Nuclear - future for Ireland?

Clo-Clo

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122180764#Comment_122180764

nobody does and no planking will ever be approved

It’s the same 1-2 posters across boards going on about nuclear and the main one hasn’t a clue

Was saying they would vote SF to stop the wind madness of Green Party till I pointed out SF plan was to increase spend on wind generation and not stop it

charlie14

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122265266#Comment_122265266

That is one of the most inane arguement I have come across here, or indeed anywhere. Especially when it`s not just a "risk", it`s a mathematical fact that we have a proposal to build 37 GW of offshore wind to achieve net zero emissions by 2050 that will cost anywhere north of €200 Billion that will fall short by around 6 GW which is greater than our current average demand. State budgets do not operate on the basis of fairytales and ideological dreams by sinking half of their GDP into projects that are not only unfinancially viable, but will not even achieve what they were supposed too. If they do then they will quickly end up like any business attempting the same, bankrupt.

You have been repeatedly here attempting to give the impression that Japan are getting out of nuclear when that could not be further from the truth. Even your own posts clearly shows it to be untrue.

charlie14

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122265273#Comment_122265273

As you have posted this reply in reference to a post of mine I can only assume the poster you are referring to is me.

When it comes to posters not having a clue your good self has been ran out of numerous threads here when caught spoofing and I have never said I would "vote SF to stop the wind madness of Green Party" In fact I challenged you months ago to go through any of my posts and show where I ever supported SF and I`m still waiting for you to get back to me.

It was pointed out to you by me and others from SF material you posted that the only vague references to wind generation by SF were for community or state owned wind farms with no figures as to what this would generate, how it would get us to net zero carbon emissions ( something as far as I recall that had to be repeatedly shown to you that was not the same as carbon neutral emissions, which you still appeared to not understand), and SF had nothing to say on offshore wind.

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122264876#Comment_122264876

An energy to fuel scheme using hydrogen would have a round trip efficiency of 40%.

The strike price for offshore wind in the UK is 40% of the strike price of nuclear.

That's the point at which nuclear became unviable forever as it can't beat the cost of grid scale long term storage of renewable energy nevermind that it can't get remotely close to the price of non-stored renewables.

The infrastructure for using and storing hydrogen rich gas already exists and can be incrementally added to. So nuclear can't compete on timescale either.

And energy to fuel is the worst case scenario. Most of the time we'll be using renewables directly on the grid.

Batteries will become more important in the future. Especially with Lithium Ion being replaced with Lithium Iron Phosphate which allow a stupid number of daily cycles.

Korea has been touted as a quick to build reactors. It helps if you only build on existing nuclear power plants. Yes they could build the older OPR-1000's in 5 years. But the build times for newer APR-1400's in Korea is now 10 years. You can see how much the Californian grid has changed in just three years.

charlie14

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122265828#Comment_122265828

An energy to fuel system using hydrogen would have consummers paying not only for the electricity they use, but the same again for the electricity used to produce hydrogen and then pay again for that hydrogen when burned to generate electricity. On top of the €200 biliion capital cost of turbines, they would also be paying the cost of the infrastructure required to generate green hydrogen, the cost of desalination plants that would be required , the costs of hydrogen storage and distribution, and nobody can give a figure for all that or even know if it would work to the scale required. It`s a load of hopium, and very expensive hopium. If producing hydrogen is your thing then doing so using nuclear is a much more effecient means than using intermitten sources like wind and especially solar.

You keep bringing up Hikley " the most expensive energy plant ever built" but keep ignoring that NPPs built in South Korea have been on average one quarter the cost of Hinckley and that the strike price for Empire 1 wind generation to supply New York is the same as Hinckley, and for anyone who still doubts the increase in offshore wind costs, Northland, the largest member of the consortium, have estimated that the cost of building the 1 GW they have contracted with Taiwan to build will cost €6.5 Billion. That would leave our proposed 37 GW of offshore costing €240 Billion just for the capital cost of turbines alone.

Batteries to keep the grid operational during the kind of extended periods we have seen to date when wind has dropped to 6% and less is a nonsense.

