Nuclear - future for Ireland?

SeanW

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122154226#Comment_122154226

Still you have to admit that this raises a lot of questions, how we got to have such expensive electricity. And you can't blame Vladimir Putin for this, we knew that he was a maniac bent on conquest and that he'd already taken chunks out of Ukraine in 2014. We in Europe were on notice in this regard - and we had seen precedents in the 1930s.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122155033#Comment_122155033

Removing nuclear from any view of French electricity would be like removing wheat from bread or cocoa from a chocolate bar. And they produce very little energy from gas.

cnocbui

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122156499#Comment_122156499

You picked a great time of the year for your ant-nuclear nonsense.

It's renewables that result in higher CO2 emissions, not nuclear.

Just 1.24% of our energy coming from wind today, necessitating the burning of fossil fuels to compensate for most of the deficit.

It took 8 years to build each APR-1400 reactor in the UAE, it took 9 to build a couple in S Korea, because the previous government cancelled the builds and the project was halted for a couple of years until a succeeding government reversed that decision, so it probaly would have taken 7 years without the political interference.

A classic hare and the tortoise conundrum. A Korean built APR-1400 has a likely 96% capacity factor, currently 100% as those built haven't stopped.

Our wind has a 24% capacity factor. A Korean built APR-1400 has a likely 96% capacity factor.

So lets say we have an annual system demand of 10 GW of constant generation, currently being met with gas. So you model two scenarios out to 20 years, one being build a NPP and the other being onshore wind farms, with start of construction tomorrow.

The onshore wind has had 7 years of operation by the time the NPP goes online. In 20 years time, the wind farm will have resulted in 1273.7 TWh of electricity generated from gas, whereas the NPP wil have resulted in 742.8 TWh.

That's 42% less CO2 from the slow to build NPP.

cnocbui

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122155987#Comment_122155987

Offshore wind is at least four times the cost of Korean built NPPs based on APR-1400 reactors and adjusting for capacity factor difference, and excluding storage costs for the OSW energy and the 26-30% O&M costs (based on capital construction cost)

Six APR-1400 reactors are operational with a further two under construction and another two likely to be built in Poland.

It's ridiculous to lumber nuclear with negatives that are based on Irishness.

KrisW1001

The cost to install your first nuclear reactor is a multiple of the cost to add a subsequent one. Ireland's energy demand cannot justify more than one reactor, so we would end up with all the fixed costs, without the possibility of spreading them over future incremental build of more plants.

You can't compare Korean costs to what it would cost here. Korea is a world centre of heavy engineering... everything they need to build something of this scale can be sourced locally. Every last component of an Irish build will need to be transported here, and assembled by staff flown here and a accommodated here to do it. Those costs add up.

I am not anti-nuclear, but in a small isolated grid like ours nuclear plants just can't pay for themselves. You want nuclear in Ireland, then us funding an expansion of existing nuclear generation somewhere in continental europe and building more interconnector capacity to. import that is the only financially viable way to do it.

cnocbui

One reactor is only 1.4 GW. We need at least 10 of them to meet future energy needs with regards to EV's, heat pumps and de-carbonisation of transport and industry. Poland was just offered 6 reactors for the same price as the two currently under construction in Korea. So yes, you can compare the costs with Korea. Easier to transport stuff from SK to Ireland than Poland, given we are talking ships.

bk

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122161662#Comment_122161662

Ah the Korean company found guilty of using counterfeit parts in the plants and falsifying safety records!

bk

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122158817#Comment_122158817

Ironically most Nuclear power plants in Europe use Uranium for Russia!

They are trying to switch suppliers now, but it still largely hasn't happened.

It was also ironic that in 2022, when we needed them most, half of Frances Nuclear reactors were offline due to cracks found in pipes and France had to desperately import electricity from Germany, etc. to keep the lights on. All at a time when we really needed those reactors and prices were jumping up. They really made the situation a lot worse!

cnocbui

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122161682#Comment_122161682

Not this sh​it again. They were not counterfeit parts. No such thing. The safety inspections were falsified. All of this was 11 years ago. Boeing is far worse, their failures are current and ongoing.

Explosive_Cornflake

I would love to see nuclear here, and I'm sure this has been said in this thread a few hundred times, but there is not a chance in hell we'd build it for less money than landing on the moon. It would take decades to decide where to put it, and then you'd have tribunals and enquiries into the selection of that site.

bk

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122161811#Comment_122161811

If you keep brining up Korean reactor's I'll continue to bring up this companies history so everyone knows the type of company you want us buying reactors from!

