Finland’s much-delayed Olkiluoto 3 (OL3) nuclear reactor, Europe’s largest, began regular output early yesterday, its operator said, boosting energy security in a region to which Russia has cut gas and power supplies.
Nuclear power remains controversial in Europe, primarily due to safety concerns, and news of OL3’s start-up came as Germany on Saturday switched off its last three remaining reactors, while Sweden, France, Britain and others plan new developments.
OL3’s operator Teollisuuden Voima Oyj (TVO), which is owned by Finnish utility Fortum Oyj and a consortium of energy and industrial companies, has said the unit is expected to meet about 14 percent of Finland’s electricity demand, reducing the need for imports from Sweden and Norway.
Photo: AFP / TVO / Tapani Karjanlahti
The new reactor is expected to produce for at least 60 years, TVO said in a statement after completing the transition from testing to regular output.
“The production of Olkiluoto 3 stabilizes the price of electricity and plays an important role in the Finnish green transition,” TVO chief executive Jarmo Tanhua said in the statement.
Construction of the 1.6 gigawatt reactor, Finland’s first new nuclear plant in more than four decades and Europe’s first in 16 years, began in 2005. The plant was originally due to open four years later, but was plagued by technical issues.
OL3 first supplied test production to Finland’s national power grid in March last year and was expected at the time to begin regular output four months later, but instead suffered a string of breakdowns and outages that took months to fix.
Russia’s power exports to Finland ended in May last year, when Russian utility Inter RAO said it had not been paid for the energy it sold, a consequence of the widening gulf between Moscow and Europe over the war in Ukraine.
Russian state export monopoly Gazprom PJSC shortly after ended shipments of natural gas to the Nordic nation.
Separately, the German state of Bavaria wants to continue operating nuclear power plants under its own responsibility, state Premier Markus Soeder was quoted as saying, bringing a possible comeback for the power energy Germany finished phasing out on Saturday.
The state, home to many of Germany’s most successful exporting manufacturers, wants the federal government to change the nuclear exit law to allow operating such nuclear power stations under the state’s own responsibility, Soeder said.
“Until the crisis is over, and the transition to renewables succeeds, we must use every form of energy by the end of the decade,” the state government was quoted as saying by Bild am Sonntag newspaper.
“Bavaria is ready to take on this responsibility,” Soeder said, adding that Bavaria also wants to be a pioneer in nuclear fusion research and to construct of its own research reactor.
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