I do not know if you have every been to California but when it comes to sunshine we ain`t no California. Our hours of sunshine annually are around one quarter of those of California. Incidentally If you are going to plug a 6 GW gap with solar, then in theory with an annual capacity factor of 11% you would need to install 55 GW of nameplate capacity. In reality, with solar having a capacity factor in Winter of probably not much more than 7% it would require installing 85 GW of nameplate solar capacity. To put that in perspective, we currently have 1 GW of installed solar nameplate capacity.

SeanW

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122265828#Comment_122265828

California also has the most expensive electricity in the "Lower 48" of the United States.

https://www.chooseenergy.com/electricity-rates-by-state/

And there isn't enough lithium on the planet - not by many orders of magnitude - to make batteries for all the electric cars, electric trucks AND do large scale grid storage. Neither in production, nor just as likely in actual material reserves. It's hopium and hot air.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=af3_0CrnH7o

Shoog

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122266989#Comment_122266989

Battery tech is the fastest growing area of the energy sector, lithium will be consigned to specialist high energy density batteries. For utility scale batteries sodium will take over and there is literally no ceiling on sodium supplies.

Unlike nuclear renewables are still evolving exponentially and since they are already cost competitive with all other forms of generation - they will sweep the board as costs continue to plunge.

zerosquared

Which is untrue and a lie

Ground recently broken in Bill Gates funded Natrium reactor

https://hackaday.com/2021/07/06/terrapowers-natrium-combining-a-fast-neutron-reactor-with-built-in-grid-level-storage/

• can’t melt down
• can ramp up quickly form 350 to 500MW
• Can act as storage
• Can consume waste rods
• Can consume thorium

Shoog

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122267061#Comment_122267061

We can believe it if it ever happens.

zerosquared

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122265828#Comment_122265828

more untruths

Newest project From two weeks ago

https://www.windtech-international.com/projects-and-contracts/equinor-executes-purchase-and-sale-agreement-for-810mw-empire-wind-1-project

That’s 144e per MWh!

Hinkley C (which itself is on the expensive end of nuclear) Is 90gbp or 106e per MWh

Hinkley C would last at least 50-60 years while offshore wind maybe 20-25 years (no one actually ran offshore with all that salt and wear and tear that long)

Nuclear has capacity factor of 95% offshore wind of 40% and needs battery or gas backup or interconnection to UK and French nuclear contaminated electrons over interconnections

SeanW

And many of those advocating more reliance on weather based renewables are clear that massive grid expansion plus a wide variety of other projects are necessary. I've been getting YouTube ads from an activist group called "Build Our Grid" which demands a variety of investments to support weather-based renewables.

https://buildourgrid.ie/about-the-grid/#whatdemands

That, in addition to a laundry list of projects promulgated by the ESB and Eirgrid (list elsewhere presumably) they also want battery storage (presumably in large quantities) AND foreign interconnectors.

Needless to say, what projects they have in mind are not listed, nor is anything costed.

California also has large economies (states) surrounding it on land. They also don't have to worry about dunkelflaute as much as we do.

SeanW

And since California was referenced above, I thought it best to read what the government of California has to say about their battery storage rollout:

https://www.energy.ca.gov/news/2023-10/california-sees-unprecedented-growth-energy-storage-key-component-states-clean

Energy storage projects capture power produced by wind and solar resources and discharge the energy back to the electric grid during times of peak demand. In California, electricity demand is highest in the late afternoon and early evening hours when the sun sets, causing solar resources to drop off before winds pick up later in the evening. The battery storage fleet provides a critical energy bridge during this time of day. 

No provision for dunkelflaute, no evident concern for winter (which may actually make sense given California's climate), and no reference to any revolutionary new battery technology.

So we can assume that what they did was basically take a trainload of cash, buy the entire worlds production of lithium for some time and put in place a system that allowed them to extend their solar power production a few hours into the evening.

josip

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122267061#Comment_122267061

I think to be accurate, that ground has been broken on Bill Gates' molten sodium cooling plant. The natrium reactor design isn't expected to be approved by the US dept of whatever until 2026 at the earliest, so they're going ahead with whatever they can. Presumably while Bill is still with us and able to wield a shovel for the photo op.

