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Finland's Nuclear Plant Start Delayed Again
mdsolar writes with news about further delays to Finland's Olkiluoto 3 nuclear reactor. "Areva-Siemens, the consortium building Finland's biggest nuclear reactor, said on Monday the start date of the much delayed project will be pushed back to late 2018 — almost a decade later than originally planned. Areva-Siemens blamed disagreements with its client Teollisuuden Voima (TVO) over the plant's automation system, the latest blow for a project that has been hit by repeated delays, soaring costs and disputes. "The delays are because the planning of the plant has taken needlessly long," Jouni Silvennoinen, TVO's project head, told Reuters on Monday. "We haven't examined the supplier's detailed schedules yet, but our preliminary view is that we could do better (than 2018)."
It'll never be finnished.
While civilian nuclear has been in decline over the past few decades there's not likely to be any shortage of suppliers of uranium. In one large mine for example, Roxby Downs, it's really just a side product of copper, silver and gold which would be mined anyway if there wasn't uranium in that ore.
Unless it is a fast breeder or similar that can "burn" plutonium, by the time they get around to getting the fuel, there won't be much uranium left on sale, or suppliers willing to sell it.
There is a glut of uranium on the market, with prices for yellowcake falling by more than 50% since Fukushima.
What happend here is that Areva wanted the deal at any cost, so they agreed to build their prototype reactor cheap with Finnish safety standars (which are very high). the problems started in early stages when they could not produce complete plans to Finnish authorities as their plans were not even finished yet. When Areva got their plans ready they where already a few years late, it was thn discovered that the fail-safe/automation system were not separated well enough, many single-points of failure were discovered and caused further delays as they needed to fix the plans so that the systems fail-safe are autonomus from main systems.
Areva is trying to turn this on TVO (the buyer) by saying the delayes were caused by them not getting the approvals in time, when in reality Areva did not provide complete plans ever when they requested. Abosulte disaster prject and design from Arevas side.
It's not just software projects that that can't be completed in a timely, cost-effective manner.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
As everyone knows, when it comes to planning, you need someone to manage those plans, you need more project managers.. the more you hire the more planning will happen.. almost in direct proportion. You probably don't need experienced engineers as much as you need project managers... in fact, you might want to add a program manager to manage the managers who manage the projects.. this way many plans will be made, planning projects will be finished and the projects will happen because of gant charts. no real self respecting project can be accomplished unless you have gant charts.. and recently there have been some amazing developments in gant charts, for instance, they don't need to be waterfall.. they can in fact be other shapes too.. we're not sure what shapes they really can be, but to be safe, lets make it a waterfall so project coordinators can follow them without too much management overhead. Oh, I forgot to mention we need project coordinators under the project managers, and program managers on top of the project managers.. you know, like a waterfall.. like a gant chart that looks like a waterfall. I can feel the synergy from here.
Yes. A glut of unranium putting uranium producers out of business, closing mines, etc. The glut today may well lead to a shortage a few years out from now.
No, because as soon as prices recover, the mines will reopen. There is enough uranium stockpiled to cover the transition. If prices ever go back to where they were in 2010, it will be cost effective to extract uranium from seawater, where the supply is almost limitless. At current consumption rates, we will not run out of relatively cheap uranium for thousands of years. There are plenty of reasonable arguments against nuclear energy, but "we are running out of fuel" is not one of them.
yeah because Finland is TOTALLY gunning for the new reactor for use with nuclear bombs and not for having cheap power to power the steel industry or anything like that...
some people... some people.. PHEAR THE FINNISH NUCLEAR THREAT!!!
*) disclaimer, Finland, if given some realistic incentive, could make a bomb in a few years, partially due to before mentioned expertise in steel and other high technology needed to accomplish such a feat. so you better fear it! and since Finland is not in NATO it's obviously a ROGUE STATE and since it's not allied with Russia either it's a double rogue state! homebase of the SPECTRE!
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
The number of reactors peaked in 2002 http://www.worldnuclearreport.... but the power produced peaked in 2006 http://www.worldnuclearreport.... so a few decades may be too long to count for a decline. Market share has declined for a while now, but that does not influence the rate of uranium consumption.
The Olympic Dam copper, uranium and gold mine in south Australia is installing an experimental acid leach facility to process their spoil to extract residual uranium and copper.
"Olympic Dam currently produces close to 4000 tU3O8 per year and around 180,000 tonnes of copper. The planned [acid leach] expansion could lift annual uranium production to around 19,000 tonnes U3O8 and boost annual copper production by up to 515,000 tonnes." (From World Nuclear News)
The uranium market spot price has been depressed for a few years in part due to the "Megatons to Megawatts" project which put a lot of excess Russian weapons-grade uranium into the fuel pipeline, effectively subsidised by the US government as part of its non-proliferation efforts. Now that this project is complete it's expected the minehead price will rise again and mining operations are looking to expand their production now that it is expected to be more profitable in the near future.