Finland’s long-delayed and costly new nuclear reactor went online Saturday amid expectations that it will boost the Nordic country’s electricity self-sufficiency and help to achieve its carbon neutrality targets.

Finnish operator Teollisuuden Voima said the Olkiluoto 3 nuclear reactor in the country’s west started supplying electricity to the national power grid.

It will go through a trial period of about four months during which it will generate electricity only at a fraction of its 1,600 megawatt capacity.

The reactor will reach peak capacity in July when it will cover an estimated 14% of Finland’s total electricity demand, reducing the country’s need to import electricity from Norway, Russia and Sweden, Teollisuuden Voima said.

The last time a new nuclear reactor was commissioned in Finland was over 40 years ago. The Olkiluoto 3 is among western Europe’s first new reactors in over a decade.

The Olkiluoto 3 is a third generation European-type pressurized water reactor developed and built by a joint venture between France’s Areva and Germany’s Siemens.

Construction began in 2005 and was to be completed four years later.

However, the project was plagued by several technological problems that lead to lawsuits.

Finnish public broadcaster YLE said late last year that the reactor’s final price tag was put at around 11 billion euros ($12 billion) – almost three times more than what was initially estimated.

Finland now has five nuclear reactors in two power plants located on the shores of the Baltic Sea.

Combined, they cover more than 40% of Finland’s electricity demand.

The owner of a historic railway that runs up Mount Washington is proposing to build upscale accommodations and a restaurant near the summit of New Hampshire’s highest peak.

Mount Washington Cog Railway owner Wayne Presby said the nearly $14 million project would station 18 rail cars at an elevation around 5,800 feet (1,670 meters) from mid May through mid October. Nine sleeper cars would accommodate up to 70 guests who would pay similar rates to those charged on other sleepers.

“There is a demand for it. People want to stay up on the mountain,” Presby said of the project that will require state and county permits and take up to seven years to complete. “They want better facilities than what are being offered up there by the state of New Hampshire and everybody else.”

The project, presented earlier this month to the Mount Washington Commission, comes several years after Presby scrapped a plan to build a 35-room hotel on the mountain. That project came under widespread criticism from environmentalists and hikers, who argued the 25,000-square-foot (2,300-square-meter) hotel would damage the fragile alpine ecology and destroy the scenic views.

Presby said the latest proposal, which includes plans to pipe sewage down the mountain and fiber-optic upgrades, has the support of the state. In exchange, the Cog would agree to not to pursue further expansion on the summit.

A spokesperson for the Department of Natural and Cultural Resources did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

It is unclear whether this proposal will garner the same opposition as the larger hotel project, when thousands of people signed a petition against it.

Chris Thayer, who serves as the Appalachian Mountain Club’s representative on the commission, called the proposal “creative in its approach to summit operation and visitor experience challenges” but he said it “deserves more careful consideration to impacts on highly sensitive natural resources and viewshed aesthetics.”

David Govatski, a retired U.S. Forest Service forester who can see the site from his home in Jefferson, opposed the larger hotel. But he remains undecided this time around.

Govatski believes the project could ease congestion from the throngs of summer tourists on the mountain, since it includes a shuttle from sleeper cars up to the summit, the highest peak in the Northeast at 6,288 feet (1.91 kilometers). Currently, the cog goes right to the summit, resulting in hundreds of people getting on and off trains at one time.

But he worries hotel guests could damage are alpine plants including Bigelow’s sedge on the mountain and stress out the rare American pipit that nests in the area. Other people worry plans for brightly-colored rail cars — something Presby said could change to more neutral colors — would be out of place on the mountain.

The area where the rail cars would sit has had its share of activities over the years. The Mount Washington Auto Road is nearby. There are fuel tanks there, a helipad and there once were barracks for a jet engine testing lab.

“They have done their planning. The concept looks good on paper but the devil is in the details. That is what we want to work out,” Govatski said.

“You have to balance the economic value of a railroad like that against the potential for the environmental impact, of increased usage at new location near the mountain top,” he continued. “I remain neutral until I can really study what the impacts are.”

Mount Washington has been attracting more tourists in New Hampshire’s North Country since the loss of the Old Man of the Mountain, a granite profile and state symbol that crumbled in 2003. The mountain draws over 300,000 visitors a year.

The 65-year-old Presby, who has owned the railroad for nearly 40 years, said the project would partly fulfill his vision of bringing back hotels that once graced the mountain in the 1800s.

Among them was the Summit House Hotel, which burned down in 1908.

It would also bolster the Cog Railway’s role as an economic engine, something the company has prided itself on since the train first started running more than 150 years ago. The region, which has among the state’s lowest median income, is heavily reliant on tourism. The train brings 150,000 people each season up to the summit.

“The cog railway has been my life. I bought this place when I was 26-years-old,” Presby said. “My whole goal in owning the railroad was to bring it back to its preeminence.”

The Khotyn Fortress is a fortification complex located on the right bank of the Dniester River in Khotyn, Chernivtsi Oblast, Republic of Ukraine.

It is situated on a territory of the historical northern Bessarabia region which was split in 1940 between Ukraine and Moldova, the fortress is also located in a close proximity to another famous defensive structure, the Old Kam’yanets Castle of Kamianets-Podilskyi.

As a large tourist attraction in Ukraine, it stands on a rocky territory near a passage across the river Dnister, which makes the panorama of the fortress really amazing.

The Khotyn Fortress’s beginning goes back to the Khotyn Fort, which was built in the 10th century by Prince Vladimir Sviatoslavich as one of the border fortifications of southwestern Kievan Rus’, after he added the land of present-day Bukovina into his control.

The fort, which eventually was rebuilt into a fortress, was located on important transportation routes, which connected Scandinavia and Kiev with the Ponyzia (lowlands), Podillia, Genoese and Greek colonies on the Black Sea, through Moldavia and Wallachia, on the famous “trade route from the Varangians to the Greeks”.

Throughout the centuries, this fortress underwent many reconstructions and expansions, and was damaged by new conquerors, who would later rebuilt it, among who in 1250-1264, Prince Danylo of Halych and his son Lev.

They added a half-meter (20 in) stone wall and a 6-meter (20 ft) wide moat around the fortress.

In the northern part of the fortress, were added new military buildings as well. During the 1340s the Fortress was taken by Moldavian prince Dragos, a vassal of the Kingdom of Hungary.

After 1375 it was a part of the Principality of Moldavia, when the fortress greatly expanded.

In 1476, the garrison successfully held the Fortress against the Turkish army of Sultan Mehmed II, however, by the end of the 16th century Moldavia became a tributary principality of the Ottoman Empire.

As previously stated, there were many “owners” who won the fight over the fortress, but later were defeated by some other greater force.

This has happened until 1944, when the fortress was finally liberated from the occupators during World War II.

In September 1991, during the celebration of 370 years since the Battle of Khotyn of 1621, a monument made in the honor of Ukrainian Hetman, Petro Sahaidachnyi by the sculptor I. Hamal’.

Today, Khotyn is one of the biggest cities and an important industrial, tourist, and cultural center of the Chernivtsi oblast, and in 2002 it celebrated its 1000 year anniversary. Truly amazing!