Nuclear - future for Ireland?

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119812474#Comment_119812474

Neither are in Western Europe.

Even so the newest one in Japan is Ōma which to no one's surprise construction is dragging on

In 2008, J-Power announced a 2.5-year delay to allow for additional work to make the plant resistant to a strong earthquake, making the operation start date in November 2014.[1][2] Following the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster of March 2011 construction at Oma was suspended for 18 months. Work was resumed in October 2012. In March 2013, the main reactor building was at its full height.[3]

In December 2014 J-Power applied for safety checks at the Oma nuclear plant, slated for startup in 2021.[4]

In September 2016, the commissioning date was postponed again, this time to late 2023 or early 2024.[5] In September 2018, the startup was postponed until 2026 to allow for expanded screening

Notice how many of Japanese nuclear power plants stayed closed. It's like they weren't built properly.

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119811727#Comment_119811727

Nuclear is best when producing a constant high output

So what is your solution to for extra 1GW we need at peak times during the day and the extra 1GW we need in winter and the extra 1GW to meet record demand ?

Diarmuid

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119801523#Comment_119801523

Nuclear is cheap : France generates 70% of her electricity from nuclear and has the 12th cheapest electricity costs in the EU (Ireland is 23rd cheapest)

Nuclear is fast : France started with no experience and built 56 plants within 15 years.

Nuclear is good : France has the second lowest emissions from electricity generation in Europe. Irelands emissions impact is 6 times, that of France.

cnocbui

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119812581#Comment_119812581

Just use solar - right? It was you who claimed solar is a great match for our grid because it has peak output just when the grid needs it - right?

You are not going to come back at me and say solar is unreliable and that it might not be so great if some clouds suddenly blow in or in winter, it's a bit less than ideal - right?

Not that you really want an answer, but there are many ways to skin this cat.

I would copy the French and the South Koreans and build a solid state electrolyser into the plant to generate green hydrogen with greater efficiencies than cold electrolysis can manaage. the French bit is the nuclear capacity would exceed the grid needs and the excess power used for the electrolysis.

So Rather than vary power production to match grid demand, I'd vary the proportion of the excess power being used for hydrogen production, reducing the rate when peak power is needed.

There are so many uses for green hydrogen that you'd never have to worry about making too much. Use hydrogen to replace hydrocarbon liquid fuels to decarbonise transport, turn it into ammonia, again using heat from a reactor, and make fertiliser in bulk and export some instead of importing it, after satisfying local demand.

The energy generated by existing wind farms could all be exported or contribute to hydrogen production using less efficient cold electrolysers. I'd favour decommissioning them at end of life and removing them as they are a blight on the landscape.

Or as a less ambitious alternative, have €400m of li-ion batteries. But that's really boring.

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119812608#Comment_119812608

France isn't generating 70% of energy from nuclear. Most of the plants have been offline since April. 15GW shortfall made up by imports. Nuclear isn't good.

France has completed 0 plants in the last 15 years. Ditto UK and US. All have plants under construction with at least 15 year leadtimes from, project statup (US construction parked , UK haggling over prices, France incompetence). Nuclear isn't fast anymore.

Your argument on cost is based on plants that now need massive repairs due to underinvestment. Also the French govt has set limits on prices and had to buy the company as a result.

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119812995#Comment_119812995

Solar matches peak demand in summer. It's a seasonal resource. Like the way we get more wind and wave in winter.

Yes you can use solid state electrolysers but in summer solar is way cheaper.

And you'd have to build enough nuclear to meet peak demand. And that won't be remotely cheap. In theory if you could get pebble beds working at very high temperatures you could just split water by thermal means, but corrosion would be one of the bigger issues I suspect.

