Brit nuclear reactor planned for Ireland?

Greensleeves wrote: »

But if sufficient nuclear plants were built quickly enough CO2 emissions would start to fall and the sea levels wouldn't rise!

Here's a graphic from the Guardian showing the planned expansion of new nuclear capacity across the world between 2013 and 2018. If the graphic is accurate China is investing heavily in nuclear which might be a good thing if the nuclear replaces coal.

In 2006 alone China completed 70GW of coal plants. That's three times what the graphic shows for China for all the years.

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/interactive/2013/oct/21/nuclear-power-growing-world-interactive

That graphic doesn't include plants due to close

Germany has been installing 7.5GW of solar every year.

Globally there should be 40GW solar installed world wide this year up from 35 last year and 32 the year before.



And here's the thing with solar, the spend on solar in Germany has gone down a bit in the last few years but the amount installed has gone up because the price is falling so fast.


China should have 100GW wind in the next 3 years. The nuclear figures are dwarfed by solar / wind / hydro there.


I'd take the North Korean figures with a pinch of salt. Yes they have restarted reactors, but I'd like a link to confirm they have built new ones recently.

UAE is a year earlier than I've seen elsewhere

The French reactor due in 2016 was started in 2007, or look at how long it will take to build Hinkley even though there are few other reactors under construction in Europe.

SeanW wrote: »

A fair bit I imagine, and it tends to be needed when the sun isn't shining. And very often when the wind isn't blowing either.

That's why we have interconnectors, existing gas plants, Norwegian hydro etc.

The point was that heating loads can be shed in the short term to load balance , for grid stability or reduce the amount of spinning reserve.

And lets be totally clear about Nuclear, it requires spinning reserve of at least the size of a reactor. That is a load of overhead. For Ireland that would mean that we'd need up to 1,600MW spare capacity - half our summer load.

Only you can't build houses near them, because the human quality of life impacts are extreme

Why would you want to build a house in places that wind turbine are normally located ?

The whole ribbon development is another debate.

And Ireland's wind patterns mean that they're all either going furiously, or not at all.

Done to death.
If you play the boogeyman of low wind then I can play the boogeyman of a reactor scram followed by three days offline because of Xenon poisoning. But wind is predictable.

Offshore wind requires massively higher subsidies, even higher than on-shore, (if you can imagine), again, you don't have to build nukes at sea to get better conditions like you do wind turbines.

of course it's more expensive, but it bypases the Nimby's.

One of my gripes with the nuclear industry is the consistent lack of contingency planning. Of course you don't have to put the nuclear plant at sea level, but almost everyone does. Of course you can build a nuclear plant in a cave or hole so you can easily seal it later. Only the Swiss did that, and yes they had to seal it. Jellyfish are still an unresolved problem.

So how can you say "Where will the uranium come from?" when you oppose mining for it and even exploration?

I don't remember opposing exploration. But would I be right in saying it was located in granite ?

And if so then how could it be mined economically.

You keep asking "what will happen if there is no wind ?" despite eirgrid managing wind and being told that we already have surplus generation capacity here.

I keep asking fundamental energy questions about how it's possible to extract enough uranium from granite or how thorium can be breed fast enough.

Same view I had about your plan to recover hydrogen from methanol ... wouldn't it be more practical just to burn the methanol? Isn't getting the methanol the hard part?

Like I keep saying hydrogen is difficult to store. One way is to make methanol using it. This can be used as a petrol substitute. At present it's expensive to do. But it just shows that there are options for using surplus renewable energy.

And "a generation or two" is exactly what will be needed before any of the stuff you've been going on about will be practical. At best.

Wind is practical and there are economies of scale to be exploited.
Solar is practical - even in the UK . Costs are falling and efficiencies are rising
Tidal turbines have been tested and are being commercialised
Hydro is just expensive.
Geothermal is also expensive , but worthwhile for other countries.
Waste to energy, biomass and others contribute small amounts too.

It's probably better to install more renewables than attempt storage but compressed air energy storage is interesting


Nuclear is a blank cheque for a one trick pony. It can do baseload for twice the wholesale price. Yes there is some load following ability , but it's very slow compared to other generators. And it requires changes that affect efficiency.

Germany Hits 59% Renewable Peak, Grid Does Not Explode
https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/Germany-Hits-59-Renewable-Peak-Grid-Does-Not-Explode






Here's a study from the South West USA that debunks a lot of the nonsense about cycling of fossil fuel to balance renewables. - They have more solar and more air con loads, but the main thing to take from this is the additional costs of having fossil fuel load balance to match wind are less than 2.5% of the fuel savings.

https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/What-Are-The-Impacts-of-High-Wind-and-Solar-Penetration-on-The-Grid

The study also finds that the carbon emissions induced by more frequent cycling are negligible (<0.2%) compared with the carbon reductions achieved through the wind and solar power generation evaluated in the study.
...
The study also finds that high levels of wind and solar power would reduce fossil fuel costs by approximately $7 billion per year across the West, while incurring cycling costs of $35 million to $157 million per year.
...
She adds, "This graph shows the cycling cost for the average fossil-fueled plant in each of the scenarios. You can see that starts, not ramps, drive wear-and-tear costs."

the one I quoted earlier was
http://nextbigfuture.com/2012/12/the-lowest-cost-combinationof-wind.html , North West USA which would be more like us.

