Finland will no longer even snore on nuclear power
Despite its ambitious goals for the energy transition, Finland has canceled a contract with Russia's Rosatom for a nuclear power plant due to go into operation in 2024. Full details
The nuclear power plant that was to be built in Finland by Rosatom, the Russian state company created by Vladimir Putin in 2007, will not be built.
On April 11 it seemed that everything would continue to proceed despite the invasion of Ukraine, but today the Finnish consortium Fennovoima has definitively abandoned the project.
THE NEWS
The Fennovoima consortium announced that it had canceled, due to further risks from the Russian invasion of Ukraine, a contract with Rosatom for the construction of a nuclear reactor in northern Finland.
"The war in Ukraine has aggravated the risks of the project located in Pyhajoki on the shores of the Baltic Sea", reports a statement from the consortium, which also speaks of "significant and growing delays" and "inability" on the part of Rosatom to "bring at term ”the site of the Hanhikivi reactor.
The Russian company had planned to complete the plant by 2024, but in 2018 it was forced to consider a delay of four years and since then the calendar has slipped further.
THE PROJECT AND THE ROLE OF ROSATOM
The Hanhikivi 1 project between Fennovoima and Rosatom, writes the Financial Times , "got bogged down from the start" and "was particularly controversial because Rosatom, the Russian state-owned nuclear company, was not only the supplier of the reactor but also the principal shareholder and financier of the Fennovoima consortium ".
As the article explains, "Rosatom owns 34%, while Finnish companies such as the energy group Fortum, steel producers SSAB and Outokumpu and local municipalities own the rest."
Finland, the FT recalls, had approved plans for the Russian reactor in September 2014, a few months after Russia annexed Crimea. On that occasion, the Green party, led by the then Minister of the Environment, Ville Niinisto, had left the government in protest.
WHAT FENNOVOIMA SAID
“The decision to terminate the contract [with Rosatom, ed ] is not taken lightly – explained Esa Harmala , president of Fennovoima – In such a large project, there are significant complexities and decisions are made only after in-depth considerations. We fully recognize the negative impacts and do our best to mitigate them ”.
THE POSITION OF FINNISH POLICY
Several Finnish companies behind Fennovoima and local politicians, the FT said , "have been desperately looking for reasons to pull the plug on the project in the last two months since Russia invaded Ukraine."
The final building permit was to be granted by the end of 2022, but the Minister of Economic Affairs, Mika Lintila, said it was "completely impossible". So now the Finnish government will have to rethink the project.
“Fennovoima's decision is clear. We must be satisfied with the owners' decision. It would have been practically impossible to carry out the project. At the ministry, we assessed the impact of the decision from a regulatory point of view ”, is what Lintila tweeted .
HOW MUCH WILL THE END OF RELATIONS WITH ROSATOM WEIGH?
Since 2019, Finland has been pursuing a very ambitious goal: to become the first carbon neutral country in the world, i.e. to achieve net carbon neutrality by 2035.
According to the International Energy Agency (Iea), the country has made good progress, especially in energy generation thanks to large shares of nuclear, hydroelectric and bioenergy. In fact, in recent years, the use of fossil fuels has decreased significantly.
According to preliminary data from Statistics Finland, published by the International Trade Administration , in Finland, from 2019 to 2020, the total energy consumption decreased by 6% but the renewable production of hydroelectricity, wind and solar energy increased. The share of renewable energy sources decreased by 1%, however, their share of total energy consumption increased to 40% and, for the first time, the consumption of renewable energy was higher than that of fossil fuels and peat put together.
Finland, among other things, stands out among the leading IEA countries for public and private spending on energy research and development, as well as being a global leader in second-generation biofuels produced from wood, especially biodiesel. .
However, it cannot underestimate the cold climate, the long distances and the energy-intensive industries that inevitably condition its energy transition, in addition to rapid climate change, which is even more accentuated in an Arctic country.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/energia/la-finlandia-non-russera-piu-neppure-sul-nucleare/ on Mon, 02 May 2022 12:12:55 +0000.