Nuclear - future for Ireland?

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120099425#Comment_120099425

Most biomass in Germany is energy crops converted to bio-methane. You can use like natural gas.

So instead of a steady 5.5GW you could save for when you need 21GW.

https://www.agora-energiewende.de/en/service/recent-electricity-data/chart/power_generation/12.01.2022/12.01.2023/today/

Stored hydrogen could be used for peaking too. The energy and capital costs are similar to what the UK have contracted to pay for nuclear for 35 years. Except the renewable costs will fall as their contracts are way shorter.

Birdnuts

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120099763#Comment_120099763

Would this be the biomass taking land from food and wildlife and butchering ancient forests??

josip

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120101373#Comment_120101373

No, that's the other biomass you're thinking of.

timmyntc

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120099763#Comment_120099763

biogas cannot scale massively as it relies on large amounts of crops grown specifically for biogas. The land use is huge, especially at a time of increasing food insecurity worldwide.

Also the economics of using biogas plants as peakers isnt great either

As for hydrogen - you need excess power to generate the hydrogen (a lot of excess if its based on electrolysis), and then theres still the issues of stable storage and trying to get a "clean" burn. Much easier if its stored locally in dedicated storage surely as opposed to using the existing NG infrastructure as was suggested previously, but its a non-trivial problem.

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120101899#Comment_120101899

Food isn't a problem. Subsidising things like corn to produce ethanol and high fructose corn syrup is a problem. It's low quality rubbish.

Growing stuff like miscanthus doesn't have to affect food production either.

Germany are already getting 5.5GW of it and their natural gas peaking is 21GW. It's the same stuff, methane so it's already happening.

Nuclear doesn't generate excess power. Renewables like wind , wave and solar do. Clean burn tech exists, it's mostly about preburning at a lower temperature, but you can use adblue (made from hydrogen) to capture emissions if you are paranoid.

Hydrogen production is inefficient and has a low energy density but storing it in old salt domes or gas fields means you have a mechanism for months of storage at costs directly comparable to nuclear's everyday cost. It's not the cheapest storage but it's huge. It's the fallback position.

Markcheese

Food isn't a problem, until you replace valuable tillage land with energy crops ..

Mescanthus growing didn't really work in Ireland , it grew alright , but it was hard to sell for bio-fuel,

In theory it's easy to harvest with existing equipment , in practice its harvested in winter ,and the ground can be very wet .

Willow is similar,

Using fertilizer,made from gas, to grow corn, to make bio-gas , to use instead of gas is , Inefficient, the overall round trip efficiency is questionable , if you can do it largely with waste products, the figures get a lot better

Birdnuts

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120106132#Comment_120106132

Your first line is exactly what is happening in Germany with Maize been grown specifically for those biodigestors

Markcheese

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120106168#Comment_120106168

Not just Germany , it's done in many countries including the UK . there are commercial biodigesters here as well ,both north and south but it's more developed in the north , ( I don't think theres any commercial unit using specifically grown feedstock south of the border )

I'm not sure of the math in terms of energy efficiency for AD, but if it's using Maize as a feedstock and you include tilling- fertilizer,harvest ,transport,ensiling and , the running of the AD plant ,and then transporting of the digestate and spreading it's going to be close to energy neutral...

Waste (animal and crop ) can change the math fairly substantially , and crops other than maize ( like red clover ) can change the equation quickly ...but transport is the killer

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120106132#Comment_120106132

I had thought it was grown on marginal land with limited inputs and wasn't there something about harvesting it in summer when it's greener if you want to digest it for methane where water content isn't a problem rather than winter where you want it as dry as possible for peat replacement ?

Growing it on good farmland with lots of inputs really isn't worth doing. At least in future the residue from bio-digesters and nitrogen fixed using green hydrogen should result in a more circular system.

The principle still stands that it's a form of offsetting carbon when done right and gas can be stored.

It's one of many renewable "top-up" options deliverable in the short term.