Curly Judge wrote: »

From one of your own links:

This looks like it would cost a lot more than building nuclear power or some other mix of power generation. This is a link to the EIA levelized cost of energy.

It looks like this approach would cost about 2 to 3 times more than a mostly nuclear power approach.
http://nextbigfuture.com/2012/12/the...onof-wind.html

You should really be more careful Capt', some people actually do read some of your links

good to know people are reading

And here comes the old chestnut about nuclear costs not being transparent. And that nuclear isn't getting cheaper while renewables are still falling faster than interest rates.



levelised costs were from http://www.eia.gov/forecasts/aeo/assumptions/pdf/electricity.pdf
go to page 220

The High Nuclear case assumes that all existing nuclear units will receive a second license renewal and operate beyond 60
years (excluding one announced retirement). In the Reference case, beyond the announced retirement of Oyster Creek, an
additional 6.5 gigawatts of nuclear capacity is assumed to be retired through 2040, reflecting uncertainty about the impacts
and/or costs of future aging. The High Nuclear case was run to provide a more optimistic outlook, with all licenses renewed and
all plants continuing to operate economically beyond 60 years. The High Nuclear case also assumes that additional planned
nuclear capacity is completed, based on combined license applications issued by the NRC and where an NRC or Atomic Safety
and Licensing Board hearing has been scheduled. The Reference case assumes that 5.5 gigawatts of planned capacity are
added, compared with 13.3 gigawatts of planned capacity additions in the High Nuclear case.
• The Small Modular Reactor case assumes that new advanced nuclear plants built after 2025 will be based on a smaller modular
design rather than the larger AP1000 design used in the Reference case. The overnight costs are assumed to be the same
as in the Reference case, but the construction lead time is reduced from 6 years to 3 years for the smaller design. The fixed
operating and maintenance costs are assumed to be higher for the smaller design. To account for the time necessary for design
certification, the first available online date for the small reactors is assumed to be 2025

I don't believe that all US reactors will stay open
That report was in April 2013, and 4 reactors have already shut down since
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/sep/24/us-nuclear-power-closures

Page 46

Moody’s credit rating agency has described large
nuclear power plants as bet-the-farm endeavors for most companies, given the size of the investment and length of time needed
to build a nuclear power facility [94], as highlighted by comparisons of the costs of building nuclear power plants with the overall
sizes of the companies building them
...
AEO2013assumes that the overnight cost of a 2,200-megawatt nuclear power plant is
approximately $12 billion, which is a significant share of the market capitalization of some of the nation’s largest electric power
companies. For example, the largest publicly traded company that owns nuclear power plants in the United States has a market
capitalization of about $50 billion [95]

Hmm, that's an interesting argument against nuclear


The report uses the phrase "advanced reactor" for it's costs. If it's based on the smaller modular design then I am still saying that they haven't been commercialised despite being in use since 1955. If on the other hand they are a new design then it hasn't been built yet and the economics are a crapshoot.




A comparison I'd make is with the VASMIR engine
http://www.nasa.gov/audience/foreducators/k-4/features/F_Engine_That_Does_More.html

Although VASIMR is still years away from being used in space, Chang-Diaz said that it has already shown great promise during tests on Earth. So, it is entirely possible that the engine that will carry the first person to Mars is already running in a laboratory on Earth.

Sounds good until you look at the power requirements, the costs and the fact that the Russians have been using https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hall_effect_thruster in orbit since the 1971, over 200 used with no failures.

Like the VASMIR the nuclear industry keep promising "new technology" in X years time that will be Y times better than what we have, while completely ignoring all the proven technology that's already in use or under development else where.

Yes in theory the new individual modular reactors may be cheaper, but if you don't get a volume of scale sufficient to adsorb the R&D costs then the program will be more expensive. Look at the B2 bomber or space shuttle for non-nuclear examples or the flyaway costs for the latest fighters compared to the overall spend. Then again the new reactors may be white elephants like a lot of experimental reactors over the years.

SeanW wrote: »

Sorry for posting-and-running, but I've been very busy last few weeks

I'm dreading the Christmas rush.

I plan to address some more of this over the weekend, but very quickly I would like to ask:

Why do you continue to post about the German wholesale price when you know full well that it is irrelevant given the nature and scale of the interference in that market? Not to mention the instability of a price that go as low as -€100? How is the figure in any way meaningful when you know that German people are paying about 8 times that?

8 times -€100 ?

Isn't that price only in parts of the US where they have some truly insane rules that allowed the likes of Enron to send power out of a state to cause a shortfall and then reimport the same power on the other end of the grid at a premium price.

But seriously it shows that at times there is surplus electricity available to be used. Hadn't realised the response time was as low as one second. http://www.itm-power.com/news-item/first-sale-of-power-to-gas-plant-in-germany/

Power to gas energy storage is rapidly growing in significance in Germany and this deployment with Thüga-Group is the largest ever PEM Electrolyser deployment in a Power-to-Gas application to date. PEM electrolysers are able to respond rapidly to fluctuating renewable inputs and so are able to store renewable energy as hydrogen for injection into the gas grid. The ITM Power technology is unique since it can respond in one second and is self-pressurising up to 80bar, permitting direct injection into the German gas grid.

The thing about German rates is that the wholesale price is a fraction of the retail price because of politics. We can agree to disagree on the relevance of each, if you claim that renewables make it expensive for the retail customer I'll remind you that the wholesale price is that the stuff gets when exported to Austria and Switzerland