Nuclear power in Ireland

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118572075#Comment_118572075

There are, I've posted them. Even mad crazy schemes like making hydrogen in Spain and a Nordstream II pipeline to deliver it are coming in way under the cost of one nuclear power plant for capital cost and electricity cost. Storage costs of £75m a year for 2/3rds of our annual gas usage are a rounding error compared to nuclear overruns.

Only some high strength steel alloys suffer from hydrogen embrittlement. Pipes can be lined from the inside.

Hydrogen is leaky so I can't see it being used for cars. But grid level storage under a couple hundred meters of rock, that's already being done. ICI used to store lots of different gases off Teeside.

Burning hydrogen in a computer controlled 600MW gas turbine is a little different to using it in an internal combustion engine like de Rivaz did in 1807 with the first hydrogen car.

And hydrogen wouldn't be needed while there's enough wind or sunshine and we have the kit to harvest them.

Ubbquittious

https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/22/02/13/239255/declaring-renaisance-for-french-nuclear-industry-french-president-promises-up-to-14-new-reactors-by-2050?sbsrc=md

Macron isn't digging the gloom anyway

end of the road

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118631253#Comment_118631253

because there is an election upcoming.

realistically they won't be built or not as many will be built due to the ridiculous cost.

Freddie Mcinerney

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118501904#Comment_118501904

Are those figures correct? Pure Uranium much cheaper than it ore?

cnocbui

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118632499#Comment_118632499

The cost is not riduclous as the fuel is inexpensive and they last 60 years. The LCOE of nuclear in the US is $76.88 with a capacity factor of 90%. Offshore wind is $120.52 for less than half the capacity factor at 44%. Even the operating and maintaiance costs of nuclear are lees than for offshore wind. And that offshore wind would probably realistically be near double that price if you were playing fair and included storage costs.

https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo/pdf/electricity_generation.pdf

end of the road

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118634478#Comment_118634478

all of the figures provided across multiple threads on the issue show you to be incorrect.

the fact is that nuclear is the most expensive form of power generation when examined against all of the other costs of every other power generation source and by quite a large margin.

this is just basic facts and economics.

it's not happening in ireland because it is not affordable, the closest you are getting is power imported from elsewhere that is using nuclear currently such as france, and even then that is not cheap but still cheaper then doing it ourselves.

NedsNotDead

Nuclear power makes perfect sense. Arguments otherwise makes no sense

end of the road

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118635479#Comment_118635479

it really really doesn't.

the costs of it are out of wack with all reality, it requires billions in subsidy and or high consumer charges, it's waste requires ongoing expensive storage, in the event it does have a melt down well that isn't sorted easily.

for a small country like ireland the economics just do not make any sense, even for bigger countries the economics are rubbish but if they have military use for it then that gives it a bit of a purpose.

even in the 50s when it might have made some sense gas was cheaper.

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118634478#Comment_118634478

US capacity factor may average 90% over a full year (if you ignore things like early retirement) but it dropped to near 75% for a few weeks back in October. It's not as 24/7 as advertised and needs a lot of redundancy. Hywind averaged 57.1% capacity factor last year which drastically reduces storage requirements for wind.

The more you look at nuclear the worse it gets.

If you assume a payback time of 30 years then best you can do is to triple annual nuclear power production. And that's in the face of increased demand for heat pumps, electric cars and industrial decarbonisation which will see demand soar.

Nuclear can't scale up without becoming even more uneconomic. When you double cost of extraction you only increase the recoverable uranium by a quarter.

Yes fuel is cheap enough at $94/kg. But that price has doubled since 2018 and there's lots of speculators in the market now.

For a recovery cost of $130/Kg present uranium reserves are 6m tonnes. So there's enough uranium to keep today's 400 reactors going for 100 years. But they only provide 10% of today's electrical demand or 10 years worth of global electrical demand. Or 3 years worth of total energy demand and the initial fuelling of a reactor takes ~3 years worth of fuel.

Capt'n Midnight

tl;dr version - unless you can build each GW of nuclear for less than the cost of 3GW of offshore wind there's no point.

