Nuclear - future for Ireland?

KildareP

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119790881#Comment_119790881

Well for a simple question, no-one seems to be able to answer it when arguing for pursuing renewable-only solutions in isolation...

KildareP

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119790901#Comment_119790901

We had a period during the Summer gone of about 5-6 weeks where wind generation remained in the very low single digit percentages of total demand on the Eirgrid dashboard simply because there was so little wind blowing annywhere. Adding more turbines isn't going to significantly increase production if the wind just isn't there.

That's a significant amount of hydrogen to be produced and stored to cover such shortfalls.

Planning is part of the problem - we know what we're getting with nuclear. No-one has a clue what renewables and hydrogen will produce and how much of it will actually be needed.

bk

"Well for a simple question, no-one seems to be able to answer it when arguing for pursuing renewable-only solutions in isolation..."

Oh, FFS, so you won't answer the question!

How do you back up your Nuclear power plant come 2050?

josip

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119790959#Comment_119790959

Summer lulls could be partially covered by solar. And onshore lulls do not mean offshore lulls.

cnocbui

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119789071#Comment_119789071

It took 8 years from start of construction at Barakah to the first reactor going live - and that is with problems and delays - in SK they have built NPPs in 4 years and had hoped to do it in 5 at Barakah.

Ireland could never have a NPP built without bypassing it's unworkable planning retard-fest. With legislation exempting a NPP from the usual shi​tbaggery, this country could have a zero CO2 grid about 15 years ahead of the 2050 target, which will be missed by about two decades on the current course , or more likely, never achived.

Nuclear is the fastest and 100% guaranteed route to net zero. Even Greta has seen the light. The IPCC has always been for nuclear.

The funny thing about that ESB video by Dr Meadhbh Connolly about the ESB BS strategy, is the channel hosting it -> EngineersIreland. The recently appointed head of that organisation has said that this country needs to look at nuclear - he probably knows as well as I do that the ESB strategy would cost more than this country could ever afford and is technically unachievable with the limited technical and engineering capacity of this country and certainly isn't within the ludicrous timeframe which will never be met with renewables and the ESB hopium.

About that France 70% thing. At this moment, 62% of France's grid is nuclear powered, yet you are always banging on about half their reactors being down for maintainance. That means that were they all working, they could power 120% of the current grid demand.

I imagine it's that the 70% you quoted is simply the same as our grid where renewables can't exceed about 70% because other sources have to be in the mix for stability and safety. So really France has actually had the capacity to be 100+% nuclear, but chooses not to, but instead earns an absolute packet exporting that 50% of grid demand surplus to Europe and the poor non nuke countries.

France is the world's largest net exporter of electricity due to its very low cost of generation, and gains over €3 billion per year from this.

If the greedy government had ploughed some of that back into better maintainance, the current problems might have been avoided

Imagine, every 2 years they earn enough from exports to build another nuclear reactor.

bk

The idea here is really very simple, we become the Norway of Wind.

We build lots of excess wind power and interconnectors and when we have excess wind we sell it abroad and make lots of money from it. When the wind isn't blowing, then we import over the interconnectors. Of course with so much excess wind, the amount of times we need to import will go down substantially as even if those winds farms are only producing at reduced capacity, there are so many, that most of the time it will be enough to cover our needs.

Sure there might be a 4 to 5 week lull in Summer, but that is less downtime then having half your Nuclear power plants offline for more then 6 months. If the French can rely on their interconnectors for so long to power their grid, no reason we can't do the same for a few weeks.

As for who pays for all this. It pays for itself!

Really, we will make a lot of money exporting clean renewable energy to mainland Europe. More then enough to pay for itself.

Just like Norway has WAY more generating capacity, hydro plants and interconnectors then it actually needs, because it makes loads of money exporting to the rest of Europe.

Even France normally makes a lot of money exporting to it's neighbours when all their Nuclear power plants are up. Exporting excess electricity is a nice business.

