enough on a cold, windless winter period. That hasn't realized as rationing or blackouts yet though. A couple of subsea cables to Sweden are critical.
I don't quite know how we are going to handle the increasing demand of base consumption, esp. data centers which obviously don't want to be elastic. We'll get a new connection to Sweden soon, it helps a little bit.
Overall, the combination of Norwegian hydro and wind in nearby countries is great, as long as there's enough connectivity.
Hydrogen had a major role in some kind of national energy strategy, but those hopes seem to be unwinding. The demand is mostly missing. (Haven't followed this closely.)
Yes we have a lot of shallow geothermal here, individual house owners and housing co-operatives are building it. Like where I'm writing this, the co-operative departed from district heating and invested on their own geothermal heat pump (not sure whether that made any sense in the long run). On deep geothermal, I'm not aware of any plans.
In general, (air) heat pumps are commonplace everywhere, especially on the countryside.
Forestry: no-one can't calculate or agree on how much soil is releasing carbon under forestry or without, there are just some canonized formulas and fighting around them. That is inconvenient, even comical, for the political mission to be carbon neutral by 2035 strongly depends on forest sinks. We are still burning wood for heating at the countryside, like at summer cottages. (I personally have a fireplace and a heat pump there, that's a common combination.)
Maybe 30-40% of new cars are electric now. We are way behind Norway on that, but doing quite well compared to other Europe. Yes electric cars work fine here, even in Lapland, unless you have to drive for work in places with not much chargers. Our cars overall are pretty old, so it'll take a while to get emissions from transportation down. (And then there's heavier traffic too of course.)
Our public transportation is excellent in big cities, especially at the capital area. On rural areas a car is mandatory.
The "pragmatism" seems to be that Finland is suspending near term nuclear power expansion in favor of wind power expansion, particularly offshore. At current growth rates, it appears likely that SMWRs ("Small Modular Wind Receptors") will generate more power than nuclear within four years.
One note on nuclear economics. The least expensive powerplants to build and operate are on large, cold bodies of water where they can use "once-through cooling" efficiently. Like on an island in the Baltic Sea! Not in the windy, sunny high deserts of Utah, Wyoming, Colorado, Arizona, Idaho, etc., where there is bizarre enthusiasm for them.
In any case, good job Finland to get to 90% renewable electricity with plans for further electrification and innovations in heating and heat storage. Like a CO2-cycle air-water HP for a 90C hot water district network.
Also, I think that a miles deep geo power well failed in Finland, but Helena mentioned boreholes of 100s of meters or a few km. As far as I can tell this is for use in networks serving HPs so not hot hot, but going down that deep starts to harvest the earth's core heat flux, and avoids turning your standard 100m borehole into an ice hole when you don't have summer heat rejection.
The part about nuclear energy is quite biased as far as I can tell.
The new Okiluoto reactor was neither on time (18 instead of 4 years) nor on budget (8.5bn € instead of €3bn, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olkiluoto_Nuclear_Power_Plant#Unit_3) – It was intended to be the proof that new nuclear stations can be built in Europe as an easy fix to increasing electricity demand, but it had a rather adverse effect.
In Germany, the challenges the Energiewende (energy transition) is facing are manifold, but lacking electricity from nuclear doesn't seem the big one. They are fading out coal for electricity at the same time (which causes social and regional controversies), have a chemical industry and furnaces, a big part of the financial burden of the transition was put on end-consumers, heating is relying heavily on gas, … – but wind and solar easily supplant the energy that came from nuclear.
Nuke reactors aren't green. Radioactive cpds hang around forever (life times) . where you gonna story all that radioactive stuff? Dump em in our oceans on our lands. Please world don't follow the Fins on this crazy strategy.
Great interview. I'm sure the transcript has a typo, "...our ground, it's mainly graphite..." I'm sure the word should be 'granite' not 'graphite'. Well done Finland, and congrats to the Greens who recognize the low carbon footprint of nuclear energy. Wish I could say the same for our province of British Columbia which puts much of the hydroelectricity it produces in to LNG production. Crazy!
Yes, granite.
By the way, the vote share of greens has been dropping dramatically lately, but not because they went for nuclear. Attribution is hard of course; I'd say they gradually forgot the core environmental agenda and went further left and then woke, and ended up being somewhat without clear identity in our multiparty system. (At their peak, greens were around 15% at the country level and clearly more popular in Helsinki.)
Nuclear was controversial for a long time, especially after Chernobyl, but now the discussion is more about base load vs. elasticity and renewables, and in this context the main negative attributes of nuclear are not so much around safety, but on price, slowness and centralization.