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122267061#Comment_122267061

Snakeoiln. See also NuScale.

TerraPower had already abandoned the previous traveling-wave reactor (TWR) idea.

There was no hardware in 2022, none today, and since the main suppliers for high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU) fuel are Russia and China I can't see this going anywhere anytime soon.

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122266989#Comment_122266989

Oh look the US found another source of lithium. estimates suggest Marcellus Shale production wastewater from Pennsylvania could meet 38–40% of current domestic "consumption"

Lithium Iron Phosphate is one battery technology. It's at least an order, possibly two, of magnitude cheaper per cycle than lithium ion , which means using vehicle batteries for storage would be a viable option unlike with lithium ion.

There are other battery technologies. We are unlikely to run of the materials for aluminium air batteries anytime soon.

zerosquared

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122268072#Comment_122268072

Poster claimed no innovation in nuclear yet there clearly is

zerosquared

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122268247#Comment_122268247

For a moderator you sure do have an abrasive and condescending posting style which is not conductive to a civilised discussion, where is that ignore button

The fact remains, construction has started

That’s more than can be said about our 37 GW for 2050 of offshore wind plan, as the wind snake oil companies are teetering on verge of bankruptcy after 70% cost increases last year and widespread project closures

Unlike yourself I read high quality reference materials on subject this recent one from DOE caught eye

The US plan is 100GW by 2050 of offshore wind, this is a country with largest economy in world (43x ours) and decades of offshore construction and shipbuilding experiences and more critically the infrastructure required (unlike us)

as you can see literally no one has deployed floating offshore on which our insanely expensive offshore wind plan rests on

Also notice the cost there which is again higher than nuclear

Shoog

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122268394#Comment_122268394

It's not an innovation - it's an experiment. There is a huge difference. It's unlikely this experiment will ever put a watt onto any grid.

How do we know this, the long trail of previous failed SMR reactor experiments.

Come back when you have some real nuclear innovation.

Consonata

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122268422#Comment_122268422

There are four completed offshore wind projects? Most recent one being completed in August 2023. Meanwhile you touted earlier Natrium reactors, where only the US is seriously investing in the technology, a country with already relatively easy access to uranium and has a nuclear energy industry, two things which Ireland lacks.

What we don't lack is experience in building out wind turbines, which we can utilise to drive costs down.

zerosquared

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122269504#Comment_122269504

we have zero offshore construction experience unlike the US and UK and Norway who spend decades building extensive offshore infrastructure

Having to rely on companies that are on verge of bankruptcy and had had to cancel multiple projects as their costs went up 50-60% at end of 2023 and interest rates are high

KrisW1001

The USA isn't building offshore wind because its climate doesn't provide the country with much in the way of wind resources. You may as well argue that Norway is mad to spend money drilling for gas because Ireland doesn't…

As for "Natrium" (a brand name for a design of Sodium Cooled Fast Neutron Reactor), the idea has promise, but Sodium-Cooled reactors have a poor operational record that has dragged down their availabilty factor (fortunately they are among the safest type of nuclear, so those l faults haven't involved injury or damage). I also worry about any "startup" being responsible for this kind of engineering, where safety is paramount - spending lots extra to avoid something that "might" happen is just not in the American start-up mindset.

The reason this technology is attractive to the US is that it can be run on decommissioned weapons-grade plutonium, which the US was obliged by treaty to dispose of. It did dispose of that material, by storage, but burning it for power was the original plan. Guess what happened to the first reactor in that proposed family..? Cancelled after massive cost and schedule overruns.

I'm not against this if it can be made to work... but it's still too expensive for Ireland to take a punt on; the alternative current options are just too expensive full stop...

Shoog

Its a bit farcical for nuclear proponents to highlight the cost increases in offshore wind projects which have been necessitated by supply chain issues, inflation and labour issues. We know that nuclear is effected by all the same factors, been based upon heavy engineering - but we also know that we will not learn about the cost implications for nuclear until their massive cost overruns are finally announced some way down the line (or the company goes bankrupt and walks away). The poor governments are already years in to these behemoths projects and will push forward regardless of the pain on the sunk cost fallacy - with little knowledge of what the ultimate bill will be.