And hell I talk of us becoming the Norway of Europe, but they are doing the same and even better then us. Despite having loads of oil and gas and vast hydro, they are planning to add 30GW of offshore, mostly just to export it and sell it!

And to be honest, I really hope mainland Europe continues to go for Nuclear, that when our wind isn't blowing, we will be importing nice French Nuclear power.

But Nuclear doesn't make a lot of sense for us, we have zero experience with it, we are too small a grid for large reactors, we need to wait and see how SMR's develop, etc.

But we are blessed (and cursed, LOL) with incredible amounts of wind energy and it would be idiotic not to make the most of it.

cnocbui

All the best onshore wind sites are taken. Offshore wind costs more than double that of nuclear, so your 'simple' just build lots of excess capacity idea is incredibly expensive. I mean, really, really expensive.

But don't worry, that is exactly what the ESB master plan is based on, so you will get to see your idea put into practice and get to pay for every cent of it.

bk

"All the best onshore wind sites are taken. Offshore wind costs more than double that of nuclear, so your 'simple' just build lots of excess capacity idea is incredibly expensive. I mean, really, really expensive."

What are you talking about. We are planning to to add 4GW of onshore wind over the next few years. Just over the past few weeks a number of onshore wind projects were announced, got planning permission or went forward for planning. Plenty of onshore wind yet to be built in Ireland.

As for offshore wind being more expensive then new Nuclear! What are you talking about!

Look at the UK, offshore wind farms come in at a strike price of £37.35, by comparison Hinkley Point C comes in at £106.12, not even close!

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119789705#Comment_119789705

Might have something to do with the Russian gas pipeline being abruptly cut off ?

Germany's move to renewables. This is being accelerated 2035 is the target for 100% renewables. There's no way nuclear can rolled out on that time scale even if you could afford the interest payments on the loans.

More wind in the second half of the week. Solar is taking a good bit of peaking demand too.

Nuclear power in Germany compared to the stable output of Biomass. The big drop in January can be explained by plants being shutdown. The other drops show that nuclear isn't as dependable as it's supporters like to claim.

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119790681#Comment_119790681

The answer won't be 100% nuclear - no more than the answer will be 100% renewables. It has to be a mix of both. Pretending renewables can somehow deliver what nuclear somehow can't makes no practical or logical sense.

When the grid can take 95% renewables we will be able to accommodate more wind than we could nuclear.

Getting to a point where Either nuclear OR renewables provide 50% of the power is relatively easy. After that you hit diminishing returns and nuclear soaks up more time and up front costs.

If you don't mind having all your eggs in one basket Nuclear can provide expensive baseload. A one trick pony. (And not totally reliable)

You will still need 1GW daily peaking plant though solar can do a good bit of this cheaply in summer. But you will an need 1GW extra base load all through winter. And an extra 1GW in winter if it gets really cold.

You will also need spinning reserve to cover the largest generator on the grid and reactors tend to be bigger than gas turbines and way bigger than most wind farms never mind individual wind turbines.

This peaking plant could be wind when it's windy in winter and gas or storage or interconnectors when it's not.

Here's the thing. We already get 50% of our electricity from wind in February, out of a max 75% allowed on the grid. 2/3rds , even France relied on imports/exports to Germany , UK , Spain , Italy , Switzerland, Belgium and Luxembourg (hydro) AND a massive roll out of electrical heating to incorporate 2/3rds nuclear.

Yes you can mix wind and solar and nuclear on a grid. But on a grid that can accommodate up to 95% non-synchronous generation you only have a guarantee of 5% baseload all the time. There won't be enough magical dark calm days to justify an investment in a "always-on" generator like nuclear. Peaking plant or storage would be cheaper even if the electricity cost more than nuclear.

And yes you are right about continued investment in nuclear. But in France's case they were already investing (in repairs), they were already building the next generation of plant. And then they got with even more repairs. It's a saga that the US went through a while back. With nuclear corrosion is a fact of life as are transformer outages. And jellyfish. On a small grid like ours all the eggs would be in one basket.