There's simply no advantage in waiting for nuclear. Especially since doing that would require lots more fossil fuel to be burnt.

Markcheese

Miscanthus is usually grown for bio-mass , and harvested when the leaves are dead , so in winter ,

It can be grown on poor ground in Ireland, but usually poor ground means wet ground , so increased cost to harvest

Markcheese

https://youtu.be/quI_8xYSWYE

This is an update of a previous price comparison ,

Diarmuid

France making the sensible decision to dump the 50% target for nuclear and in fact are accelerating the procedures to build new plants.

A clearly sensible approach

https://www.liberation.fr/environnement/nucleaire/le-gouvernement-renonce-a-lobjectif-de-reduction-a-50-de-la-part-du-nucleaire-dans-la-production-delectricite-20230117_YTOTKZDPTFHNHISIORQKFMZ6PM/

josip

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120123356#Comment_120123356

So will they build 12 new reactors or keep 12 old reactors going longer?

Diarmuid

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120123437#Comment_120123437

The draft law says it's the accelerate new builds but that does not mean they won't keep existing ones longer .

http://www.senat.fr/leg/pjl22-100.html

charlie14

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120123550#Comment_120123550

With CO2 emissions being the bellwether on which climate change is being judged it`s not difficult to see why when you compere them to their neighbour Germany. For 2021 Germany`s CO2 emission per capita were 8.06 tons, France 4.58 tons. After years of being told by greens that Germany was the model to follow and after tears of Germany jibing France over nuclear, Germany are now back razing villages to strip mine coal, building and leasing LNG terminals, buying coal from the largest open cast strip mine in Latin America in Columbia, El Cerrejon (which daily guzzles 34 million liters of water), and are back in the oil and gas exploration game. Yet Germany is still insisting it will shut its few remaining nuclear plants that produce no CO2 emissions. Even Greta Thunberg cannot make any sense of that.

Before anybody here starts waffling on about costs using the most expensive nuclear plant they can find as an example, Forbes estimate that for Germany to achieve 100% self sufficiency from renewable resources in the coming years on top of what the have spent already will necessitate an additional spend of €5 Trillion. When you compare that to Poland`s decision to go with a price (that wasn`t even the lowest) of nuclear for €4.7 Billion per GW, the there are a hell of a lot of GW`s in €5 Trillion.

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120124837#Comment_120124837

Today's figures are no guide to future emissions. We've to drop 80% ourselves so today's numbers are nowhere near where we'll be in 2030.

€4.7Bn per GW from Westinghouse ? The company that went bankrupt and left one customer writing off $9Bn, and the other customer spending good money after bad , now at $30Bn for two rectors that still aren't finished. I wouldn't buy a second-hand car off them.

All the residents left that ONE German village Lützerath two years ago, they started 16 years ago, so it's not like it happened overnight. And despite ditching their main supplier of imported fuel Germany has accelerated phasing out of coal to 8 years sooner which means it's the last village.

This is the actual renewable production in Germany over the last month. They will be rolling out a lot more offshore wind too.

Compare to the graph below where they've been exporting lots of power to the neighbours , which accounts for some of that CO2 as grids aren't yet ready to take 95% renewables.

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120123437#Comment_120123437

The most recent grid connected reactor in France started construction in 1991 back when they used to be able to build the things.

It's a little early to tell how this year's maintenance downtime will have affected the existing French reactors lifespans either way. This is the same EDF that had to close plants in the UK early after getting life extensions. And constantly made overly optimistic forecasts about last year's debacle. So have a history of well not exactly lying but ... They aren't out of the woods as not all plants have been through the cycle. And they pushed the workers to strike.

Flamanville 3 has been under construction since 2007.

And looking at Hinkley-C, Olkiluoto 3 and Taishan there's no evidence of things going smoothly.

charlie14

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120126983#Comment_120126983

Some of the stuff you post is fairy land.

