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Nuclear - future for Ireland?

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  • Registered Users Posts: 13,574 ✭✭✭✭josip


    I think some posters are more "anti-wind" than "pro-nuclear" per se.



  • Moderators, Recreation & Hobbies Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Technology & Internet Moderators Posts: 90,537 Mod ✭✭✭✭Capt'n Midnight


    The UAE's plant started construction 11 years ago and still isn't complete.

    It was built with more or less indentured labour on desert land in an autocracy. Construction costs here would likely double and there'd be more delays and gal challenges so there's that too.


    The CfD for wind here is for 10 years. Any nuclear plant here would have to compete with the marginal cost of existing wind on the open market.

    In the UK the CfD for Hinkley-C will run until at least 2062 assuming they don't need the 3 year extension they got recently. And half the time it's "always on" power won't be needed which effectively doubles the price.



  • Registered Users Posts: 19,540 ✭✭✭✭cnocbui


    Trotting out the slave labour bulls​hit again.

    Barakah is based on South Korean built APR 1400 reactors. It's got 4 of them and factoring in the whole project cost, that works out at $6.1b a piece

    In South Korea, in Dec, they commisioned two new APR 1400 reactors - Uljin 1 and 2. The only costing I can find for them is $3b a piece.

    The South Koreans a few months ago offered 6 APR 1400 reactors to Poland for $4.45b each.

    Clearly if ireland were to build an APR 1400 based NPP, it should make sure to get it's slave labour from Korea, or maybe Poland, at a pinch - that UAE slave labour is far too expensive.



  • Moderators, Recreation & Hobbies Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Technology & Internet Moderators Posts: 90,537 Mod ✭✭✭✭Capt'n Midnight


    Shin-Hanul in Ulchin was expected to cost $6Bn in 2012 but it was been delayed years so costs must have escalated ? Also add in the billions per reactor for decommissioning on top of previous costs.

    Nuclear power is a political football in Korea, alternative governments blowing hot and cold on it.

    Shin-Hanul No. 1 started in December. Construction began on the 1,400 megawatt reactor in 2011, with commercial operations originally scheduled for April 2017. ... "The formal opening was repeatedly delayed, once for a software glitch and once due to a nearby earthquake. Safety evaluation problems were reported, and changes in regulations related to building materials also caused problems."

    "Shin-Hanul No.2 was supposed to go into operation in April 2018.  The Safety and Security Commission has pushed the approval to March 2023, citing concerns similar to those expressed about the first reactor." 

    "It has taken more than a decade for the two new nuclear power plants to be completed since ground was broken in April 2010."  , Unit 2 is scheduled to begin commercial operation in September 2023 - which means the plant is taking 13 years to build which means 5 extra years of fossil fuel being used to keep the lights on.

    Shin-Hanul Unit 1 has been criticized for its lack of preparation for the passive catalytic hydrogen material combiner (PAR) safety problem and the risk of terrorism and disaster. This article also lists the escalating costs and interest payments in Won and mentions that Korea's reserve power will be reduced to 4GW, which is scary considering how many reactors are on each site and what happened in Texas.


    Shin-Kori reactor No.5 was supposed to start operating in October last year, while the No.6 reactor was supposed to go into operation in October this year, but the schedules were delayed.


    The thing about nuclear is the more you look the worse it gets.

    It's not flexible so the grid has to accommodate it when it's up and cover for it when it's down. Same with renewables but in the UK new nuclear power costs 2.7 times as much as wind and you've to provide the subsidy for 2.3 times as long and wind power is generating while new nuclear is still years away.



  • Registered Users Posts: 19,540 ✭✭✭✭cnocbui


    Whataboutery to deflect from your previous BS being exposed for what it is.



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  • Registered Users Posts: 1,267 ✭✭✭RetroEncabulator


    The EPR project will eventually have all of its bugs ironed on and become much smoother. All of those technologies are done on such a small volume of examples that they have enormous problems in their initial builds. In the past they costs were often just hidden away in other budgets, particularly into defence research etc etc in places like the UK, US and France etc back in the day.

    The technology was just seen as strategically necessary - France in particular just wanted energy independence after the oil crisis in the 70s and it was a money no object project, involving French tech. The UK AGR project was a matter of national pride and being a 'nuclear power' etc etc back in the 50s-70s. It only became a commercial thing in the Thatcher era and they never built another one.

    The majority of European nuclear sites were built by old ESB-like energy monopolies that were state owned. Few were ever built by entirely commercial entities.

    I quite honestly cannot see Ireland going for a nuclear power solution to energy here. You would really struggle to get political support for it because there's no public support for it and there's no way the commercial sector would ever build one.

    If we did go for it, and it would be a huge if, it's almost certainly going to be a choice of a technology that can be supported easily within Europe or the US. I really don't see us going for a one-of-a-kind type solution. It'll be something tried, tested and used by European peers and there is an extensive set of European atomic energy regulations going all the way back to Euroatom's foundation.

    I would also suspect that Ireland's approach to something like this would be extremely conservative and risk averse, so you're not going to just go for cheapest solution.