Over 2,000 falsified safety documents, two reactors had to be taken off line to replace the parts in question and 100 employees indicted for their part in falsifying documents.

gjim

Not only that, but the suspension of operations in Korea due to the falsified safety documents and the use of substandard parts was estimated to have cost about 10T Won (about $8.5 billion). And it wasn't just falsified quality assurance certificates - there was bribery and corruption indictments too.

Here's a quote from an MIT study about the scandal:

On September 21, 2012, officials at KHNP had received an outside tip about illegal activity among the company's parts suppliers. By the time President Park had taken office, an internal probe had become a full-blown criminal investigation. Prosecutors discovered that thousands of counterfeit parts had made their way into nuclear reactors across the country, backed up with forged safety documents. KHNP insisted the reactors were still safe, but the question remained: was corner-cutting the real reason they were so cheap?

Park Jong-woon, a former manager who worked on reactors at Kepco and KHNP until the early 2000s, believed so. He had seen that taking shortcuts was precisely how South Korea's headline reactor, the APR1400, had been built.

After the Chernobyl disaster in 1986, most reactor builders had tacked on a slew of new safety features. KHNP followed suit but later realized that the astronomical cost of these features would make the APR1400 much too expensive to attract foreign clients. "They eventually removed most of them," says Park, who now teaches nuclear engineering at Dongguk University. "Only about 10% to 20% of the original safety additions were kept."

Most significant was the decision to abandon adding an extra wall in the reactor containment building ‒ a feature designed to increase protection against radiation in the event of an accident. "They packaged the APR1400 as 'new' and safer, but the so-called optimization was essentially a regression to older standards," says Park. "Because there were so few design changes compared to previous models, [KHNP] was able to build so many of them so quickly."

Having shed most of the costly additional safety features, Kepco was able to dramatically undercut its competition in the UAE bid, a strategy that hadn't gone unnoticed. After losing Barakah to Kepco, Areva CEO Anne Lauvergeon likened the Korean unit to a car without airbags and seat belts. When I told Park this, he snorted in agreement. "Objectively speaking, if it's twice as expensive, it's going to be about twice as safe," he said. At the time, however, Lauvergeon's comments were dismissed as sour words from a struggling rival.

By the time it was completed in 2014, the KHNP inquiry had escalated into a far-reaching investigation of graft, collusion, and warranty forgery; in total, 68 people were sentenced and the courts dispensed a cumulative 253 years of jail time. Guilty parties included KHNP president Kim Jong-shin, a Kepco lifer, and President Lee Myung-bak's close aide Park Young-joon, whom Kim had bribed in exchange for "favorable treatment" from the government.

"Several faulty parts had also found their way into the UAE plants, angering Emirati officials. "It's still creating a problem to this day," Neilson-Sewell, the Canadian advisor to Barakah, told me. "They lost complete faith in the Korean supply chain."

So yeah, if you want "cheap" nuclear, this is one only way to do it.

Busman Paddy Lasty

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122161604#Comment_122161604

Spot on.

"I am not anti-nuclear, but in a small isolated grid like ours nuclear plants just can't pay for themselves. You want nuclear in Ireland, then us funding an expansion of existing nuclear generation somewhere in continental europe and building more interconnector capacity to. import that is the only financially viable way to do it."

I've said same many times over. We could buy into French nuclear and have a base load supply, leveraging their 50 years of experience and existing plants.

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122162495#Comment_122162495

There's nothing to buy into because France doesn't export nuclear power. And even if it did the UK are ahead of us in the queue as they've been importing GW's of French electricity for ages and will continue to do so for years since the French designed nuclear plants are so late.

The last 20 years of French experience of on-time on-budget delivery of nuclear in the UK, China, France and Finland can't be ignored no mater how much they'd like it to be.

Our grid will be able to accommodate 95% renewables which leaves just 5% base load. And that 5% will include hydro, CHP, biomass and until 2050 gas. Then there's the necessity to have high inertial generators on load near the large cities for grid stability unless synchronous compensators can do that. Doesn't leave a lot of guaranteed demand.

NB imported nuclear will be non-synchronous because it will come over a DC cable so it can't be used as part of the 5% base load either.