Its a deeply disingenuous line of argument.

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122267082#Comment_122267082

Empire Wind is due to start supplying power in late 2026. Hinkley-C isn't. This means you also need to factor in the costs of providing the 3.2GW that Hinkley-C should be providing. It's approximately one Drax.

At this stage it's pump priming prices for offshore wind in the US vs the UK prices for "same again".

Hinkley C strike price is index-linked to CPI form £92.50 (2012) , now £128.53 = $162.75 and it's index linked for 35 years giving them a guaranteed income stream of £113 Bn (2024) if they can maintain a 90% capacity factor. (35*365.25*24) *3200 *.9 * 128.53

Nuclear is dependent on backup too as it's doesn't provide peaking power, unlike say solar. But nuclear has much higher requirements for spinning reserve. Several UK wind farms have over 50% capacity factor and being geographically separated means they can have different weather or the same weather at different times. It's not all or nothing like nuclear frequently is.

And France exports peak renewables not nuclear baseload.

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122268394#Comment_122268394

It's a sodium cooled fast neutron reactor with some breeding.

Doug Porter, one of the people advising TerraPower started working on one in 1977 at the government facility where they started building the first one in 1949 and which was producing electricity in 1951.

Birdnuts

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122269504#Comment_122269504

Costs for who?? No evidence of that for consumers for sure….

NIMAN

DO we think if one political party in this country committed to build a nuclear power station, they would lose or gain support?

I'd vote for them.

Shoog

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122272349#Comment_122272349

They would definitely lose support. They would lose it locally from the people who would have to live next to it. Since it's just about impossible to get an Aerobic Digester through planning how easy do you think it will be to get a nuclear power plant through.

It's very much a marginal obsession with nuclear in Ireland so it would undoubtedly lose more voter support than it gained.

They would also lose support in the Dail when they had to try to change the law.

It would be the kiss of death for any party who backed it - which is why it has not and will not ever happen.

KrisW1001

Completely negative impact on any party that proposed it. It would also have a negative effect internationally: Ireland's huge agri-food sector trades heavily on us being an "unspoilt" green island (let's not talk about nitrate pollution...), and even the suggestion of nuclear waste products tarnishes that image, regardless of any scientific fact. Image matters.

Honestly I think even a couple of the nuclear fans here would have second thoughts if a plant was built where they could see it from their house. These things are collossal.

cnocbui

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122272474#Comment_122272474

So we would have an example of this impediment to selling agricultural produce in the form France being unable to find buyers for French food products, by what you consider to be logic? No one outside France consumes French wines, cheeses, butter or anything else.

In 2021 France exported around €70 billion from it's agri/food sector while Ireland exported €15 billion worth.

As an argument it comprehensively falls flat on it's Brie.

Shoog

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122272526#Comment_122272526

The Irish population is 1/10th of France and yet it produces a per capita agricultural exports of 4x France. Irelands agriculture is sold on its clean credentials and it is obviously very effective at promoting its produce. Irish agriculture and tourism are undoubtedly sold on its "clean" image - so yes Nuclear both seems to effect the attractiveness of produce and has the potential to significantly impact Irish agriculture and tourism.

Citing French agriculture is far from the gotcha moment you imagined it was.

cnocbui

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122272452#Comment_122272452

You would likely need three NPPs in Ireland, best located on existing thermal power plant sites which already have heavy grid connections. So that's just 3 local communities to convince with an offer of free power for the life of the power station. I think you would get communities actually lobbying to get them. France overcame local objections with free power and it worked a charm.

Every country that has nuclear power has overcome this supposed problem. Significant boosts to local economies through permanent stable jobs and the excellent safety records actually see local communities where NPPs are sited being very positive towards them.

Local communities in Ireland are not favourable towards either solar or wind either, With any attempts to establish them being generally objected to strongly, yet this impediment has managed to be overcome, almost 400 times. With nuclear you just have 3 communities to sway.

