2y ago

Swedish government removes nuclear power promise from website

www.telegraph.co.uk

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The right choice. Nuclear would be a great solution if we went all in 40 years ago. But we didnt and now we need a solution as soon as possible, not in 15 years to build a plant or in 25 years when it breaks even, now.
It takes just 6 months to build a 50 MW wind farm https://www.edfenergy.com/energywise/all-you-need-to-know-about-wind-power#:~:text=Wind%20farms%20can%20be%20built,last%20between%2020%E2%80%9325%20years.
Sweden uses 130 TW/h per year (130000000000 KW/h) as of 2020 https://www.iea.org/countries/sweden
and about 25% of that is fossil fuels. as of 2017 https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/SWE/sweden/fossil-fuel-consumption
So they would need to replace 32500000000 KW/h per year to get off fossil fuels
But KW/h/y is dumb so lets just make it KW/h
3710045
Then make it MW (yes I know I converted from TW to KW to MW.) so
3710 MW needed to replace fossil fuels.
So they would need 74 50MW wind farms to match that.
If they wanted to do that in 10 years to be faster than building a single nuclear plant, they would only need to be building 4 farms concurrently.
- and about 25% of that is fossil fuels.
  Sweden uses essentially no fossil fuels in the grid - it's basically hydro, nuclear and wind for all of it. The small amount of fossil fuels used is stuff like burning plastics, and one oil plant that is turned on once in a blue moon when there's an energy crisis. It's national news when they turn that one on, and it's considered a huge failure every time it happens.
  The real figure for fossil versus non-fossil energy in Sweden is 2% fossil versus 98% non-fossil, with hydro being the primary energy source (35-45%), followed by nuclear (30%) and then wind (20%). Source, in Swedish: https://www.energiforetagen.se/energifakta/elsystemet/produktion/
- A few errors
  130TWh is the final electricity consumption, not the generation. Since Sweden is a big net exporter of electricity, there is a big difference
  I'm not sure what macrotrends refers to by "Fossil fuel consumption", but it's pobably referring to raw energy rather than electricity (which doesnt consider conversion efficiency)
  In reality, sweden uses almost no fossil fuels in its electricity mix, and that is in large part due to nuclear
  KWh and KW, not KW and KW/h
  In your calculations you failed to account for capacity factors. Wind plants have average capacity factors of about 42% in sweden, so the capacity would need to be over double the consumption, even ignoring the variability of consumption and production
  Nevertheless, I do agree that Sweden doesn't need more nuclear. It already generates some of the cleanest electricity in the world and I'd imagine fossil fuels are really only used for peak load.
  
  Thank you for the corrections!
- But KW/h/y is dumb so lets just make it KW/h
  It's kW, not KW/h.
  
  explain?
  
  32500000000 KW/h per year
  
  That's 32500000000 kWh/y = 32500000000 * k * W * h / y = 32500000000 * k * W * h / (365 * 24 * h) = 32500000000 * k * W * h / 8760 / h = 32500000000 / 8760 * k * W * h / h = 3710046 * k * W * 1 = 3710046 kW
  (You actually corrected yourself later when converting to mW.)
  
  ...... exactly as I intended
  
  Since watt is joule per second, kwh per year is one kilojoule per second per hour per year.
  Electricians have played us like fools
  
  kWh is kilojoule per second times 3600 seconds or 3600 kilojoule. kWh/y is 3600 joule per year or 3600 kilojoule / (24*3600365) ~0.1W
  
  Even more cursed
  
  A kW/h would imply that the power changes by that amount every hour, while a kWh is the amount of energy spent in an hour
  
  Oh yeah, lol, I blame Friday morning fatigue.

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