Birdnuts

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119792289#Comment_119792289

Planning is a mess when it comes to wind, as the Derrybrein case etc. proves. Do you also want to see potential MPA's carpeted with wind farm junk too?? Germany has plenty of offshore wind and it hasn't stopped them flailing around for much needed fossil back up after their idiotic decision to shutter nuclear

bk

"Planning is a mess when it comes to wind, as the Derrybrein case etc. proves. Do you also want to see potential MPA's carpeted with wind farm junk too??"

I want to see wind farms built everywhere that is suitable.

We have over 300 wind farms, just because mistakes were made with one of them, doesn't mean we won't continue to see wind farms being built. For example just a few weeks ago a new wind farm Kerry got ABP planning approval. Lots of projects in the pipeline.

Also I find it hilarious that some of you are pointing out the difficulties with regards to planning permission for wind farms. If we are struggling to get planning for wind farms done, it would be pretty much impossible to get planning for a Nuclear power plant.

Seriously Wind farms are a pretty tested and widely deployed technology in Ireland and we sometimes still struggle. Can you imagine a Nuclear Power plant trying to get through ABP !

cnocbui

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119792289#Comment_119792289

"There is less space for onshore wind now, we have used up a lot of the better sites and those that remain have issues in relation to environmental sensitivities," Mr McCann said.

"We do have to take care in planning future capacity," he added.

https://www.rte.ie/news/2021/1230/1269242-wind-energy/

In terms of the cost of offshore wind vs nuclear: https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119708973/#Comment_119708973

josip

When you think about it, Carnsore Point wasn't a great location for a nuclear power station from a political point of view. Maybe it was chosen because the prevailing south westerlies would bring the radiation from any accident across the Irish Sea. But Carnsore point was too close to east coast objectors to get to.

It might have stood a better chance if it had been proposed at the opposite side of the country, where fewer people would have been prepared to travel to and it would have gotten across the line. Donegal is a bit far and impractical but somewhere like Belmullet would be a good site for a NPP?

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119793934#Comment_119793934

In the last 10 years Germany has shut down 6 nuclear power plants totalling about 8GW. About 10% of peak demand. Biomass is now providing more stable baseload than nuclear.

The three newest plants that are still in operation started construction in 1982. The others were older so many would have been retired anyway. On of the new plants is offine. They had to do a minor repair. But they will now have to refuel in order to start it up again. Should only be down for a week but I wouldn't be surprised if it's longer. And this is a plant that will close forever in a few months time.

Siemens the company that built of Germany's nuclear power plants left the sector in 2011 and now does a lot of renewables. So Germany would have to resurrect 40 year old designs or buy in foreign plants, or develop the sector from scratch, by 2035 because that's the target date.

tinytobe

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118286057#Comment_118286057

Overall I think what's important is that the economy and industry has access to cheap energy.

However on the other side, in Canada the province of Ontario has like 60% of electricity from nuclear power. For the average citizen the bills didn't come down.

I think none of us have the insight to really have a qualified discussion about it.

Large parts of society in Europe don't want nuclear energy as well, so the discussion is almost always emotional.

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119796391#Comment_119796391

You'd have to put it somewhere. Chooz is a French one that is almost surround by Belgium. It would be like us putting one in the northernmost point of Monaghan.

Carnsore point is as remote as you can get on the east/south east coast where the demand is. It's low lying so we would have had to have flood defences upgrades at a mouth watering cost by now.

Nuclear has to have good grid connections able to handle GW loads which rules out much of the west coast.

josip

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119797283#Comment_119797283

But the places with the best grid connections are usually the ones with the highest population centres which would make it nearly impossible to get planning. Someone suggested Moneypoint a few pages back, since it would already have a decent grid connection. But even that might be too close to civilisation to have a chance of getting planning.

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119797824#Comment_119797824

Moneypoint already has generators. Then again nuclear takes ages to rollout on greenfield sites in places where public opinion matters so might not be any overlap.