If you install offshore wind equal to three times peak demand (3x33.8% =100%) then you will be able to meet peak demand 53% of the time with wind alone. Minimum demand is roughly half peak demand and would be met 74% of the time.

During the other 47% of the time peak demand could be met on average by ~23.5% from offshore wind and ~23.5% from other sources which can include gas, interconnectors, biomass, waste to energy , storage, demand shedding, hydro and solar. So would stay within 2030 target.

Graph from https://energynumbers.info/uk-offshore-wind-capacity-factors by Andrew ZP Smith, ORCID 0000-0002-8215-4526

McGinniesta

We can't start a data centre in Galway.

We made a mess of the luas.

The Children;s hospital has been a cluster f*ck of epic proportions.

Several high profile infrastructure projects have been put on the long finger.

If there is anyone out there that thinks nuclear power will ever be a thing in Ireland needs to wake up and smell the bacon?

Ubbquittious

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118639850#Comment_118639850

Most power station projects appear to complete without incident though. There isn't the same trail of cock ups with those.

Also if you get small modular reactors they just ship 'em in ready made and you shove a couple of wires into the back of them and away you go

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118640190#Comment_118640190

Rolls Royce want a £32Bn order before they start making SMR's. Then they say you'll have to wait only 20 years to get just 7GW. So you will have to depend on other low carbon power

You will notice that only the French, Russians, Chinese and South Koreans are still providing reactors since the Japanese and US companies more or less folded. You don't want to owe the Russians or Chinese money while they have direct or indirect control over your infrastructure. The French EPR design is a money pit that hasn't been debugged. They have a LONG history of problems with welds on the EPR's and previous generations of reactors.

That leaves the South Koreans. UAE signed a deal in $18.6Bn in 2009 for four reactors of which only one is fully operational. "Kepco said the deal will bring it about $49.4 billion in profits over 60 years"

McGinniesta

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118640190#Comment_118640190

This is Ireland though.

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118640751#Comment_118640751

If the UK who've been doing nuclear power since the 1950's and France who have the largest % of power from nuclear and with financial backing from both governments are dragging their heels over a new power plant and needing Chinese money to keep the project going then perhaps we should wait to see how it goes.

ESB International are their own consultancy company so there's that.

Excellent article covering the topic of nuke power in Ireland

https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/even-if-nuclear-power-was-safe-it-would-not-solve-the-climate-crisis-1.4802156

NedsNotDead

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118642851#Comment_118642851

Ah yes an article trashing nuclear power in the Green and Lefty bastion that is the Irish Times.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118643038#Comment_118643038

Feel free to point out the inaccuracies

tom1ie

So it costs £23 billion to build a 3.2GW nuclear plant.

How many GW of offshore wind can we get for £23 billion?

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118649574#Comment_118649574

Plant Vogtle units 3 and 4 will be the first new nuclear units built in the United States in the last three decades. They have been under construction since 2013 and were due to start producing power in 2016. And like clockwork "$30B Georgia Power Nuclear Plant Delayed up to 6 More Months"

We can't afford to wait 10 years for 2.2GW

We can't afford $30Bn for 2.2GW -

Scotland auctioned off the sites. So technically a negative cost. Offshore wind is expected to halve in cost by 2030.

This is what 24.8GW of wind looks like, enough to produce at least 6GW (Irish peak deamand) directly 2/3rds of the time. And meet our minimum demand 80% of time. And most of the rest of the time wind would still be making a significant contribution.

And there could be up to 20GW excess power available for storage or export.

Thanks to interconnection with England and here, Scotland is already carbon neutral for electricity in case.

tom1ie

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118649768#Comment_118649768

So the nuclear plant costs $30bn for 2.2GW, if we theoretically had this $30bn burning a hole in our pocket, how many GW of offshore wind could we get for $30bn.

Surely the answer to that question would decide this debate one way or the other?

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118649850#Comment_118649850

Probably 28.4GW by 2030 as costs are still falling.

The problem with nuclear is even if there was political will and general public support it would stlll take 15-20 years to roll out.

Which means you need wind in the meantime. Which means you will be comparing the price of nuclear power plants with the cost of refurbishment of those wind farms whose original costs were paid off during those 15-20 years.

