Honestly I don’t care if it’s solar, wind, geothermal, biofuel, or nuclear, as long as it displaces fossil fuels. And it’s feasible on a very near time scale.
If Sweden did an honest investigation and found that renewables would be more costly and take longer, let em get nuclear.
We need an “all of the above” approach. This fight between nuclear and renewables is just stirred up by fossil fuel interests. Either is good. Both is good.
This isn’t an “all of the above approach” though, it’s a “cancel the short term plans and pretend we’re going to do something later” approach.
Yeah, if you decide to ramp up nuclear now, you’re only going to see the results in 10 years. Nothing is stopping you from continuing to add wind, solar and stuff like home/grid batteries in the meantime. Pretty sure Sweden has plenty of hydro storage options as well, which can be easily used to regulate the fluctuations wind and solar give you.
Mines take a lot longer than 10 years, as do power-plants (the whole thing starting at permit submission and ending at last reactor coming online). 2045 is optimistic.
Why are people in this thread acting like the intent here is to cut renewables? The target was deemed unrealisitic to hit andr raised concerns about reliability.
They are simply removing potential future renewables that have not been paid for or even ordered yet from the agenda and replacing the planned supply with nuclear, which is carbon neutral and requires less workers maintaining larger fields of solar and wind, two types of power that are not reliable during a Scandinavian blizzard… Something Sweden has to consider among many other things
Two things that are relevant is that Sweden is very, very dark during the winter which reduces the profitability of solar and also that it’s extremely difficult to get approval for wind turbines right now.
Municipalities have the power to veto building projects and almost all of them choose to block wind power installations. Wind turbines generate sound, both audible and infrasound (which can disturb sleep), and are sometimes considered a bit of an eyesore which can both reduce the value of properties near them and make people less inclined to move to that region which reduces tax income for the municipality. This could be offset by taxation of the wind power, but currently all taxable income from wind turbines go to the state instead of any of the local governments.
There was recently an inquiry into how to make municipalities more likely to approve wind power construction and the restriction that the government gave them was that they were not allowed to suggest tax revenue being diverted to the local government. Which was the only suggestion that they said would be effective.
So… yeah.
If Sweden did an honest investigation and found that renewables would be more costly and take longer, let em get nuclear.
Bullshit. Renewables are cheap as chips.
Think of a traditional power plant. There are 4 main cost catagories: Construction, Maintenance, Fuel, Demolition.
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In a traditional plant, over the life of the plant Fuel will by far be the biggest cost.
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For renewables, Construction, Maintenance and Demolition cost more (issues such as remote locations, weather, smaller generators means more generators which increases the mean time to failure) however they have ZERO fuel cost.
Renewable generation is profitable as fuck, moreso than nuclear. Your average wind farm pays itself off in less than 5 years.
This is a right wing government backing the interests of fossil fuels, by implementing policy that delays any meaningful reduction in fossil fuel use.
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.
Assuming you’re telling the truth that there’s a massive shortfall in December already (a provable lie ) then you are suggesting the solution for an urgent shortfall of around a TWh per year is to build 10GW of nuclear plants which will be ready in 2045 for €300 billion and run them at an operating loss for 10-11 months per year.
This in order to provide low grade heat which could be stored in a district heating system for a few dollars per kWh for a total cost of about 3% of your suggestion or even in batteries for about 20% of the cost (which would also run at a profit the rest of the year and make the hydro go further).
Nuke shills say some colossally stupid things, but this really takes the cake.
For renewables, Construction, Maintenance and Demolition cost more
This is less true as time goes on. CCGT and coal has substantial overlap with all-in cost of firmed PV and onshore wind just in terms of capex and FOM. Nuclear O&M overlaps with all-in cost of wind or PV (although not the latter in sweden).
SMRs (most of the proposals to reduce cost) are also substantially less efficient than full sized reactors and the high grade Uranium or Uranium in countries you can pollute without consequence is mostly tapped out so prices are increasing (currently about $3/MWh for full scale or $6/MWh for an inefficient small reactor). By the time an SMR finally comes online, just the raw uranium will cost as much as renewables, let alone the rest of VOM (which is still a minority of O&M which is far, far less than Capex).
Anyone suggesting new nuclear should be regarded as either someone lying to maintain a nuclear weapons program, a scammer, or a russian agent trying to sell dependence on rosatom.
The first is potentially defensible, but they could also not lie instead.
This is a right wing government backing the interests of fossil fuels, by implementing policy that delays any meaningful reduction in fossil fuel use.
Simply incorrect and ignorant and I could leave it at that.
But I won’t so here:
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Nuclear is carbon neutral
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The majority of Swedens energy production is still renewable and will continue to grow
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Nuclear is absolutely necessary for load balance
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Current nuclear plants are nearing their end of life and needs to be replaced
- I’m not critising nuclear for not being green.