A Shannon barrage would probably be quicker and cheaper to build if you could get planning permission.

Could Galway do with a large generator ?

Birdnuts

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119794930#Comment_119794930

One of them?? There have been several windfarm related peat landslides over the last few years, look up the Mweenbog Windfarm disaster in Donegal which got planning against the advice of ABP's own inspector and is now the subject of criminal proceedings on both sides of the border. 2 weeks ago the same planning body that continues to be under investigation for malpractice gave the go ahead for a windfarm in east Clare in an area with a history of landslides. As we speak BNM continues to pump vast amounts of peat silt laden water into the Shannon(adding to pollution and flooding problems in the catchment) to prepare for more industrial windfarms on sites that were supposed to be restored as raised bogs under the "Just Transition" and currently host various EU protected species.

Birdnuts

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119797151#Comment_119797151

Ah yes Biomass - proving to be about as green as the wind scam

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/09/07/world/europe/eu-logging-wood-pellets.html

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119797193#Comment_119797193

Nuclear relies on political and hence public goodwill to a greater degree and over a much longer time than other energy sources.

Cheap, good, fast - pick two.

Nuclear isn't cheap. It's only cheap compared to fossil fuel during a crisis , like 1973 or today. It has to be cheap for 30-60 years to justify the initial investment and financing. Solar and battery storage costs have dropped 90% in the last decade.

Nuclear isn't fast. 15 years to build a plant and that's if there is no show-stopper. Historically many nuclear projects were abandoned before completion. It's a hidden cost.

Nuclear isn't good. It simply isn't reliable enough to justify the costs and delays. Having multiple nuclear power plants go off line simultaneously isn't a rare event. You can mitigate with storage and backup but that just means you could have been getting renewable power a decade earlier.

Cheap, good, fast - none.

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119798442#Comment_119798442

Renewables provided 49% of Germany's electricity in the first half of this year.

Germany's biomass isn't based on imported wood. Most is from locally grown energy crops.

Yes Drax is a disaster but it's in the UK.

SeanW

Sizewell B construction phase was 7 years, not 15. I find the idea that countries/regions like Ontario Canada, France, Sweden and Switzerland acted irrationally to be quite bizarre. All of these regions referenced above decarbonised their power grids as a byproduct of a nuclear+hydro stragety and they did not have to industrialise their landscape on a scale unprecedented in human history - as the Greens now propose - and without driving bats and large birds to extinction. They also did not have to waste enormous amounts of raw materials in these endeavours.

No less a figure than Michael Moore showed just how bizarre all of this is in his documentary, Planet of the Humans. I watched it when it was free, and found it to be correct in facts (we're being sold snake oil by green tech advocates) but wrong in the conclusion it drew from those facts.

As to the need for backup, I suggest you have a read up on capacity factor. Nuclear is much more reliable than renewables, which are still literally as reliable as the weather, and will remain so unless the laws of physics and thermodynamics are turned on their head. And there is not enough Lithium etc. in the world to make batteries to bridge the gaps, not by a factor of orders of magnitude.

And for reference Europe is not going through a "crisis" but rather a long term realignment. Europe's entire economic model including its insane Green energy policies were fundamentally predicated on plenty of cheap Russian gas. That's history now. Though people like myself pointed out how insane this was years ago, everyone else including the entire mainstream environmental movement didn't see any danger with this arrangement until February 2022. This is particularly bizarre in the case of Germany, who with their particular history should have known better. Or, perhaps more likely, many just did not want to see the danger. The people of Ukraine are now paying the price for our bizarre myopia.

Much of Europe has little natural resources (oil gas etc) and is subject to cold-weather winters sometimes including anti-cyclones (like Ireland had in December 2010). We will continue to be "in crisis" until we recognise this fact and behave accordingly.

cnocbui

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119790793#Comment_119790793

Nice job highlighting why our grid is not too small for a NPP. If you started building a NPP capable of meeting the needs of the whole grid, right now, By the time the first reactor went online in 5-8 years, it would no longer be able to.