Spend a bit more and reblade the turbines with bigger/better blades and you could capture up to 20% more energy for 20 more years.

RainInSummer

When the wind is blowing, or not blowing too much. It's a cute concept, but at it's best it's still at the whim of the weather gods.

Are ye the type of people to leave your house burn down with everyone in it because water costs too much, because it definitely sounds like that.

Arguing the toss over money while we're already seeing people impacted by climate change?

But fumble in a greasy till

And add the halfpence to the pence

cnocbui

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118649850#Comment_118649850

Going by the Scottish pricing for their latest offshore wind farms, the GW price of offshore wind is $4.634b. The most recently built reactors are in the UAE, where the price is $4.357 per GW. But it is of course not the full picture, because the capacity factor of Scottish offshore wind is 53% while that of a Korean nuclear is 96%, so your gas cost of filling the wind holes is also far higher for offshore wind, making it all round considerably more expensive than the latest nuclear plant - which has a design life of 60 years.

That above graph does not take into account the cost of hole filling.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118671930#Comment_118671930

Haven't seen lcoe broken out by region like that before, nice. What's the source of the graph?

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118671930#Comment_118671930

That UAE reactor is a loss leader being built in a desert by an autocratic regime using cheap labour.

Costs are ~$20Bn for construction, nearly $5bn for financing, and $49.4bn on top of that because KEPCO get to keep 18% of future revenue for the next 60 years. And they are getting paid extra to have techs on site for 10 years. Then there's the cost of fuel and decommissioning and cost overruns and construction delays. Not sure who pays for insurance etc.

And it's also being subsidised by cheap "clean" coal with funding from the Silk Road Fund which allows them to export more natural gas. It would cost billions more to pay 17,000 labourers EU wages and living costs for 3,000 Koreans.

I don't know how much it would cost to build here but I do know that the UK who have been in the market for 5 nuclear power plants since 2011 and are willing and able to pay top dollar aren't biting.

"That above graph does not take into account the cost of hole filling." - Because nuclear has no hole filling costs ? (Scaremongering would be to look at cost increases on the Sellafield clean up. TBH just make it a no-go nature reserve until the next Ice Age )

Ubbquittious

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118672466#Comment_118672466

When u think about it twould be no harm if a few more places became no-go nature reserves like Pripyat. Especially if you could get one in a sprawling metropolis like the BosWash or the Pearl River delta

Capt'n Midnight

Storing hydrogen in disused gas wells is a cheaper solution for backing up wind on dark calm days than building nuclear and running it at maximum 20% capacity factor. Especially when nuclear is up against the costs of solar and re-importing over interconnectors.

The UAE plant started construction in 2010 and won't be fully operational for years by which time we will have reduced emissions by 80% because were are legally obliged to do. Nuclear arriving after that can't displace existing wind or solar. Because it's cheaper to keep a wind farm running than build a nuclear power plant and finance it and pay for alternative power sources during the build and pay for decommissioning.

Also nuclear takes too long to roll out to play much of a role in decarbonisation. Energy to fuel, production of ammonia, heating, cooling, charging electric cars are all loads that can be scheduled to when electricity is cheap. Nuclear has constant costs so can't compete with demand shedding. Fertilizer and fuel production can be seasonal too.

cnocbui

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118672343#Comment_118672343

The International Energy Agency. https://www.iea.org/reports/projected-costs-of-generating-electricity-2020

cnocbui

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118672800#Comment_118672800

Nobody knows what a Hydrogen cycle would cost, so you are stating your wishful thinking, not facts.

The UAE reactor started construction in march 2011. The first reactor was commissioned and started feeding power to the grid in August 2020, the second reactor was commissioned in Sep 2021, so two to go, both of which should be commissioned next year.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barakah_nuclear_power_plant

Nuclear has done more decarbonising than any other power source except hydro. Would you just stop with the rampant dishonesty.

Yes nuclear takes longer to build than offshore wind, but it lasts a decade longer and is far cheaper and you don't have to worry, year to year, whether there is going to be enough wind, like the past year.