Battery and solar costs have fallen 90% in the last decade so €400m might get you a decent amount of Lithium batteries in 15 years time. But £75m was the cost of storing a years supply of gas.

cnocbui

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119813789#Comment_119813789

And just like punch and Judy - Oh yes it is:

The underinvestment was stupid, but France has for probably 30 years, been earning €3 billion annually from nuclear energy exports. That's enough to build a nuclear reactor every two years. That £90 billion in earnings will more than offset current repairs, in fact, Macron announced a big €51.7 billion program to rebuild their nuclear industry, well if they believed in piggy banks, that would already be paid for.

And much to your intense annoyance, they have already completed 6 out of the 10 repairs needed and should finish the rest by the end of the year - ho, ho, ho - a merry christmas after all, back to the boring job of looking at dials while the machines make another €3 billion next year.

Repair work at 10 of France's nuclear reactors should be over by the end of the year, an executive at Electricite de France SA said Thursday, boosting the country's energy landscape as a winter of tight supply looms.

Work to fix corrosion at one reactor should be finished in November, and at two other sites by the end of the year, said Cedric Lewandowski, speaking to the French upper legislative house, the Senate.

Six of 10 projects to fix corrosion have already been completed, said Mr. Lewandowski, EDF's executive director in charge of nuclear sites.

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119814022#Comment_119814022

France was producing 44GW of nuclear this time last year, not 28GW like they are now. And 28GW is not 6 plants worth more than they've had since April. In fact repairs have been delayed. And there's strikes too.

As Nuclear Engineering International explains (dateline 13 Oct) - with nuclear the more you dig the worse it looks.

some workers at EDF's nuclear plants had resumed their strike over salaries, delaying maintenance work on eight reactors. ... Currently French nuclear availability is at 51% of total capacity with 26 of 56 reactors offline for maintenance. Of those, 15 are waiting for inspections or repair of welds due to corrosion. Recently, the restarts of the Bugey 4 and Flamanville 2 reactors were postponed by one and two months respectively with EDF noting that repairs were taking take longer than expected. ... At the beginning of September, EDF predicted more than 35GWe of nuclear power would be available on the network by the beginning of October, but this has not been realised.

Also your graphs is showing imports when the wind died down whereas last year they were exporting 11GW. Reliance on French nuclear is putting pressure on the girds of the neighbouring countries.

https://www.rte-france.com/en/eco2mix/power-generation-energy-source#

Macron nationalised EDF as it was about to go bankrupt. Where is the €90Bn if nuclear is so cheap to run ??

And the answer to your "That's enough to build a nuclea reactor every two years." is that Flamanville was supposed to cost €3.3Bn and come on line 10 years ago. This January it increased in price to €12.7Bn and was pushed back to the end of next year.

I had predicted it might have been cheaper to buy Westinghouse rather than buy a reactor from them if it would prevent price overruns but looks like else has figured out another angle Westinghouse changes hands again as Cameco buys into $7.9 billion deal It's done a lot in software industry, buy a company for it's patents and then start to sue.

For those expecting Korean reactors : Westinghouse Electric Co has filed a lawsuit against Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power (KHNP) and Korea Electric Power Corp. (KEPCO) in federal court to block them from selling reactors to Poland. It's yet another area of risk and delay.

Markcheese

Does anyone know the expected cost of the polish reactors ?

cnocbui

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119832707#Comment_119832707

Poland is planning to spend $40 billion to build two nuclear power plants with three reactors each, the last one to be launched in 2043. The deal with the U.S. and Westinghouse is for the first three reactors of the Pomerania plant, which officials saying should start producing electricity in 2033.

https://www.hotsr.com/news/2022/oct/30/poland-selects-us-to-build-its-first-nuclear

It looks like the APR-1400 reactors are 1.4 GW each. If the $40 Billion figure is met, that's $4.76 Billion per GW, which seems spot on as Barakah cost $4.53 Billion per GW.

Makes offshore wind look incredibly expensive. Floating offshore wind is priced at Irish plumbers rates.

Markcheese

The thing to include is intrest rates ... Obviously a state will borrow money cheaper than a company , but not for free..