Nuclear is so much cheaper than renewables that it should be an easy sell with an honest public debate because it could actually reduce domestic electricity costs which renwables do not do, as is clearly seen here and in other countries that are attempting the renewables route to net zero.

KrisW1001

"nuclear is so much cheaper". No. It might be "almost as cheap" if a lot of infrastructure has already been put in place, but that's as far as I would go. But really, how many nuclear plants have been built solely from the capital and resources raised at start of project and have completed on schedule? The taxpayers subsidise NPP construction to an extent that doesn't exist with any other type of generation.

Those credit guarantees, preferential loans and direct funding never show up in the price for electricity (agreed at the outset, based on the initial cost estimates of the plant), but you see them in the project costs.

Based on experience this century, NPP projects look a lot like a scam. The providers always lowball the estimate, then rely on politicians embracing the sunk cost fallacy to recoup the actual construction cost. And the electricity is "cheap" because the generator passed a huge chunk of the construction costs onto the host government. Also, the decommissioning cost at end of life is basically a finger in the air estimate, to keep the price per megawatt low, and made in the knowledge that the host government will have to pay whatever it really costs when the time comes anyway.

Even the champions of Nuclear power say that the very worst economic case applies to the first unit on a site, so the idea of having three separate NPP sites with a reactor on each is a non runner. Your only hope to get costs down is by sharing the underlying infrastructue (especially around fuel), and that means building multi-unit sites. If you think Ireland needs 3 NPPs, the only plausible plan is to have them in one place. So where will you build?

I have nothing against the principle of Nuclear power, and I consider it to be the safest thermal generation type, but the current state of the technology is colossally bad value when you count the real costs. The decision in the 1950s to pursue the Uranium cycle rather than Thorium was great for making bombs, but horrible for making reactors.

Historically the industry was kept afloat by soft subsidies from defence budgets on both sides of the Iron Curtain (Korea and Japan had their civil nuclear programmes heavily supported financially by the USA in exchange for those nations not developing their own nuclear weapons). Those days are gone, and now the only builds that make any sense are expansion of existing facilities. Gulf states with effectively infinite budgets buying NPPs doesn't make any kind of case that it would be good for Ireland to do so (the Gulf states also have a level of political corruption that makes every major purchasing decision suspicious)

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122272599#Comment_122272599

When was the last time a nuclear plant in western Europe was built anywhere other than on the site of an existing nuclear power plant ? It just doesn't happen anymore.

It's very difficult to make claims for the price of nuclear when the costs keep going up and construction times are so long.

An example of what happens when laws and standards change during construction delays.

there were 7,000 substantial design changes required by British
regulations that needed to be made to the site, with 35% more steel and
25% more concrete needed than originally planned.

Nuclear got MORE expensive as production increased. The learning curve is Negative.

Shoog

https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/frances-edf-drops-plans-develop-its-own-small-nuclear-reactor-technology-2024-07-01/

Another big player shelves it's plans to design a SMR. It's looking bleak for the fantasy of SMR reactors.

josip

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122327326#Comment_122327326

So who's left in the SMR game? Lockheed Martin's SMR fusion reactor is due sometime in 2024. Cough. Cough. Is there anyone else?

Shoog

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122327472#Comment_122327472

I am not sure Rolls Royce still have a viable project after the UK government dumped them.

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122327476#Comment_122327476

In fairness RR have actually been building SMR's for the Royal Navy's submarines since the 1960's. They aren't another startup with hand waving and CGI (with photoshop you don't even need to dip crap in glitter anymore).

The UK government didn't bite when they offered power SMR's, and lots of UK jobs, for half the cost an equivalent Hinkley-C. And that was before the most recent cost overruns.