    However, the likelihood of it ever happening is slim to non existent. It's fairly clear the public attitude to nuclear energy is pretty strongly against it.



  • Moderators, Recreation & Hobbies Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Technology & Internet Moderators Posts: 90,537 Mod ✭✭✭✭Capt'n Midnight


    The EPR's have had 20 years of construction to get it right. And in that time renewable and storage prices have just fallen off a cliff.


    Maggie lost interest in Nuclear after the miners unions had been beaten in '85 because the interest was political rather than commercial.

    Then apart from nuclear which no one wanted they sold off electrical generation to private companies who then went on a "dash for gas" in part due to the high interest rates that befitted Southern England at the expense of manufacturing and capital investment in the rest of the country and Scottish North Sea gas. CCGT efficiency improvements also helped.



  • Registered Users Posts: 1,267 ✭✭✭RetroEncabulator


    The UK dumped the ridiculously expensive and very technically limited graphite moderated, gas cooled AGR project in the mid-80s. It effectively was the end of it. Absolute white elephant stuff.

    Sizewell B was basically an off-the-shelf Westinghouse PWR (Pressurised Water Reactor) with a few extra safety features, and built by a consortium which included Franatome (Areva, now EDF and renamed Franatome again...). They began building in 1987 and finally went online in 1995.

    All of those plants had horrendously long delivery times, usually around 20 years.

    Big, rarely projects like this, involving massive engineering and specialisation are very hard to deliver due to the infrequency of the projects. It's a weird industry.



  • Moderators, Business & Finance Moderators Posts: 9,921 Mod ✭✭✭✭Jim2007


    Has any of them actually lived beside a plant? It won't technology or approach that decides this, but people because you eventually have to actually put it somewhere and I expect that is where these arguments will die. Because nobody wants it next door them and you can expect years and years of complications. And the long it goes no the less attractive it will be.

    I live within a couple of clicks from a nuclear power station, we have the A geiger counters, the iodine tables, the alarms that are tested quarterly, I have my assigned bunker and have been there a couple of times and my 'survival' kit [really an overnight bag in my opinion] is packed if we have to go.... That is the reality of it and once people start to realise this, they won't want it in their county never mind next door. So Ireland and nuclear power is just pie in the sky at the end of the day.



  • Registered Users Posts: 6,720 ✭✭✭timmyntc


    It's well enough for the people who get free district heating or even in some cases free power altogether, as payment for having a plant sited near them.

    The idea that its all doom and gloom and looking over your shoulder waiting for the impending disaster (that never comes) may be your experience, but it is not the experience of the majority. Or else property would be nigh unsellable near nuclear plants as a function of low demand. this is not the case.



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  • Moderators, Recreation & Hobbies Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Technology & Internet Moderators Posts: 90,537 Mod ✭✭✭✭Capt'n Midnight


    Remind us how that worked out for the people of Fukishima and Chernobyl and how Cockcroft's Follies prevented 95% of fallout from the Windscale and Three Mile Island wasn't that bad and how this time it'll all be different...



  • Registered Users Posts: 8,412 ✭✭✭Markcheese


    Is that graphic for operation ? , operation and construction ? or operation ,construction and polution , ?

    Including mining the fuel ? Including the mining and quarrying for the construction. .

    Could go down a lot of rabbit holes

    Slava ukraini 🇺🇦



  • Registered Users Posts: 19,540 ✭✭✭✭cnocbui


    How much are you currently paying for 1kw of electricity?



  • Registered Users Posts: 19,540 ✭✭✭✭cnocbui


    That graphic is what it is, as much as you don't like. Most of the problems and dangers associated with nuclear energy can be summed up in a single word, or two if you to nit pick - Russia/USSR. Those people are mental. If you removed from those stats, everything Russia related, nuclear power wouldn't even be on the graph.

    I'd post a link to something else, but you would like it even less - a US study which shows that nuclear energy has saved far more lives than it's ever taken, even including Russian related stats.



  • Registered Users Posts: 8,412 ✭✭✭Markcheese


    Post away , I'm not completely against nuclear , I remember first seeing the stat about deaths from wind turbines versus nuclear power and being surprised ,I went looking and the wind turbine figure included construction where the nuclear station didn't , so I kind of disregarded the stat from there , there's a lot of extrapolating and picking favourable time frames for both sides of the debate ..

    And no shortage of concrete and mined/refined resources for wind turbines,

    Slava ukraini 🇺🇦



  • Registered Users Posts: 19,540 ✭✭✭✭cnocbui


    new paper from NASA’s Goddard Institute authored by Pushker Kharecha and James Hansen in the journal Environmental Science and Technology purports to do just that. Hansen is well known as one of the founders of modern global warming science. The authors come up with the striking figure of 1.8 million as the number of lives saved by replacing fossil fuel sources with nuclear. They also estimate the saving of up to 7 million lives in the next four decades, along with substantial reductions in carbon emissions, were nuclear power to replace fossil fuel usage on a large scale. In addition the study finds that the proposed expansion of natural gas would not be as effective in saving lives and preventing carbon emissions. In general the paper provides optimistic reasons for the responsible and widespread use of nuclear technologies in the near future. It also drives home the point that nuclear energy has prevented many more deaths than what it has caused.

