Finland: failure of Europe’s largest nuclear reactor, and the price of electricity doubles
Do you remember when the price of electricity in Finland became negative, because nuclear energy production had practically satisfied all of the nation's needs? Well, that moment has passed, in fact, now the opposite effect is happening.
Finnish power company TVO said on Monday it had extended an outage at the Olkiluoto 3 reactor, Europe's largest nuclear power generator, while it carries out repairs, resulting in day-ahead electricity prices have more than doubled, as reported by Reuters .
The 1,600 megawatt (MW) unit, known as OL3, suffered an unexpected outage on Sunday due to a turbine problem, TVO and Nordic energy exchange Nord Pool said.
“The cause of the failure turned out to be a malfunction of the temperature measurement in the generator's cooling system,” TVO said in a statement, adding that nuclear safety was not compromised.
Finding alternative power proved costly for Finland, where the price at the auction the day before rose to 287.87 euros per megawatt hour (MWh) on Tuesday, compared to 116.09 euros/MWh on Monday, and much above prices in the rest of the Nordic countries. .
Monday's price had been set before the reactor outage occurred.
TVO had initially forecast a return to full production capacity on Monday morning, but said in a regulatory filing that it was instead aiming for a partial restart expected on Tuesday. THE
Production capacity on Tuesday is expected to reach 1,285 MW, while a full 1,600 MW could be reached on Wednesday, according to the document.
These cost issues become important when a country's energy becomes overly dependent on a single plant. In this case Finland has put many eggs, we could say, in a single basket, that of the largest European nuclear plant. When this had an interruption the energy price took off, and fortunately, however, even if at high costs, it was possible to find the necessary energy.
Plagued by construction delays, OL3 began regular electricity generation in April this year, about 14 years behind schedule.
Finland said the nuclear reactor, the first to come online in Europe in 16 years, is expected to meet around 14% of the country's electricity demand, boosting energy security.
.
Thanks to our Telegram channel you can stay updated on the publication of new Economic Scenarios articles.
The article Finland: failure of the largest nuclear reactor in Europe, and the price of electricity doubles comes from Economic Scenarios .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/finlandia-avaria-al-piu-grande-reattore-nucleare-deuropa-e-il-prezzo-delllelettricita-raddoppia/ on Wed, 22 Nov 2023 15:50:00 +0000.