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for 60 years to pay themselves, off.

I have no idea who Steve Thomas is, nor do I really care.   Many people are wrong about this subject.

According to the Tarjenne study, nuclear power is the most competitive choice for Sweden.

I note that the grand renewable future has been under discussion since the early 1970's and still has not produced 5 exajoules of primary energy on the entire planet as a whole.   So if long time periods are critical issues, we should immediately give up on renewable energy on the grounds that it is a failure.

The ground breaking on the EPR in Finland.

I don't know how addition and subtraction is done in Europe, but the plant was ordered in 2003, and thus if it comes on line in 2010, that will be 7 years and not 13.

Each subsequent reactor may take far less time as procedures are streamlined.

Finally this plant is subject to FOAKE (First of a Kind Engineering) delays.   These are hardly catastrophic, certainly not as catastrophic as the German failure to address the growth in their energy consumption by posturing mindlessly about wind and solar power.

by NNadir on Sat Feb 24th, 2007 at 06:00:40 PM EST
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To the best of my knowledge the Finnish EPR Olkiluoto3 project dates to 1997. If a cornerstone was laid in 2005 that's fine with me.

It's interesting to note that Finland's European Pressurized Reactor is a joint French-German project (Framatone-Siemens) with the participation of some 26 nations. The water-cooling system is Italian. Some 60 companies, mostly foreign, are lined up to buy the energy produced.

So despite local political choices, Europe has certainly not abandoned nuclear power. In fact the Council of Economic Cooperation which unites some 100 companies of the "Latin" members of the UE strongly reccomends it.

by de Gondi (publiobestia aaaatttthotmaildaughtusual) on Sun Feb 25th, 2007 at 06:11:48 AM EST
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Every single power option, from natural gas plants, to coal plants, to nuclear plants is subject to debate.   To assert that this is only true in the nuclear case is exceptionalism.

The actual construction started in 2005, and is now 2 years under way.

Timeline

I am happy that all of Europe is participating in the construction of this plant.   This bodes well for the future of Europe.

by NNadir on Sun Feb 25th, 2007 at 03:07:46 PM EST
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Thanks for the link.
by de Gondi (publiobestia aaaatttthotmaildaughtusual) on Sun Feb 25th, 2007 at 05:00:03 PM EST
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