And if you're going to compare an all a

inclusive price like an Irish wind turbine or for instance hinkley c , with a brochure price you'll get very large difference...

The way national debts work it may never be paid off , but will continue to be paid for ..

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119720850#Comment_119720850

You keep talking about not having a flexible grid yet renewables need the most flexibility of all to accommodate? Makes no sense.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119813789#Comment_119813789

Your argument is "renewables good, nuclear bad" and you use all sorts of mental gymnastics and motivated reasoning to "prove" it. There are whole weeks where our wind is "offline" and it's not just a temporary maintenance issue.

I'm agnostic on how we power ourselves, as long as it generates as little greenhouse gases as possible. Wind and solar are great, and we should continue to build out our wind capacity to multiples of our needs, but currently, nuclear has a big role to play as there is precious little else to provide a stable zero carbon base load. Batteries don't cut it, and the alternatives all produce mountains of CO2. Other stuff like wave power or fusion are a pipe dream currently.

cnocbui

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119833209#Comment_119833209

I thought the objective was to reduce CO2 emissions? Currently only 7% of our power is coming from wind. Our CO2 emissions are 349g CO2 per kWh. In France it's 65g - only 18% of Ireland's.

Interest payments are not going to make much of a dent in the difference in cost between a wholly renewables powered grid and a nuclear one.

Check out the ESB's insane plan and try and contemplate the possible costs:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xwxc31zhL8Y

I can't do it, my brain melts at the numbers - 7 times current world total production of electrolysers. - 10,000 Turlough hills - daily heat demand 7 times current grid electricity demand - 21 TWh of energy storage required - an additional 66 TWH of renewables.

It is stark raving mad. It is not affordable. Just take one item - the 30 GW of offshore wind. Current costs are I believe, represented by Hornsea One - 1.2 GW has cost $5 Billion - about $4.2 billion per GW - with a capacity factor of 47.3%.

That's a staggering $126 billion just for that element of the plan and doesn't even touch on the cost of the hydrogen part.

Now take that Polish nuclear deal - you could generate the equivalent output of 30 GW of OSW, with 12 GW of nuclear, because it has double the capacity factor and you don't need the 2.5 multiplier for your hydrogen generation margin, so that's $56.4 billion vs $126 - and of course you don't need the hydrogen storage component at all - however many billions that alone would cost.

I don't think interest payments on a NPP would even scratch the surface of what the hydrogen part of the plan would cost, which would be wholly borne by the ESB.

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119832707#Comment_119832707

This is what's being done

https://world.kbs.co.kr/service/news_view.htm?Seq_Code=173292

To pay for this

https://www.power-eng.com/nuclear/westinghouse-to-be-sold-for-7-9-billion/

(at one stage the UK govt owned Westinghouse, it's been resold that often)

Until that court case is over you may forget about Korean reactors in the EU.

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119833403#Comment_119833403

Nuclear has niches. Submarine and Ice-Breaker power. Producing radioisotopes for medicine (but that's done by a 0.045GW HFR in the Netherlands) Economic power generation isn't one of it's niches. Solar is restricted to places inside Saturn's orbit that get decent sunlight.

One of the Big Lies from nuclear is that it's reliable baseload. We don't need baseload. And nuclear isn't reliable enough to justify a premium price.

EDF have revised their forecast down again, French nuclear will have a capacity factor of 50% this year. Hywind, an offshore wind farm in Scotland has a higher capacity factor.

When the synchronous compensators are rolled out our guaranteed demand for baseload will fall to 5%. That's nowhere near enough to feed a nuclear power plant, besides hydro , CHP , biomass etc could supply the 5%. Yes we'd need storage and interconnectors, but nuclear would too.

Totally agree that batteries won't handle more than a few hours and we really only have enough of them to allow other generators to be started.

Storing 3TWh of hydrogen in existing gas wells is an option that's way cheaper than batteries or pumped storage. Way faster and less risk financially and politically.

