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Finland's pride - our future model?

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The Finnish parliament voted to build OL3 (Nuclear plant) in 2002, in a decision seen as revolutionary in a Europe that had built no new nuclear plants since the 1986 Chernobyl accident and where opposition to nuclear power has traditionally been fierce.

The Finnish answer is Olkiluoto 3, a third-generation nuclear reactor, which will be the first of its kind in the world and produce 1,600 MW of electricity. OL3, as the Finns call it, has unusually got the controversial problem of nuclear waste sorted well in advance of the reactor coming on stream and can be truthfully described as Finland's pride and joy. As well as its message to the world.

OL3's pre-emptive bid to calm the anxious 6,000 residents in the reactor's home base of Eurajoki, Finns from elsewhere and curious tourists from around the globe is "information - lots of it, simply and clearly put". Even kindergarten children are given tours of the reactor, complete with a visit to the cavernous underground waste disposal site deep in "stable, three-billion-year-old bedrock", where the Finns are tunnelling away to bury nuclear waste.

Finnish nuclear experts say the OL3 lesson can only be useful further field, including India and China which are building multiple reactors to supply their gargantuan energy needs.

There is little doubt that OL3, which is entirely privately funded, will provide amply for Finland's long, dark and freezing winters, when light and heat consumption soars.

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City.Zen's picture

Entirely privately funded............

129 users have liked.

I liked the emphasis on the phrase, "Entirely privately funded."

Bangalore has enough number of enlightened millionaires and billionaires who might be approached for selling this idea to them.

Bangalore does boast of having the registered office of one private power company, the Energy Development Company (EDC) of which Amitabh Bacchan is a founder director and Amar Singh the CMD.

City Zen
murali772's picture

disastrous move!

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This was the response by a Mr M (generally, favourably disposed to the public sector) to my posting of this info on a googlegroup: 

This is the first attempt after 1986! Lets see how far they succeed. Why is it that Europe has not gone in for these plants in a big way. Also, Finland claims to have solved the problem of waste disposal. They are burying it deep under the earth. Once it was thought that burying deep under the sea was good enough, until it was discovered that there existed life at those depths under the sea and these ingested radio activity, which then came back to us through the bio-cycle.

They claim that if some one crashes a plane into the reactor, [9/11 style] it would not leak. Hope their calculations are right. What about a terrorist attack / sabotage? An earthquake? A flood?

A reactors life is 25 years. After that it continues to be radio active for 100 years or more. The plant cannot be dismantled. It needs to be guarded all the 100 years! How such plants would suffice?

Why is it that no scientist in India has thought it fit to comment on this aspect of the 123 deal?

I sent an article to the Hindu on this problem. They refused to publish it. It was published in the CSE journal! So much for the independence of our media!

PS: As for private funding of nuclear reactors in India, SIMI, LTTE, BODOs, NSCN  and Laske-e-Toiba et al, would be to very glad to set these up free of cost. In fact they may even pay the Govt and all politicians to be permitted to set up such plants!


Muralidhar Rao
murali772's picture

way forward

137 users have liked.

The Finns have obviously debated these matters through and through, and then taken this bold decision. Perhaps it was the total transparency of the process that facilitated it. With governments not having the capacity to take up large projects, this now clearly shows the way forward.

Hats off to the Finns.

Muralidhar Rao

Muralidhar Rao
murali772's picture


131 users have liked.

OL3 seems to carry on undaunted by the Fukushima disaster - check this

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