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122161604#Comment_122161604

To add a single 1.6GW EPR reactor here would require replacement reserve of 1.21GW to be available within FIVE seconds or the entire grid will be heading Back to the Future. And the full 1.6GW within 90 seconds and then maintained for as long as required. Using a second reactor at the same site isn't an option as the French and then later the Japanese found out.

If you have that sort of backup then it's trivial to accommodate renewables with their week ahead forecasts especially when we'll have 10 minute real time weather info at 500m resolution.

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122160866#Comment_122160866

Just a reminder that Finland gets more energy from wind than from the new nuclear plant. And half that wind came on line in the last three years.

cnocbui

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122162858#Comment_122162858

https://yle.fi/a/74-20067645

https://energycentral.com/news/electricity-prices-finland-fall-75-percent-new-nuclear-reactor-became-operational

If only they had stuck to renewables and kept their electricity prices high, so Irish anti-nuclears could keep up the delusion of cheap renewables.

As a consumer, I don't actually give a toss about corruption in the nuclear supply chain so long as it doesn't increase the price I pay for my electricity. I do care about China engaging in modern day slavery and genocide towards the Uighers, which is behind your much loved and ever ejaculatory shouts of glee over falling solar prices - which are still far more expensive than an APR-1400 based on output.

In terms of moral accounting, I'll take a cheap Korean reactor over a pile of cheap solar panels made cheap via slavery or wind turbine masts being dumped below cost to harm western industries, smelted from Iron ore and coal shipped from Australia and smelted using vast quantities of power derived from coal based power, of which the Chinese are set to add 200 GW worth over the next 6 years.

When it comes to renewables fanatics/anti-nuclears; 'none so blind as those who will not see' is agonisingly appropriate.

Busman Paddy Lasty

From the second article regarding 75% drop in electricity prices since OK3 went online. That level of price decrease was not because of OK3, which supplies 15% of Finlands power.

• Last year, prices rose to unseen heights after Russia stopped exporting electricity to Finland. The country even then prepared for periodic power cuts due to the high demand for energy for heating during winter.

charlie14

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122169139#Comment_122169139

Last year due to that 15% from OK3 Finland because self sufficient in electricity generation for the first time and the price was a fraction of ours as well as being below the E.U. average.

cnocbui

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122161839#Comment_122161839

'We' wouldn't build it, the Koreans would. If the cost of nuclear has to be inflated dramatically because Ireland is such a basket case, then the same holds for the construction of offshore wind, ne'est-ce pas? Or is there some financial nonsense of an argument that makes Irish nuclear inevitably more expensive while the same logic doesn't also apply to Irish offshore wind projects?

UK offshore wind is at least 4 times more expensive than APR-1400 based Korean nuclear, based on actual output. If One is more expensive to build by X amount, then so will the other be, so the relative cost difference will still apply and nuclear will still be a quarter the cost in relative terms.

And here is the central point that continues to be lost on everyone: The whole point is CO2 reduction, not renewables for renewables sake, which is what it has become in Europe. You build nuclear capacity and you get net zero CO2 from that capacity. You build renewables and all you get is a CO2 reduction, because it's got a low capacity factor, is inherently unreliable and has to backed up with fossil fuels, being expensive imported gas.

France has the only net zero grid on the planet, and it's because they have 100% nuclear capacity on paper, which translates to 75% of their energy being from nuclear, not because they built loads of renewables that need fossil fuel based backup.

French CO2 output is currently 11g per KWh, the winds finally picked up here after days-on-end of near nothing, so our CO2 output has fallen dramatically to only 189g per KWh, instead of up around 289g yesterday.

Both in financial and CO2 terms, nuclear is the better choice because it's lower in emissions and cost.

Busman Paddy Lasty

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122169539#Comment_122169539

Please read the article. There was an abnormally high price due to the war/lack of Russian electricity, it was coming from that high price anyway.

From your graph you posted the EU looks approx 28c and Finland 24c. Hardly earth shattering deal there.

Does the Ireland figure include the rebates? I paid 35c last year on average. After rebates about 10c per unit. We are low users and two adults on the bill.

charlie14

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122169933#Comment_122169933

The only abnormallity is that without taxes our electricity costs over twice that of Finland. Finland were self sufficient in electricty for the first time last year so I don`t see what relevance Russian electricity prices had on the cost of Finland`s electricity. As to the war, the price Finland paid last year for gas would have been no different to anywhere else in Europe.