Germany now generates more than a third of its electricity from coal burning plants according to Destatis the German federal statistical office. In 3rd quarter 2022 it`s generated from coal was 13.3% higher than for the same period a year earlier. What German CO2 emissions has to do with their grids not being ready to take 95% renewables I have no idea. Their electricity generation from all renewables is not even half that 95%.

They may be rolling out more offshore wind, but they are also building and leasing LNG terminals as fast as they can build or get their hands on, and their 100% renewables plan, whatever that is with the present shambles they are in, and one they caused for many other European countries with their championing of Putin`s gas, is not going to be cheap. Forbes estimates it will require an investment of €5 Trillion over the next few years. And that is for wind that has less than half the rolling capacity as nuclear, and with wind turbines that have half the life expectancy of a nuclear plant.

You do go with the worst example you can find where nuclear is concerned, but hey if you do not like Westinghouse, then check out the price Poland received from South Korea. It was even cheaper. Westinghouse got the contract due to U.S. political pressure, so it doesn`t look as if the U.S.Democrat administration has the same concerns on Westinghouse as you do.

You do not need to use today`s figures as a guide on emissions. You can look at any day over the last decade and compare France and Germany that will show you that France continually beat Germany up a stick on CO2 emission due to their use of nuclear. And if the bellwether on climate change is CO2 emissions, then nuclear will do that 100% regardless of wind blowing or sun shining at a fraction of the offshore construction costs alone for wind.

Markcheese

The idea of shutting a nuclear plant down early is economically AND environmentally bonkers , ( unless it's a safety issue obviously )

comparing their nuclear to France ,their Lng to Poland and their renewables to Denmark , just makes germany look a bit crap ..

The only energy they excel at is lignite, and that really is an environmental **** show..

Markcheese

Actually is it possible to split Germanys green push (energywiende ? ) into sections ?

A lot of their solar seemed to be on individual houses , heavily subsidized, it seems more a greenwash campaign/way of keeping your voter base happy ..

I assume they're more production focused now , ( rather than capacity focused)

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120127540#Comment_120127540

Germany is phasing coal out 8 years early.

Nuclear is too little, too late to be an option.

And besides it's nowhere near as reliable as you think. Japan shut down all their reactors. 80% are still shut 12 years later. Italy shut down all their reactors. Germany is shutting down all their reactors. The UK will soon only have one or two working nuclear power plants. France had half it's reactors shut down and had a capacity factor of 52.9% last year. Nuclear is very much all your eggs in one basket.

South Korea with the fake parts scandal ? Have a read of this expose on how they are institutionally corrupt. And it's still going on 3 officials given suspended prison terms on charges connected to Wolsong-1 Their reactors are cheap because they decided to drop 80% of the safety features. I wouldn't buy a secondhand car from them.

The history of nuclear delivering on-time, on-budget is abysmal. The actual delivered cost (if delivered) is way more expensive. Doubling or even quadrupling of costs isn't unusual, which is why I'm using CfD costs rather than the promises of an industry that has consistently failed to deliver them.

gjim

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120124837#Comment_120124837

Regarding Poland's decision, you know the background/history of the Westinghouse AP1000 - the design they've signed up for?

Westinghouse spent the 1990s designing the AP600 but didn't manage to convince anyone to build one. So they evolved the design into the bigger AP1000 - roughly a 1GW design - which was certified in 2005.

Of the 8 AP1000 that started construction:

The "success" is that they've actually completed 4 such reactors in China. But at the end of the construction, the Chinese have said they're not going to build any more and have abandoned the design because of cost overruns and delays.

One of the most infamously disastrous nuclear power projects in the last few decades is reactors 3 and 4 at Vogtle in the US was a AP1000 project. This has been going since 2009, is already 6 years late and $20B over the initial budget of $14B. Reactor 3 was supposed to go into operation in 2016. Latest news (this month) is that it will be delayed again until the middle of 2023.

The last "flagship" AP1000 project was at the VC Summer plant in South Carolina. This was the largest business failure in the history of the state. $9B dollars spent between 2009 and 2017 before an audit revealed completing the pair of reactors would cost at least $25B and the project was abandoned. The average South Carolinian is now on average paying $30 a month on top of their electricity bills to fund this $9B investment into what is now a a large field of concrete.