Fusion is the technology of the future. Always was. Always will be. I can remember seeing some research on neutron? accelerators to induce fission but the costs were within 20% of renewables so that's not even worth considering given the lead times and risks and falling costs of renewables.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119834181#Comment_119834181

How will we produce this hydrogen? Electrolysis from our 300 % wind capacity? And remember hydrogen is extremely difficult to store because the molecules are so small they leak easily.

Birdnuts

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119834181#Comment_119834181

Fusion is at least as viable a concept as all these yet to materialize floating wind turbines and Hydrogen hubs

cnocbui

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119835700#Comment_119835700

I can remember reading about how wonderful fusion was going to be in 20 years time, in the early 70's.

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119835596#Comment_119835596

It's one option but yes.

Hydrogen is leaky and causes embrittlement in hard steels. Town gas was ~50% hydrogen which is what was used here before natural gas.

The stuff can be stored in disused gas fields for hundreds of millions of years. If we hadn't removed the Kinsale platform recently then it would have been a relatively cheap and quick conversion.

Costs will drop but today it's about £1.5/watt to build electrolysers etc. for 2026 for the Felixstowe project. And if you only use hydrogen for peaking you can spend more time making it than using it. This would reduce the costs to a fraction of what might be expected at first glance.

No one is predicting nuclear up and running here by 2026.

Here's the timeline from 2005-2016 for Hinkley-C. Hinkey-C won't be up and running by 2026.

Why did we remove the Kinsale platform? Why are we so short sighted in Ireland?

Capt'n Midnight

Nice article here on how various nuclear power companies pulled out of projects - https://www.regulation.org.uk/archive-energy-nuclear.html

Since it was written

• Hunterstown B, Hinkley Point B and Dungensss B were all closed ahead of schedule.
• Hartleypool and Heysham 1 to close in March 2024. (less than 18 months away) (Heysham 1 reactor 2 is Offline for boiler tube leak repair)
• Heysham 2 and Torness to close in 2028 not in 2030. (Hayshem 2 reactor 7 is Offline for inspection outage)

Of the original 6 new plants only 3 have any movement.

• Hinkley-C is 10 years late
• The government are now denying that plans for Sizewell-C have been scrapped.
• Bradwell-B if it goes ahead would be two Chinese PWRs. (The Chinese already own UK steelworks)

Still in the 5-7 years prep stages. Only then can you start the "Average 7.5 years construction time" waffle which uses stats from earlier rollouts.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119842025#Comment_119842025

These delays are entirely due to bureaucracy. The Chinese have no such delays, in fact many of their plants are opened ahead of schedule and within budget.

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119842099#Comment_119842099

Why do you want us to be at the mercy of the Chinese or Russians ?

Akrasia

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119842099#Comment_119842099

Delays are due to bureaucracy democracy

The chinese have no such delays because they can forcibly take land and relocate people when they need to build infrastructure

Akrasia

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119835596#Comment_119835596

Hydrogen can be stored in underground reserves like Capt Midnight said, but I think it will be stored as Ammonia, which can be easily stored and transported, and doesn't have the leaking problem that Hydrogen has while transporting it from a storage location to where it's needed.

It would add to the round trip costs but given that we would only need Hydrogen/ammonia to cover the rare events when there are long periods of inadequate wind and solar and nuclear, then it's acceptable

Burning Ammonia directly has high NO emissions which is not ideal, but again, someone needs to do the calculations about the benefits of burning ammonia, or cracking it back to H2 and burning the Hydrogen.

We have 30 years to figure this stuff out. But the main thing is to build up our renewable and storage infrastructure to harvest the low hanging fruit and reduce Fossil fuel dependence by 90% asap, while we can work on the final 10% later on.

Nuclear's role, is to keep operating for as long as possible the existing plants, Finish the plants that are past the point of no return, and keep researching the potential of SMRs or Thorium, or Fusion or whatever, but the fact is, Nuclear cannot be the baseload fuel for the global economy. There isn't enough fuel, and it would take so long to deploy the tech that by the time we've even rolling out phase 1, we're already looking at more than 2-4c of warming.

