Will Bertie close Moneypoint?

TomF

With the Kyoto treaty in the news lately, I was reminded that Ireland is in trouble for CO2 emissions with all the cars sitting in tailbacks in Dublin, Cork, Limerick, Galway, etc., pouring the exhaust into the air.

The story I have heard is that Bertie will have to close Moneypoint power station down to meet Ireland's quota of CO2. I suppose this means that we can all modify our lifestyles somewhat to use power from Airtricity and other wind generators (when all the lawsuits about bogslides are settled), and perhaps it means that Cork may eventually have to remove the "nuclear-free zone" (hee, hee) signs on city approaches when Bertie, Enda and Co. realise that maybe France and Chicago aren't completely wrong about building nuclear power plants.

Is the political will there for Moneypoint to be closed? The lead time for a nuclear station is long, but it wouldn't take too long to festoon the mountains south of Dublin and the Cliffs of Moher with wind generators.

OfflerCrocGod

All we need is to setup TomF in front of the wind turbines and let him rip......plenty of air/wind there

mike65

Moneypoints future is proberly dependent on a number of factors including local politics, cost cost up upgrading the scrubbers (assuming its got any at all) and alternative supplies. When the interconnectors are beefed up we could stop producing any "dirty" power ourselves...though that would'nt be politcially acceptable I'm sure.

edit -

Lurgi Lentjes wins major order from Ireland
Order worth about €150 million
Construction of a flue gas cleaning plant
Strong reduction in environmental emissions

Frankfurt am Main, August 25, 2004: Lurgi Lentjes AG, Düsseldorf, a subsidiary of mg technologies ag, has won a contract to build a flue gas cleaning plant for Money-point power station in Ireland. The order is worth about €150 million and was awarded by the Irish power utility ESB (Electricity Supply Board). This project represents an-other major order for Lurgi Lentjes.

Lurgi Lentjes is to build a total of three flue gas cleaning lines for the three 305 mega-watt units of the Moneypoint power station by 2008 and is to gradually integrate them into the existing plant while it is in operation. Lurgi Lentjes’ state-of-the-art denitrification and desulfurization technology will ensure that Moneypoint will fully comply with its obligations under the Large Combustion Plant Directive. This technology can cut nitrogen oxide emissions by more than 85 percent using the selective catalytic reduc-tion process and sulphur dioxide emissions by over 90 percent using the dry circulation fluidized bed desulphurisation process. The coal-fired Moneypoint power station supplies around twenty five percent of the country’s total energy needs.

Besides references for generation of power and steam with combined cycle power plants, Lurgi Lentjes owns innovative proprietary technologies and processes that convert residual and other waste materials into valuable energy and technologies to keep the air clean. As a world leader in these technologies, Lurgi Lentjes combines efficient waste treatment with power generation to protect natural resourses

Mike.

bonkey

Moneypoint is currently at the end of its original psorjected lifespan (although for anyone like me old enough to remember it being built, I bet it only seems like yesterday).

However, to the best of my knowledge, the ESB (possibly/probably after some consultation with the govt) approved significant expenditure to overhaul and modernise the station.

I don't ahve any of the costs/details to hand but the basics that I rember were :

1) With a maximum production of just over 1TW, Moneypoint produces something like 1/3 of the nation's power. It is simply not viable to shut it down at this point in time.

2) For its time, its size, and its nature (coal-burning) it was an incredibly efficient and clean station.

3) The overhaul includes the improvement of the current filters, as well as the addition of (at least) sulphur-scrubbers.

Going on from that, the notion of resorting to nuclear power is laughable. Ireland is (I believe) second or third in Europe in terms of wind/wave generation potential. Not only that, but its not just about political will. I genuinely believe that any government who had the "political will" (as TomF so blithely puts it...I'd call it "blind stupidity") to puyt a nuclear power station in Ireland would be faced by civil protest for the rest of their term of office, which - possibly foreshortened - would terminate in a crushing defeat as the public turned to anyone else who offered to keep Ireland nuclear free.

But maybe thats just me...

jc

mike65

Wind power is not the answer to Irelands supply problems as the power current it generates cant be stored. No wind = no power. So its only of any help as a supplement. As for the Nulcear option well chances are we'll never see one here if only on cost grounds but there are strong signals elsewhere
suggesting a new generation of reactors will be built in the next 10-15 years.

http://business.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=1275372004
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2095-1324967,00.html
http://www.isn.ethz.ch/news/sw/details.cfm?ID=9951
http://www.timesleader.com/mld/timesleader/10101946.htm

With the proposed interconnectors with Wales we will then have a supply which
could be from any number of countries including say France which is nearly 80% nuke. So the idea we are a nuclear free zone will be true only in a physical sense.



Mike.

Moriarty

bonkey wrote:

1) With a maximum production of just over 1TW, Moneypoint produces something like 1/3 of the nation's power. It is simply not viable to shut it down at this point in time.

It's apparently starting to hit about 40% at some peak times now with recent upgrades and some other power plants having failures with moneypoint having to pick up the difference.

Moneypoint's future is secure for the next 10 years, or as long as we all want to keep the lights on in any case.

TomF

I remember driving out to see the Moneypoint site in October 1983. I couldn't get too near because of fencing and gates. I also remember at dinnertime the pubs in Kilrush were full of men away from their jobs working on the power plant having their liquid and solid nourishment. I gave a lift to a man from Loop Head who had walked to make application for work. He had to park his car several miles from the gate.

It's hard to believe that was 21 years ago, but it seems to me that 21 years isn't too long in a power plant's lifetime, not the way continuous maintenance and improvements are done these days.

Does ESB think this German flue gas cleaning technology will remove carbon dioxide (CO2)? I thought it was only strong acids like sulfuric and nitric that were removed and weak acids like CO2 just passed right through to the atmosphere.

At any rate, it is going to take some serious €€ investment in the station to get Ireland under the CO2 limit, and that means some serious political risk for Bertie or his successor(s).

On the nuclear option, how is it different for us to consume electricity supplied through an undersea cable from Scotland to Northern Ireland and then by overhead lines to the Republic when a significant fraction of that power may have been generated at nuclear power stations in England?

Is opposition to a nuclear power plant in Ireland a matter of distrusting "feckless" Irish engineers/workmen/managers/politicians to actually be able to build and operate a nuclear plant here? What do the French and the Chicagoans have that we don't have here: expertise? inventiveness? enterprise? fewer Luddites?

Redleslie2

TomF wrote:

Is opposition to a nuclear power plant in Ireland a matter of distrusting "feckless" Irish engineers/workmen/managers/politicians to actually be able to build and operate a nuclear plant here? What do the French and the Chicagoans have that we don't have here: expertise? inventiveness? enterprise? fewer Luddites?

Dunno, maybe the fairy folk should be consulted. We braindead alky peasants just don't have a clue do we Tomf.

Ireland - Do be lovin' it or do be leavin' it.