In 2022 Ireland consumed 30.6 TWh of electricity according to Enerdata. Finland 79TWh. Same size of population but Finland`s consumtion is 2.25 times greater than ours pe capita. OK3 is supplying 15% of their electricity for a cost of, (even after all the delays and budget over-runs), €11 billion. That €11 billion would have provided 33% of our needs. You mentioned earlier about viable finances, so how viable is this current 37GW plan financially when compared to that Finland have for a cost of €11 billion ?

Busman Paddy Lasty

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122170404#Comment_122170404

I mentioned Russian supply not prices just to clarify. "Last year, prices rose to unseen heights after Russia stopped exporting electricity to Finland."

If we could build an OK3 in Ireland for €11B I'd vote for it. But can we?

bk

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122170404#Comment_122170404

First of all Finland is part of the Nordic synchronous grid which also includes Sweden, Norway and Denmark. This means if one of their reactors suddenly goes off line they can rely on Norwegian hydro to back it up.

We being an island nation with just our own grid and no sychronous interconnection (DC interconnectors are not sychronous), thus we don't have that luxury and would need to keep gas power plants around running to back one up.

Finland has prexisting Nuclear industry and experience that we don't enjoy.

This new reactor OL3 was built in a pre-exisitng Nuclear facility which already has two other reactors, with the supporting services already in place, we would have to build all that.

Originally that plant was supposed to cost just €3 Billion, it ended up taking 18 years and €11 Billion!

Keep in mind most of the major construction was done pre covid, so that price doesn't include the massive increase in capital costs (for all projects types) that we have suffered over the last 4 years or so. Capital costs have doubled or tripled in that time. Also we are now in a high interest rate environment, that is really bad news for the financing of Nuclear projects.

So if this cost €11 Billion, realistically you would be looking at more like €30 Billion (conservatively) here in Ireland, with the capital cost increases, high interest rate and no supporting Nuclear facility.

We would also need to build a Nuclear waste storage facility, Sweden are currently looking at a €20 Billion bill for theirs.

It is very telling that the Finnish have cancelled a planned 4th reactor, OL4, because of the big cost overruns and delays of OL3. OL3 really wasn't a good experience for them and as a result they are going to focus on renewables instead.

From your graph you posted the EU looks approx 28c and Finland 24c. Hardly earth shattering deal there.

Cool, I'm paying 24c too here in Ireland. Including VAT and without the government support.

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122170547#Comment_122170547

Renewables can pay for themselves over the timescales from getting approval to commissioning of US and Western European reactor projects since the turn of the century. So there's an argument that even if nuclear was free it would still be more expensive than going with renewables.

https://www.nucnet.org/infographics/nucnet-explainer-finland-s-olkiluoto-3-begins-commercial-operation-5-2-2023

The story of Olkiluoto-3 began in 2000 when Finnish utilities company
Teollisuuden Voima Oyj (TVO) first applied to build a new nuclear power
unit in an attempt to wean the country off foreign imports of
electricity and supply a new source of low-carbon energy.

Commercial 23 years later operation started.

Unlike us the Finns had the advantages of having a nuclear industry and an existing site at a nuclear power plant they could build on.

AREVA and Westinghouse went bankrupt. EDF and NuScale are hovering on bankruptcy. Toshiba and Siemens left the industry. Rolls Royce isn't willing to invest their own money in new reactors. Nuclear construction is a gamble.

cnocbui

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122170547#Comment_122170547

KHNP offered Poland six 1.4 GW reactors (8.4 GW) for €24.6 billion. That's €2.93 billion per GW. OK3 is 1.6 GW, so €6.88 billion per GW.

In other words, if we had the nouse of Poland we could get an OK3 level of capacity for far less than €11 billion, actually less than half the OK3 price.

So I think we could easily secure a deal with KHNP, if we wanted it.

Would you vote for that, or say €4 billion per GW, allowing for some Irish cost inflation?

Earlier, competition between Westinghouse and KHNP for the main contract
had become contentious. KHNP had reportedly offered to build six
APR1400 reactors with a capacity of 8.4GWe for $26.7 billion. The
Westinghouse offer was $31.3 billion for six AP1000 reactors with a
total capacity of 6.7GWe, while EDF’s bid for its EPR technology was for
$33-48.5 billion for four to six reactors. Polish media reported that
KHNP had also proposed post-construction technology transfer to Poland
and media speculation was that the contract would go to KHNP.