RR didn't invest much of their own money in power SMR's, even though the 20 year+ contracts on commercial airliner engines mean RR is a cash cow. Instead they were waiting on £32Bn worth of order commitments before they'd commit to getting the ball rolling.

https://www.powermag.com/a-closer-look-at-two-operational-small-modular-reactor-designs/

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) publishes booklets
biennially on the status of SMR technology. In the IAEA’s most recent
booklet, it notes 25 land-based water-cooled SMRs and another eight
marine-based water-cooled designs are under development globally. It
also lists 17 high-temperature gas-cooled SMRs, eight
liquid-metal-cooled fast-neutron-spectrum SMRs, 13 molten-salt SMRs, and
12 microreactors. If you do the math, that’s 83 SMR designs under
development, but only the KLT-40S and HTR-PM are actually operational.

The two are from Russia and China. The Chinese one is based on old German tech. Using German fuel pellets. Getting Russian fuel is a issue at present and a lot of SMR plans were abandoned when that realisation sunk in.

Capt'n Midnight

How has German coped in the year after nuclear closed down ?

With a net increase of more than 30 TWh, the additional output of renewables alone thus more than compensated for the loss of nuclear capacity in net public electricity generation. … Fossil power sources contributed 210 TWh to electricity production in the final year of nuclear power use … stood at about 160 TWh by 15 April 2024

So in addition to displacing nuclear, in single year, renewables also reduced demand for fossil fuel.

charlie14

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122352797#Comment_122352797

You are so rabid anti nuclear electricity generation that you cannot see the wood for the trees.

2021 nuclear generated 69.1 TWh. Renewable sources, (even including biomass and household waste), in 2021 generated 233.9 TWh and in 2023 generated 267.8 TWh. An increase of 33.9 TWh. So no, renewable sources did not make up for the loss of nuclear generation. The did not even make up for 50%.

In 2022 Germany generated 577.9 TWh. In 2023 514.6 TWh. A 11% drop in generation when consumption dropped by half that percentage at 5.6%. That resulted in for the first time in years Germany having to import 11.7 TWh and a scramble to invest a further €30 Bn., (on top of the billions already invested), in LNG terminals and LNG fired energy plants to keep the lights on in the future.

Those are the realities of Germany`s insanity shutting down a carbon neutral energy source based on nothing to do with climate change, just green ideology

bk

2021 nuclear generated 69.1 TWh. Renewable sources, (even including biomass and household waste), in 2021 generated 233.9 TWh and in 2023 generated 267.8 TWh. An increase of 33.9 TWh. So no, renewable sources did not make up for the loss of nuclear generation. The did not even make up for 50%.

In fairness an increase in renewables of 33.9TWh in two years is an absolutely staggering increase!

To put that in context, in two years they built out enough extra renewables that could power Ireland for a year (34TWh in 2023)!!!!!

The fact that they could build enough new renewables to displace 50% of the Nuclear is just two years, shows how little they needed Nuclear and just how crazy quick it is to add and scale up renewables. It would take decades to build the equivalent amount of Nuclear.

In 2022 Germany generated 577.9 TWh. In 2023 514.6 TWh. A 11% drop in generation when consumption dropped by half that percentage at 5.6%. That resulted in for the first time in years Germany having to import 11.7 TWh and a scramble to invest a further €30 Bn., (on top of the billions already invested), in LNG terminals and LNG fired energy plants to keep the lights on in the future.

Yes, which has nothing to do with renewables, the LNG is to replace piped gas from Russia for obvious reasons.

Don't get me wrong, personally I'd rather they had kept the Nuclear for a few more years and shut down some more coal plants instead.

However your figures actually show why Nuclear is doomed, the speed and scale you can build out renewables is breath taking.

Take China, in 2023, they added 1.1GW of new Nuclear capacity, they added 301 GW of new renewables in 2023. 301GW added in one year! That is insane. That is 50 times Irelands worth of max electricity demand in one year!

China is now expecting to hit their 2030 renewables goal by the end of this year.

When you see absolutely staggering figures like these, you realise we are in the middle of an energy generation revolution. Renewables are scaling at insane pace, I see little chance for much new Nuclear when renewables can be built out this quickly and scale.

Busman Paddy Lasty

Absolutely amazing that amount of renewable generation can be rolled out so quickly. I

charlie14

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122356078#Comment_122356078

Two very different topics so I`ll answer them seperately.

