Remote Finnish city grows accustomed to nuclear power

By John Tagliabue
Published: November 16, 2008

RAUMA, Finland: The café where Paivi Alanko-Rehelma serves coffee and smoked fish stands almost in the shadow of a sprawling building site on the island of Olkiluoto where Finland is erecting a nuclear power plant, the third on the island and the fifth in Finland in the past 30 years.
Like many of her neighbors who have grown accustomed to nuclear energy, Alanko-Rehelma makes no objections to the new reactor. "It's now safe, it saves nature, it's cheaper," she said.
No one is certain when the plant, which has been plagued by construction delays, will be finished. But whenever it does begin operating, the reactor will be a new cog in the works of Finland's national energy policy, which seeks to diversify the country's sources of energy and reduce its historical reliance on Russia for cheap electricity.
The plant is also part of a global trend, as the prospects of nuclear power rise amid concerns about the warming effect of carbon dioxide emissions to generate electricity.
The Finns are going first-class, building what is called a European Pressurized Reactor, the latest model, which is billed as the safest and most powerful nuclear reactor ever designed. It is the product of a consortium of French and German engineering companies.

It is not as if anyone in this wooded region a three-hour drive northwest of Helsinki is marching in protest, spraying anti-nuclear graffiti or hampering construction work.
To the contrary, the construction of the power plant is producing a mini economic boom.
Take this port city of pastel-colored wooden homes about 25 kilometers, or 15 miles, south of Olkiluoto.
Nearly 4,000 migrant laborers from more than 30 countries, including Poland and Estonia, are working at the new power plant, lifting business in stores in downtown Rauma and making possible the opening last year of two new shopping malls on the edge of town.
Local building contractors have been buoyed by orders to carry out some of the reactor work. Moreover, taxes paid by the migrant workers and French and German engineers who have come to the city bring in more than $2.5 million a year.
"A journalist called recently from Helsinki to ask how much longer we can delay completion of the reactor," Jaakko Hirvonsalo, managing director of the local chamber of commerce, said with a laugh. "Locally, we're doing well."
The delays, however, were no joke: Parts of the huge reactor shield, now about 27 meters, or 90 feet high, had to be dismantled and rebuilt because of faulty welding and poor cement work. The Finns attribute the delays to the French builder, Areva, which subcontracted work to Polish companies to cut costs.
The French and their German partners blame the Finns, pointing to the glacial pace of construction reviews by the Finnish nuclear safety authority. Wherever the blame truly lies, the reactor's startup date has been pushed back by at least two years, to 2011, and the estimated cost increased to nearly $6 billion from an original $3.8 billion.
Now, the French are seeking the help of a Swedish arbitrator to settle their differences with the Finns. As for the delay, "It's not a race," said Jacques-Emmanuel Saulnier, a spokesman for Areva in Paris. "Don't forget, it will operate for 60 years."
Yet he acknowledged that in some ways, Olkiluoto was a test, since it was the first attempt to build a pressurized water reactor.
"It's the first of its kind," he said. "You cannot go into a hangar and make a model to test. And yet you have to have a test."
Beneath the surface, people in Rauma are weighing the costs and benefits. And not all are happy with the result.
"As long as everything is O.K., it's O.K., but there are problems and risks," said Janne Koski, director of the city art museum.
Asked whether people had ignored the risks because of the benefits, he replied: "That is not exactly so. Of course, many people are working there, at the reactor site. It's about economy and finance."
Rauma has never had an accident like that at Chernobyl, but even people who are most comfortable with nuclear reactors admit that they affect the environment.
Alanko-Rehelma, whose husband operates two fishing boats in the waters around the reactors, said their cooling systems warmed the water near Olkiluoto Island.
"That is not good for some kinds of fish," she said. "But good for others, like trout."
The only large-scale resistance to nuclear energy in Finland comes from Greenpeace, which cites the hazard of radioactivity and the siphoning of money from investment in alternative carbon-free energy sources, like wind, sun and tides.
"It's far too risky and hazardous," Lauri Myllyvirta, a spokesman for Greenpeace, said by phone from Helsinki. "Because these projects tend to be prone to delays - cost overruns - these decisions have a negative impact on other carbon-free solutions."
Yet Rauma has not neglected alternative energy. It is working with UPM, a wood processor with four mills in Rauma, to use wood waste to make electricity.
"We're selling electricity and heat for housing," said Arno Miettinen, who has been city manager for four years, about as long as the nuclear plant has been under construction. Part of the heat is pumped under the cobblestone streets of the city center to keep them free of ice and snow during Finland's harsh winters.
The United Nations lists Rauma as a World Heritage site because of its enormous stock of charming 17th- and 18th-century wooden homes. The World Heritage designation is meant to help preserve historic sites, though income from tourism remains meager, Miettinen said.
"It's mostly Finns, and some from Germany and Italy," he said. But he did not think nuclear power plants were keeping people away. "A great many people think nuclear energy is good for Rauma and its industry," he said.
Pasi Katajamaki, editor of the local newspaper, Lansi Suomi, said, "We're very used to it."
"When you have something near you, you simply grow accustomed to it."