I'm from Finland, not an expert but have been following the energy landscape over here. The podcast was quite accurate as far as I can tell... maybe overall concentrated on positives.
As Kim said, Olkiluoto 3 was expensive and late. We have got a lot of wind now; yes our electricity is clean and probably cheapest in Europe, but also price variation at the spot market is highest. After imports (maybe 1GW max, or ≈10% of average consumption) from Russia were cut, we have been living somewhat at the margin. Every winter there is a small probability that production and imports are not enough on a cold, windless winter period. That hasn't realized as rationing or blackouts yet though. A couple of subsea cables to Sweden are critical.
I don't quite know how we are going to handle the increasing demand of base consumption, esp. data centers which obviously don't want to be elastic. We'll get a new connection to Sweden soon, it helps a little bit.
Overall, the combination of Norwegian hydro and wind in nearby countries is great, as long as there's enough connectivity.
Hydrogen had a major role in some kind of national energy strategy, but those hopes seem to be unwinding. The demand is mostly missing. (Haven't followed this closely.)
Yes we have a lot of shallow geothermal here, individual house owners and housing co-operatives are building it. Like where I'm writing this, the co-operative departed from district heating and invested on their own geothermal heat pump (not sure whether that made any sense in the long run). On deep geothermal, I'm not aware of any plans.
In general, (air) heat pumps are commonplace everywhere, especially on the countryside.
Forestry: no-one can't calculate or agree on how much soil is releasing carbon under forestry or without, there are just some canonized formulas and fighting around them. That is inconvenient, even comical, for the political mission to be carbon neutral by 2035 strongly depends on forest sinks. We are still burning wood for heating at the countryside, like at summer cottages. (I personally have a fireplace and a heat pump there, that's a common combination.)
Maybe 30-40% of new cars are electric now. We are way behind Norway on that, but doing quite well compared to other Europe. Yes electric cars work fine here, even in Lapland, unless you have to drive for work in places with not much chargers. Our cars overall are pretty old, so it'll take a while to get emissions from transportation down. (And then there's heavier traffic too of course.)
Our public transportation is excellent in big cities, especially at the capital area. On rural areas a car is mandatory.
The "pragmatism" seems to be that Finland is suspending near term nuclear power expansion in favor of wind power expansion, particularly offshore. At current growth rates, it appears likely that SMWRs ("Small Modular Wind Receptors") will generate more power than nuclear within four years.
One note on nuclear economics. The least expensive powerplants to build and operate are on large, cold bodies of water where they can use "once-through cooling" efficiently. Like on an island in the Baltic Sea! Not in the windy, sunny high deserts of Utah, Wyoming, Colorado, Arizona, Idaho, etc., where there is bizarre enthusiasm for them.
In any case, good job Finland to get to 90% renewable electricity with plans for further electrification and innovations in heating and heat storage. Like a CO2-cycle air-water HP for a 90C hot water district network.
https://www.man-es.com/company/press-releases/press-details/2024/08/28/man-energy-solutions-to-supply-world-s-largest-air-to-water-heat-pump-for-helsinki-s-district-heating
Also, I think that a miles deep geo power well failed in Finland, but Helena mentioned boreholes of 100s of meters or a few km. As far as I can tell this is for use in networks serving HPs so not hot hot, but going down that deep starts to harvest the earth's core heat flux, and avoids turning your standard 100m borehole into an ice hole when you don't have summer heat rejection.
https://www.qheat.com/solution
The part about nuclear energy is quite biased as far as I can tell.
The new Okiluoto reactor was neither on time (18 instead of 4 years) nor on budget (8.5bn € instead of €3bn, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olkiluoto_Nuclear_Power_Plant#Unit_3) – It was intended to be the proof that new nuclear stations can be built in Europe as an easy fix to increasing electricity demand, but it had a rather adverse effect.
In Germany, the challenges the Energiewende (energy transition) is facing are manifold, but lacking electricity from nuclear doesn't seem the big one. They are fading out coal for electricity at the same time (which causes social and regional controversies), have a chemical industry and furnaces, a big part of the financial burden of the transition was put on end-consumers, heating is relying heavily on gas, … – but wind and solar easily supplant the energy that came from nuclear.
Don't follow Shandy he/she are trolls for nuclear energy craziness.
Radioactivity is not green
Nuke reactors aren't green. Radioactive cpds hang around forever (life times) . where you gonna story all that radioactive stuff? Dump em in our oceans on our lands. Please world don't follow the Fins on this crazy strategy.