Capt'n Midnight

Wylfa on Anglesey has been chosen as the preferred site for a large-scale nuclear power plant, the UK government said.

Just to set the expectation The site was bought by ministers for £160m from previous developers Hitachi who abandoned plans for a new reactor in 2019.

The next UK General Election is on 4th July. And this government hasn't a snowball's chance in Hell of winning.

Parliament will be prorogued on Friday, 24 May, while dissolution will take place on Thursday, 30 May.

Then Purdah kicks in.

Consonata

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122171227#Comment_122171227

Lets see if they actually make good on their cost projection? So far any Nuclear Plant actually completed in Europe in the last decade has been wildly over budget (Finland) or unfinished (UK). If it were truly the case that Korea was a silver bullet that had finally figured out a way to build Nuclear on time, on budget in a replicable fashion, then why aren't the UK, France, Sweden all queuing up to build a dozen Korean plants?

You can see why European states prefer more conservative renewable options which have lower capital cost and better maintenance projections that doesn't require a whole nuclear energy industry to already exist to maintain them.

charlie14

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122170547#Comment_122170547

So really Russia had nothing to do with Finland being self sufficient and paying half the price for their electricity that we were..

My question was in relation to your earlier post on financial viabilty which for you appeared to be a problem where nuclear was concerned, yet you appear to have no problem voting for a current 37GW offshore wind/hydrogen 2050 plan that nobody can give a cost for, that will not be within a country mile of providing our 2050 requirement according to Eirgrid and that was before Eamon Ryan admitted that for the floating turbine part of that plan (around 25% as far as I recall) will not be technically possible within the next 20 years or more

If you cannot give a cost for a a plan you favor how can you compare it on the basis of financial viability to any other proposal ?

Busman Paddy Lasty

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122171227#Comment_122171227

KHNP, are they the same KHNP that the following was put to you just two days ago...

"Park Jong-woon, a former manager who worked on reactors at Kepco and KHNP until the early 2000s, believed so. He had seen that taking shortcuts was precisely how South Korea's headline reactor, the APR1400, had been built.

After the Chernobyl disaster in 1986, most reactor builders had tacked on a slew of new safety features. KHNP followed suit but later realized that the astronomical cost of these features would make the APR1400 much too expensive to attract foreign clients. "They eventually removed most of them," says Park, who now teaches nuclear engineering at Dongguk University. "Only about 10% to 20% of the original safety additions were kept."

Most significant was the decision to abandon adding an extra wall in the reactor containment building ‒ a feature designed to increase protection against radiation in the event of an accident. "They packaged the APR1400 as 'new' and safer, but the so-called optimization was essentially a regression to older standards," says Park. "Because there were so few design changes compared to previous models, [KHNP] was able to build so many of them so quickly."

Having shed most of the costly additional safety features, Kepco was able to dramatically undercut its competition in the UAE bid, a strategy that hadn't gone unnoticed. After losing Barakah to Kepco, Areva CEO Anne Lauvergeon likened the Korean unit to a car without airbags and seat belts. When I told Park this, he snorted in agreement. "Objectively speaking, if it's twice as expensive, it's going to be about twice as safe," he said. At the time, however, Lauvergeon's comments were dismissed as sour words from a struggling rival.

By the time it was completed in 2014, the KHNP inquiry had escalated into a far-reaching investigation of graft, collusion, and warranty forgery; in total, 68 people were sentenced and the courts dispensed a cumulative 253 years of jail time. Guilty parties included KHNP president Kim Jong-shin, a Kepco lifer, and President Lee Myung-bak's close aide Park Young-joon, whom Kim had bribed in exchange for "favorable treatment" from the government.

"Several faulty parts had also found their way into the UAE plants, angering Emirati officials. "It's still creating a problem to this day," Neilson-Sewell, the Canadian advisor to Barakah, told me. "They lost complete faith in the Korean supply chain."

Busman Paddy Lasty

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122171398#Comment_122171398

From the graph you posted Ireland seems to be 38c, EU 28c and Finland 24c. Not quite double but more expensive as we are an island grid with no natural resources or connection with multinational synchronised grid.

You should query/investigate the Ireland gross price, most retailers here quote a high price and offer discounts to everyone for a term contract. @bk paying 24c. Me as low as 30c gross last year.