- Renewables should grow (they’re profitable), but there should be further incentivised growth to help reduce reliance on fossile fuels more quickly.
- Yes, nuclear is brilliant for voltage and frequency stability. Large turbines have momentum in their spinning mass, when loads are switched on and off they keep spinning the same speed. However there are other options, eg rotating stabilisers, often used on very large ships but land installations are now being made also. These can be built without the nuclear red tape.
- Replacing existing nuclear plants is always a decent thing to do. You skip over many of the hurdles by building on the same site under the same nuclear permits. However taking money away from renewables to pay for this is questionable at best.
I think Sweden does have some geographical complications, along with a lackluster transmission network. These are much harder to get private investment for. However if there was a decent transmission network then there would be more utility of renewable generation in the north as well as the capability for import of energy from neighbouring countries or even export when Sweden has an excess.
Putting my balls on the table, I reckon if Sweden put all the money they’ve got in nuclear into transmission first and then renewables, I reckon they could switch off more fossil fuels more quickly.
i heard that nuclear still kind of heats up the earth since its not outputting what has been put in by the sun before. Supposedly thats a problem since space is a good insulator.
have you ever been in Sweden? it is a a rocky mountainous and mostly dark region. they only renewables that they can easily manage is geothermal and iirc they do not have the correct crust for it
According to another comment they have plenty of renewables up in the north but only use about 30% of that capacity. So it seems the main issue is with the transmission network for the country, its ability to get power from one place to another.
Instead of investing in 20 year nuclear power plant plans, they should be looking at accessing and expanding the available renewable generation in the short term.
Imo, renewable should still be the target, nuclear should be the bridge towards renewable until it’s feasible enough
Building a stop-gap that will be ready 20 years after you get to the main destination for 10x the price isn’t a bright move.
The best time to ignore the nuke shills and build wind and solar was the 1940s when both wind and solar thermal were proven economically and fission hadn’t happened yet.
The second best time is now.
I disagree… the biggest “issue” I have with “renewables” is the storage problem… That 20 years gives you time to figure out something while reducing the carbon output
I don’t get why people here are so hyped. Why is it a good thing to completely dump renewables?
An extreme excess of renewables would be viable as a singular source to displace fossil fuels, and could be built more quickly than new nuclear. There already is some nuclear, the wind is always blowing somewhere, and the sun shines through the clouds.
Renewable generation is here now, it is proven and it is cheap & highly profitable.
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.
Completely replacing fossil fuels is not here right now, it’s not cheap, and it’s not highly profitable.
This is almost completely wrong
It’s takes 10-15 years to make a new nuclear plant. If you choose nuclear without renewables you would have to burn so much fossil fuels while waiting for your nuclear power to become ready that the human race would be extinct before you have a decarbonized energy grid.
People here have better reading comprehension apparently and know that dumping a 100% target doesn’t mean dumping renewables.
Hell yeah, tell me the best future isn’t nuclear power and electric rail like an old space Lego set.
Nuclear’s probably not a great long term choice since it’s a lot more expensive than renewables.
But that’s just the generated per kwh cost, not taking into account when the energy is generated. To compare a full renewables grid to a renewables nuclear mixed grid you need to take into account massive energy storage systems and their inefficiencies and possible material shortages. We can’t just compare the currently favorable cost per kwh without taking into account problems as we scale into less reliable energy sources.
You will need long term storage in both cases. Nuclear can’t act as a peaker because you can’t quickly ramp up or down the generation. Nuclear can only perform as baseload which, in theory, could be provided by a renewable energy mix if the install base is high enough.
I don’t disagree with your point that it isn’t a simple direct comparison but any sensible energy mix will still require storage. I find it difficult to see the economic case for nuclear if renewables can be installed in sufficient quantities, given that nuclear is roughly 4 times as expensive as solar and wind.
France, with all it’s maintainance disasters with their nuclear reactors shows us yet another problem: how to properly cool the water for the generator? With sinking fresh-water levels in rivers and fastly rising water temperatures nuclear reactors become less reliable. Wind and solar output on the other side will in an ironical way get a little more reliable, as there will be more of both.
One of the biggest problems that we have today when it comes to energy production (and a whole lot of other things) is putting all our eggs in one basket. Well how the fuck does this change anything?
I am not anti-nuclear, but dumping ALL renewable targets is moronic. Now you’ve simply replaced one egg for another egg, but it’s still just ONE egg. A stable energy portfolio is diversifying your sources.
The article doesn’t say if they intend to have 100% nuclear or if they dropped the target of 100% renewable to have a mix with more nuclear