    There you go, and I'd add the untold number who's lives might have been saved by the radio nucleotides made in nuclear reactors, not to mention the uncompromising sterility of the trillions of single use medical consumables exposed to gamma ray sources.



  • Moderators, Recreation & Hobbies Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Technology & Internet Moderators Posts: 90,537 Mod ✭✭✭✭Capt'n Midnight


    30% of global medical radioisotopes are produced in the 45MW (thermal) High Flux Reactor in the Netherlanders which has nothing to do with nuclear power.


    Only 30% as each continent has it's own source because of travel time compared to the half life of molybdenum-99 of 2.75 days and it's daughter technetium-99m of 6 hours. Also you'd be doing well to get 20MW of electricity out of the 45MW thermal output.



  • Registered Users Posts: 9,601 ✭✭✭Birdnuts


    A Vestas funded survey - give me a break!! about as credible as the BS the WEI and BNM came out with yesterday on public attitudes to windfarms and energy prices. Anyways you only have to see the amount of damage and scale of concrete haulage etc. to build wind turbines on BNM peatland to see that those figures are total BS



  • Posts: 0 [Deleted User]


    bout as credible as the BS the WEI and BNM came out with yesterday on public attitudes to windfarms and energy prices.

    You mean the one that said 80% of the public supported them?

    You might be interested in this. Looks like boards posters attitudes closely align with that survey finding




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  • Moderators, Recreation & Hobbies Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Technology & Internet Moderators Posts: 90,537 Mod ✭✭✭✭Capt'n Midnight


    Today the UK was getting more from solar (yellow) than nuclear (grey) between 10:10 and 14:30 - mostly because nuclear output dropped.

    Number of reactors in service: 4 of 9 , However, only there's only two of nine on "nominal full load" because

    Sizewell B - where Turbine generator 1 is Reducing load prior to statutory/refuelling outage

    Hartlepool - Reactor 1 is Reducing load prior to outage to address a steam leak



  • Moderators, Recreation & Hobbies Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators, Technology & Internet Moderators Posts: 90,537 Mod ✭✭✭✭Capt'n Midnight


    France so far this year with nuclear and fossil fuel removed for clarity

    Exports of power when renewables are producing, imports when they aren't.



  • Registered Users Posts: 13,574 ✭✭✭✭josip


    EDF made a loss of €18bn last year.




  • Registered Users Posts: 19,540 ✭✭✭✭cnocbui


    The grey area is about 3 times the yellow area, but slag away and arrange the goal posts to suit your agenda.



  • Registered Users Posts: 19,540 ✭✭✭✭cnocbui


    And in the UK, where the government isn't handicapping them with price caps, EDF's profits have surged in 2022.




  • Registered Users Posts: 13,574 ✭✭✭✭josip


    Nuclear generation was down 9% yoy in the OECD in November. Does anyone know why?

    The latest IEA's Monthly Electricity Statistics report including November 2022 data shows that for Total OECD:

    Total net electricity production amounted to 851.3 TWh in November 2022, down by 1.8% y-o-y compared to November 2021.

    Electricity production from renewable sources increased by 9.7% y-o-y at 295.3 TWh, mainly driven by solar (+41.3% y-o-y) and wind (+15.6% y-o-y), with hydro remaining stable (+0.3% y-o-y). Overall, the share of renewables in the OECD electricity mix settled at 34.7%.

    Nuclear electricity production dropped by 9.0% y-o-y at 136.0 TWh, continuing the downward trend observed during previous months. This decrease was mainly driven by OECD Europe (-19.5% y-o-y), followed by the OECD Americas (-1.8% y-o-y) and OECD Asia Oceania (-1.4% y-o-y). Overall, the share of nuclear in the OECD electricity mix was 16.0%.



  • Posts: 0 [Deleted User]


    In a word, France. They are having a terrible time with maintenance/refurbishment issues with their nuke plants



  • Posts: 0 [Deleted User]




  • Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators Posts: 19,254 Mod ✭✭✭✭Sam Russell


    One of the comments on the article quoted above sums up the point about nuclear power generation .

    Quote: 'I read a quote from a scientist about 20 years ago, and it has always stuck with me: "Inventing nuclear power without inventing a safe way to deal with its nuclear waste is like inventing the airplane without inventing a safe way to land it." '

    The cost of the decommissioning contract was US$2.4 billion - add that to the costs of the original power plant, and they are just dumping the contaminated water into the Hudson for free.

    I think that just about sums up the chances of Ireland ever sanctioning a nuclear power plant on the island of Ireland. Add in the unlikely event that any community in (rural) Ireland would give anything but outright open opposition verging on warfare to such a development, and that puts it into the NEVER, NEVER, NEVER category favoured by a certain Northern politician.



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  • Posts: 0 [Deleted User]


    Fukushima decommissioning is going well, 500 tonnes of contaminated water to be released daily for the next 30-40 years

    Anyone want to go for a swim?




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