Ireland and Nuclear Power

timmyntc

Sam Russell wrote: »

The problem facing Japan was losing a large percentage of their generating capacity in one go. If we go nuclear, we will not have five separate plants, we will probably have just one capable of supplying over 50% of our requirement. If that shutdown, we would be back to candles.

Technology is trumped by physics. The half life of nuclear fuel is not changed by technology.

If we go nuclear, we will have to have separate plants - our grid couldn't handle one large centralized plant trying to supply the entire country or even close to that - you'd need 2 or 3 regionally located plants to supply large areas of the population.
And as battery technology improves and large scale batteries becoming more cost effective it'll be even less of an issue.
Besides, there's no reason they can't have fossil fuel burning plants as backups in the event of a plant shutdown.

As for nuclear waste, certain types of reactors produce waste that can be reused for other reactions and other purposes - and I don't mean making bombs. However there will always be some waste that needs either treated or buried somewhere - imo a well regulated 'burial site' for nuclear waste is much more preferable to having toxic emissions coming out of coal plants and the like.

MayoSalmon

Centralized power generation is not the future especially for a country like Ireland with such a dispersed population. Nuclear will never set foot on this island nor should it really!

Water John

The problem with any back up is, time lag. How long it takes to kick in if a sudden unscheduled breakdown or loss of output occurs.
That is why the spinning reserve has to be working generally.
Pumped storage and Hydro are the quickest response. That is why they are used to regulate the current.
We have closed cycle gas turbines. Yes, they are more efficient than open cycle but then the output cannot be varied, which would an ideal blend with RE.

Dispersed storage, the beginnings of which are those Tesla wall packs need to become widespread and tied in with smart metering.

Opposition to nuclear must have a rational basis. I would be against what has been, conventional nuclear plant, but would have an open mind to better alternatives of the same tech.
If we are simply paranoid about nuclear, then we have to stop a lot of other radioactive uses like radiotherapy etc.

12Phase

All the technical and economic arguments in the world don't get past the fact that it is probably a political impossibility.

It's one of the most anti nuclear countries in Europe.

dr.fuzzenstein

Water John wrote: »

One of the prime tasks is either to make Moneypoint almost clean, with newer tech or shut it down.

Actually that has been done, I think it was Siemens that was involved in a major refit there. All fumes are now scrubbed.
Of course people now forget that leaves vastly more crap to be disposed of than any nuclear plant.

Consonata

Technology is trumped by physics. The half life of nuclear fuel is not changed by technology.

Yes half life stays the same, but modern plants use the fuel much more efficiently thus producing less nuclear waste. You are talking about a very different thing.

In uranium, there are different isotopes. One is much much more abundant, one is not. In the past we had to get through that abundant material to actually get to the part of the Uranium that can be used for fission. That is not the case anymore. As technology progresses we can get those parts much easily and plants are much more efficient than (shocker, I know) chernobyl, or any of those plants that you were referencing in Scotland, which were built in the 50s!

As to your point about having the one plant. That is true. If we were to build a plant we couldn't just have the one power plant powering the entirety of Ireland. But who is to say we can't have Coal and Oil plants in the background powering in the event of a shutdown. Or even to have two smaller nuclear plants, maybe 1 reactor each. One acting as the backup for the other. There are many ways to have backup generation, and as battery technology continues to improved, we could have vast amounts of stored energy to keep the country struggling on for a couple of hours while we get back up generation going.

Sierra Oscar

Sam Russell wrote: »

Japan has a serious problem following the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster because they lost a significant amount of generation power - not to mention the radioactive fallout. If we had a single power plant, its shutdown would shut down the country, so we would need diversity - say three plants in different places.

In the unlikely event of an accident taking place couldn't we import electricity on a temporary basis, like we do currently?

The European Energy sector is due to develop further in the years ahead too. Surely there should be ample electricity available on the European market in the years ahead if an accident occurred??

Sam Russell

Sierra Oscar wrote: »

In the unlikely event of an accident taking place couldn't we import electricity on a temporary basis, like we do currently?

The European Energy sector is due to develop further in the years ahead too. Surely there should be ample electricity available on the European market in the years ahead if an accident occurred??

Unfortunately, you lose power by transporting it. Inter-connectors are wasteful beasts and are really used to balance loads. Importing electricity from France, say, would be only worthwhile if we got it cheap as it costs a lot to build a connector that far.

Water John

Was their any further dev on the proposed Western European super grid?

There is also plans for an interconnector from Cork to France.

Super grid could provide a back up facility.
The best solution still is a mix of generation and storage capacities.
Forgot pressurized air as storage option, earlier.

Markcheese

timmyntc wrote:

As for nuclear waste, certain types of reactors produce waste that can be reused for other reactions and other purposes - and I don't mean making bombs. However there will always be some waste that needs either treated or buried somewhere - imo a well regulated 'burial site' for nuclear waste is much more preferable to having toxic emissions coming out of coal plants and the like.

They're doing that in france for high level waste ... its not too expensive ... till you start decomissioning plants..

12Phase

Dr_Bill wrote: »

How much do you think Ireland will be charged per Kwh when we buy our electricity off the Brits over the next 35 years?

Probably a competitive rate as we've options to connect further afield potentially and they're competitive with whatever we can do domestically.

They're commercial companies selling us energy, not doing us a favour for some political purpose.