My original post was in relation to the claim that renewables replaced the generation being provided by nuclear. They didn`t. They didn`t even relace half over two years which resulted in generation dropping by 11% in 2023 (double the drop in demand) and resulted in Germany having to import 11.7TWh of electricity to keep the lights on and announcing a further spend of a massive €30 Billion on LNG terminals and LNG gas burning plants.

How anyone can look to Germany after that, (especially after them being more or less hand in glove with Putin encouraging others in Europe to avail of his gas), as some example to still follow on mitigating climate change is beyond comprehension. This is a country that based on nothing other than a governing green ideology shut down those carbom neutral nuclear plants while keeping coal burning plants open and pumping billions into LNG terminals and gas burning plants.

Will they get around to replacing the other 50% lost due to shutting down nuclear plants with renewables,as well as replacing the generation from their coal burning plants and gas plants, who knows, but there appears to be less confidence in Germany that is being expressed here. In December 2023 leading members of the Christian Democrates (CDU), the Christian Socialists (CSU) and the Free Democrates (FDP) as well as State Premiers called for those nuclear plants to be reopened, with an "overarching consensus" among the CDU and CSU on re-opening the technology in Germany, due to, as the Bavarian Premier Soder put it, "the current nuclear policy having burst on contact with reality" due to a court ruling in November that declared €60 Billion earmarked for climate and transformation projects unconstitutional.

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122356270#Comment_122356270

https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/qa-germanys-nuclear-exit-one-year-after Rise and fall of German nuclear

German coal , now at the lowest since 1959 - you can see how nuclear never had any effect on coal usage, just like in the other coal producing countries, the US and UK.

By 2015 renewables were already producing more TWh than peak nuclear. They've been eating into fossil fuel since.

For scale the 3.2GW Hinkley C is expected to generate about 24 TWh a year

Capt'n Midnight

Some info on Hinkley C indirect costs in addition to the direct costs now given at £34 Bn (2015) which is £45.53 Bn (May 2024) = €53.75 Bn

Hinkley C won't even replace the remaining reactors that will close before it opens. UK nuclear output will fall to a 64 year low in 2028 . Also Sizewell B is due to close in 2035 leaving Hinkley C as the UK's only nuclear power plant.

Using CCGT to replace this would lead to "additional 26 TWh of CCGT generation projected across 2027 to 2029 would cause an additional 10 MtCO2 of emissions. …. The delay to Hinkley Point C takes up to 3.2 GW of baseload, inflexible capacity out of the supply stack. Prices increase by 7% on average across 2027 to 2029 as a result of this, with a maximum increase of £4.7/MWh on average in 2028."

Hinkley was supposed to supply 7% of the UK's supply, instead it will cause a 7% wholesale price increase across the board.

"Note: In this analysis, we have modeled a best-case scenario of unit
one becoming operational in 2029, followed by unit two in 2030."

Using DRAX instead (it's supposed to be low carbon innit ?) would mean 3,534 ktCO2e Scope 3 emission a year at a cost of £8.125 Bn for 22.3TWh so essentially it's only as green as the CCGT option. And you have to ignore the harvesting of old growth in British Columbia or Southern USA and other activities that got them dropped from the Clean Energy Index

The five and a half years in the chart above means another £45 Bn (2024) in revenue for Drax, just supplying the power that Hinkley C should have displaced. (Any fan of nuclear will tell you it's all about the construction costs because it's so cheap to run so I'd assume by the same metric there'd wouldn't be much fuel cost offset.)

And then there's the subsidies for Drax which has been supplying the energy that Hinkley C should have. Not sure if they are already covered by "revenue", if not it's billions more. BECCS is carbon capture and storage.

With nuclear the deeper you dig the worse it gets.

SeanW

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122356944#Comment_122356944

It's all well and good to talk about total production, but the fact remains that there's at best no correlation between the output of weather-dependent renewables and energy demand. And that's being kind, to some extent the correlation is reversed: i.e. that weather-dependent renewables produce the least energy when the demand for energy is the greatest.