Nuclear is only viable in a fantasist's world - in reality every nuclear reactor project started in western Europe or the US since 1995 has been a disaster one way or another. The biggest proponents (and opponents, to be fair) of nuclear are generally terribly uninformed about the industry and it's history, it's record of project failure, cost-overruns and 10 year, 20 year or even longer schedule overruns.

SeanW

As a reminder to all the fantasists pushing nonsense like weather-dependent renewables, hydrogen, biofuels and other lunacy, note that 43 years after Germans started pushing the Energiewende, they cannot consistently keep their CO2 output below 500g/kwh. (559g / kwh as of now). And they're not decreasing their use of coal, they are increasing it.

https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/DE

Energiewende was always a scam predicated on access to that sweet, sweet Russian gas, hence the increasing reliance on what were to be multiple NordStream pipelines. The East Slavic world provided a lot of what the world needs to survive (Ukraine providing wheat, Belarus providing fertiliser components, Russia providing oil, gas and lots of other raw materials).

And as to biofuels ... honestly, I don't even know where to start. We are potentially going into a prolonged food shortage worldwide because of limitations on the amount of high quality agricultural land and the supply of fertiliser components, and some people want to waste what we have left on biofuels 😫 As the Gen Zs would say "I can't even ..."

According to a commentator Peter Zeihan who has been doing the rounds on YouTube as of late, we are potentially entering into a world in which everything we rely on from an interconnected world is going away, including enormous amounts of stuff from the East Slavic world. If true, we will simply not be able to afford the kind of starry-eyed lunacy that has lead to things like the German Energiewende a.k.a. half a century of lunacy and failure.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AinG0tJz-50

DaCor

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120205926#Comment_120205926

I think it's pretty clear which way Germany is going i.e. the same direction as everyone else

https://www.offshorewind.biz/2023/02/01/germany-launches-7-gw-offshore-wind-tender/

As for Peter Zeihan, I like his stuff, watch a lot of it. The one comment I would make is his conclusions are based on inaction. What I mean is he makes an assessment of a topic but assumes no action by the parties concerned to address his conclusions (which are often very obviously things which can be addressed through policy means).

He's also prone to the odd wildly absurd claim or two, the death of China being one notable one. I've a lot of respect for his analysis on Russia though, he's been pretty rock solid in that area.

Birdnuts

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120206391#Comment_120206391

Guess they will be expanding and opening more coal mines so to indulge this greenwash

Markcheese

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120207028#Comment_120207028

It's seems as if the German energy policy was concocted in the Kremlin ,

Just outsource your energy supply to Russia , shut your nuclear , but more gas .. even their renewables policy was definitely suspect ,lots of big subsidies for small ,roof top solar , in a north European country. The public love the feel good factor and the payout , meanwhile buy more Gas ...

It'll be interesting to see how polands new nuclear scheme pans out - and costs out . And what's included ,or excluded from the headline figure , intrest rates being the big big one, grid costs ,

Oh and where the fuel comes from , can't see them getting it from Russia 😁, so north Africa (would the french be helpful if it makes Edf look bad ?) Canada ?

DaCor

This should surprise nobody

https://www.irishtimes.com/business/economy/2023/02/10/nuclear-power-is-not-the-right-solution-to-irelands-energy-needs/

Markcheese

Yeah , we're not the same energy market that we were 20 years ago , all those data centres ect are running 24 / 7 ,

A pair of reactors wouldn't be unreasonable in the scale of things ,

Of course the spinning reserve for that would be a bitch , and wouldnt link in with wind at all ..

And where would you put it ? Moneypoint?

And even with no objections ect. It'd be 15 years minimum to get it built

DaCor

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120225792#Comment_120225792

That's optimistic imho. Like it's taking 15 years to get bus lanes put on some roads for comparison

Sam Russell

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120225801#Comment_120225801

And how long for a Metro?