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119842525#Comment_119842525

Over provision of renewables means far less storage needed. And the excess can produce storable fuel for use elsewhere too.

Hydrogen for grid scale.

Ammonia or other hydrogen carriers for transport. Methanol is a near replacement for petrol and way less toxic than ammonia. Indycar used it from 1965 until they switched to ethanol because methanol fires were invisible in bright sunlight.

The NO emissions are related to temperature. Diluting the feed with inert water/steam would be one way. Or using the pure oxygen from hydrolysis so there's less or no nitrogen. Or capturing the emissions or using catalytic converters at the power plant. It's a red herring in that there are numerous solutions. Like using the latest turbines with low NO2 emissions.

Renewables have a shorter timeframe if we can hit our 2030 targets then we'll have a breathing space to research other power sources.

I wouldn't worry about Thorium. Development in Canada started in 1946. The Americans and Germans have had full scale power plants, the Chinese bought the German tech and have one small reactor after 15 years. Thorium needs to be pump primed, you have to breed the fuel first so there's a long lead time even if it works. It's a technology we've been doing on an industrial scale since 1944 and still haven't got right. Like Plutonium, Thorium is a way to stretch Uranium, not replace it.

Fusion is the technology of the future. Always was, always will be. The UK has committed multiples of the international spend of fusion research on one delayed nuclear power plant.

Akrasia

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119842701#Comment_119842701

Yeah, and 'over producing' isn't the same as over producing our Peak demand, it's over producing our average demand, because in a world where we can store energy, the concept of Peak demand stops making sense. If we need 3x energy demand to make renewables work, it's 3x 2gw, not 3x 6gw, because we already have excess generation capacity that sits there doing nothing until3 million households all boil the kettle during the half time break in the world cup semi-final

Now we'll need to over produce routinely because we're going to electrify heating and transport, so we'll need maybe 15gw of renewables installed to be self sufficient, with a lot of storage. Most of that storage will be inside EV batteries, lots of it will be within domestic Batteries, lots more in Industrial and and commercial batteries, and the final gap will be filled by BESS providing grid servicing on utility scale.

And on top of that, there are other storage solutions, like Thermal storage (in Hot water tanks and Storage heaters) and pumped hydro

And this is before we have anything approaching next gen tech, the likes of Fusion, SMR nuclear, Geothermal using next gen drilling tech etc

cnocbui

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119842467#Comment_119842467

Thats what they had to do to build the 3 gorges hydroelectric dam.

More than 158 people have died or gone missing, 3.67 million residents have been displaced and 54.8 million people have been affected, causing a devastating 144 billion yuan ($20.5 billion) in economic losses.

Sizewell in the UK is on a 245 acre site and there are two NPP located in that area and there is a town only 2km from it and farmland even closer.

Amongst the best builders of NPPs these days are the south Koreans. They have built many NPPs in 5 years or less, and they are a democracy, as are Japan, who have built reactors in 3 years.

cnocbui

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119842774#Comment_119842774

Why don't you watch the ESB video which lays out what we'll need to achieve zero via renewables? Then you won't have to make wildly inaccurate guesses.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xwxc31zhL8Y

An additional 30 GW of renewables are needed, not 15. And that EV battery idea is a complete nonsense. People are not going to allow their EV batteries to be used for Grid storage due to the constant cycling degradation it would cause. In that video, you will note that last year there was a 6 week lull in the wind which no ammount of EV batteries can fill. Not to mention no one is going to want to find their EV battery has less than needed to get them where they need or want to go because it's been syphoned.

We can't do pumped hydro, we don't have the geography, and it's one of the most environmentally damaging things you can do.

Renewables cost more than double what nuclear power costs without factoring in the cost of staorage. With storage it's probably going to be tripple, but no one knows as no country has done it so the true costs are just wild guesses.