As stated in the Energy Infrastructure thread:

https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/commodities/solar-panel-supply-german-electricity-prices-negative-renewable-demand-green-2024-5

The difference between the two actually widens even more in the summer, a season of peak production and lower demand. 

This also means that consumers are not necessarily benefiting from the low prices, as they typically consume more energy in non-solar hours. 

This situation will get worse in the coming years as the government wants us all to have electric heat pumps, most of which will be air source heat pumps, the efficiency of which go down with temperatures as do the output of solar panels and - in the case of blocking anti-cyclones - wind turbines.

All that these silly things are doing are complicating the economics for the traditional thermal generation facilities that we still need and will continue to probably for the foreseeable future. That's one of the reasons why countries following this model tend to not only have among the highest energy costs in the world, but in some cases among the dirtiest.

KrisW1001

A note on German politics, as statements from "German politicians" have entered the discussion. It's useful to know the ideologies behind those statements. Both of the parties quoted are on the political right, and both are very fond of big business. It's not a surprise to see either advocating for nuclear power, especially not the FDP who are happy to dabble in a little culture war nonsense from time to time (think of the UK Tories, but add competence and take away racism).

CSU/CDU (they are not two parties, but two regions of the one party.. imagine Fine Gael without some [CDU] or all [CSU] of the progressive social policies) was in opposition at the time those statements were made. FDP is the smallest party in the current coalition with SDP (basically "Labour") and Greens.

Germans often call Bavaria "Texas" in reference to its right-wing conservative politics, so again it's no surprise that Söder (a CSU politician, incidentally) is for it, or at least was that day.

It's also a mistake to claim that Germany had a "knee-jerk", unplanned nuclear shutdown. The country had already started to phase out nuclear power long before Fukushima: Gerhardt Schröder announced the plan in his first government in 2000, with 2022 as the final shutdown date, and the decomissioning of older plants was already underway in 2011. Fukushima just put the existing plan back on schedule. It was a long term, deliberate action, regardless of whether you agree or disagree that it was the right thing to do. Personally I'm in the camp that says once you've got the things you should at least make the best of the situation and keep them online, but I don't get a say, and the German people, who do get a say, never liked nuclear power from day one.

Germany's biggest failure was not to shut down it's nuclear fleet - much of it was going to be hitting very expensive 40-year overhauls by now if left in service; the error was to rely on Putin's gas as a replacement, rather than investing in renewable technology to replace nuclear. It's sad that a country at the centre of Europe's electrical engineering capability is such a laggard in both wind and solar, but when domestic domand was being met by gas, there wasn't much in the way of orders, and thus technical development.

charlie14

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122357713#Comment_122357713

If you take a look at the most recent opinion polls from Germany it`s not that easy to handwave away that the CDU/CSU and FDP (a member of the present coalition government) have called for the re-opening of nuclear plants and having an "overarching consensus" on reopening the technology.

The present governing parties in the most recent poll received 32% support. (SPD 16%, Greens 12%, and the FDP, a party that favours re-opening nuclear plants 4%). The CDU/CSU received 31% with the AfD on 18%. THe CDU/CSU support alone is 3% higher than the combined support for the SDP and Greens who wish to keep them closed.

You may not look at the decision to shut those nuclear plants as knee jerk, but in the middle of an energy crisis to do so while leaving coal burning plants open, was so ill related to mitigating against climate change by reducing emissions that even Greta Thunberg thought it insanity.

Shoog

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122358608#Comment_122358608

There was no energy crisis when the decision was made.

josip

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122357713#Comment_122357713

Is it too simplistic to say that Schroeder was bought from the very beginning? And that while Germany's decommissioning of nuclear gets blamed on green ideology, the reality is that Russia saw useful idiots in Germany everywhere it looked and bought them all off in order to sell shedloads of gas to them?

charlie14

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122358634#Comment_122358634

There certainly was one after the decision was made where generation fell by 11% (twice that of the fall in demand) with Germany having to import 11.7 TWh of electricity, (a third of our yearly consumption), and announce a further €30 Billion spend on LNG terminals and LNG gas fired plants.