Larbre34

It doesn't need to fulfill the requirement of the whole grid, just the weather gap.

Ireland shouldn't build one NPP, it should build about 10 Small Modular Reactors at strategic urban and industrial locations, for about 3,000 MW of generation. More than enough to fill any gaps in renewable capacity as we move towards 50% of that type. More than enough to cheaply serve big consumers and every bit of forecast consumption increases as the economy continues to boom.

cnocbui

By the time you finished building it, it wouldn't satisfy the whole grid demand, that was the point, though of course over sizing it like the French did could do that and create a nice little earner if you had enough interconnectors or used the excess to make ammonia and fertiliser from that. Nuclear is best when producing a constant high output, it's not something you would ramp up and down to chase the vagaries of the wind or sun. The real point with it is that you actually don't need any renewables so can save on all the bother of building the things and blighting the landscape in the first place, and it's cheaper than offshore wind.

You save money, you don't need the huge expense of developing a hydrogen infrastructure or the dangers from just handling such an explosive substance, you no longer have to blight the landscape with turbines and people who live near them no longer have to put up with the life altering flicker and noise pollution.

And if you bypass the planning quagmire, you get a net zero grid around 16 years sooner than the 2050 target which will be missed by decades with current unworkable and unaffordable crazy plan the ESB has been forced to come up with.

The main thing is that it's the cheapest approach that will deliver the desired result in the shortest possible time, and it's cheaper by a huge margin, which means the price of electricity for consumers would be as low as is possible while achieving the aim.

I absolutely agree with you on the preference for SMR's, but unfortunately they probably won't be a prospect soon enough, not that the 2050 target has to be stuck to, they are happy enough missing it with the current insanity so missing it because of another path being taken shouldn't be a problem.

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119810732#Comment_119810732

Rolls Royce had a plan to produce 10 SMR's by 2035 with the first one arriving in 2029.

Costs $3Bn for 470MW, and an operating cost of $68/MWh

But those costs are based on CGI models of equipment that not only doesn't exist, it won't exist until RR get hundreds of millions for research, and firm orders for £32Bn of them. Then when they've hooked enough suckers the delays and cost overruns can begin.

How do propose to meet peak demand with them ? The fixed output of nuclear power means you have to invest in a more flexible grid.

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119810640#Comment_119810640

Sizewell B construction phase was 7 years, not 15.

In despotic regimes with indentured labour and worthless desert land you could start construction fairly quickly.

Not here. Not in the UK, not even 40 years ago. 15 years from sign off to generation. In Western Europe. In the USA. Now and in the 1980's. You can cherry pick faster projects but you can't guaranteed that we'd have a nuclear plant up and running by 2030. (allow 6 months between grid connection and full commercial operation)

Capacity factor is meaning less without considering demand. To run our grid on enough nuclear to meet peak demand would mean the plants running at 50% capacity factor. Which would double construction costs. Nuclear's capacity factor is more than offset by the cost and the consequences of it unplanned outages. Or you could build 50% nuclear but the other 50% would be what exactly ?

Why are you still insisting that lithium is the only storage available ? It's like you can't admit that our grid could be run for a year on the amount of gas stored in the Rough Storage Facility which had an overhead of £75m a year.

The ESB's planned hydrogen storage project has a capacity exceeding the entire global production of Lithium batteries. Storage for the dull days is more easily done than handling a year's delay in a nuclear project.

cnocbui

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119812034#Comment_119812034

I didn't know Japan and South Korea were despotic regimes located in deserts. 18 reators have been built in 3 years, 12 of those in Japan. South Korea has several times done it in 5 or less.

Your desperation is unbelievable - slave labour in Japan and South Korea - scraping the bottom of the your cespit of integrity. Its up there with you repetitively asserting nuclear energy is unreliable when the opposite is the globally accepted fact.