Nuclear - future for Ireland?

cnocbui

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118667270#Comment_118667270

Have you noticed how secretive the real costs of renewables seem to be? When trying to find the real costs here, and even more so ones announced for Ireland, the cost is usually not given. They will tell you MWs, and tons of CO2 avoided and that wonderful thousand of homes metric, but almost never what it's costing.

Leaving that aside, the East Anglia One windfarm has a declared cost of £2.5b for 714 MW. That's $3.395b; divide 4.1 by 0.714 and you get 5.7422969..; 3.395*5.7422969=19.495, so I'd say your rationale is sunk. There must be other undisclosed sources of funds or they are just lying.

Offshore wind is more expensive than non EU built nuclear , even before looking at 50% capacity factors, and that tallies with the Internationa Energy Agency figures that have European offshore wind costing more then nuclear:

https://www.iea.org/reports/projected-costs-of-generating-electricity-2020

And it is really so much worse than that, because the life expectancy is a derisory 20 years. So if offshore wind is fully 50% more expensive than Barakh nuclear, where I failed to take account of the 40 year life expectancy discrepancy, then offshore wind is actually going to be more like 150% more expensive than nuclear, allowing for Barakh's future costs of a further $20b over the next 60 years.

Also note that utility scale solar in Europe is about the same LCOE as nuclear - fancy that, but that makes it more expensive by a wide margin due to inadequacies in using LCOE.

This endless argument that nuclear is significantly more expensive than renewables is dishonest and deceitful. LCOE needs to be scrapped as a concept applied to measuring renewables as it does not include any costing of the energy required to fill the holes. We need a different benchmark that realistically reflects a technologies total costs to deliver power 24/3/365 and which includes life expectancy.

bob mcbob

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118667570#Comment_118667570

Here is an article comparing electricity strike prices of offshore wind and Hinkley C.

The subsidy to Hinkley C is 4 times that of offshore wind.

On 11 September 2017 the UK government announced that two developers would commit to delivering 2.4GW of offshore wind capacity for a strike price of £57.50 per MWh generated from 2022/23, taking the industry by surprise. Comparisons to the £92.50 MWh required by the planned Hinkley Point C nuclear plant quickly spread on social media.

In stark contrast, the top up payment to Hinkley Point C will be nearly four times greater at £47.50 per MWh – not double as reported by many commentators. And, as explained above, if the wholesale price should go above £57.50 per MWh, then these two offshore wind sites will not only not require support, they will pay the difference back.

https://www.camecon.com/blog/details-matter-what-you-need-to-understand-about-yesterdays-offshore-wind-stories/#

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118667570#Comment_118667570

Offshore wind is more expensive than non EU built nuclear - ie. no future in EU where offshore wind is an option.

life expectancy is a derisory 20 years - from your link it's 30+ year working life after which it's a decision on refurbish / replace at a fraction of the cost of new build, which should be taken into account for LCOE costings.

Barakh's future costs of a further $20b over the next 60 years ? - Aren't you forgetting the $49.4Bn deal ? And other deals and fuel costs etc.

In addition to the profits from the nuclear power plant construction, the utility firm reportedly will receive about 18 percent of the Enec’s electricity sales, and the total revenue that KEPCO could collect over the next 60 years is estimated at $49.4 billion, ... Separately, KEPCO and KEPCO KPS will soon sign a contract dispatching workers for nuclear power plant repair and maintenance over the next 10 years. The deal is expected to create up to 1,000 new overseas jobs every year, said the KEPCO official.

LCOE highly favours nuclear as the costs can be spread over 60 years and interest rates can be fiddled with to make the numbers add up. It ignores future costs of fuel.

cnocbui

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118667706#Comment_118667706

Hinkly isn't the only nuclear power facility on the planet, though it is a favourite of nuke bashers because the UK government are run by idiots. Using Hinkley as your nuclear poster boy when the clowns responsible are also responsible for Brexit, is an own goal.

cnocbui

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118667822#Comment_118667822

No I am not forgetting the $49.4b deal - you are. $24.4b has been spent leaving a further $25b to go. my $20b was off the cuff and doesn't materially change anything, so large is the cost discrepancy between the Barakh nuclear cost vs offshore wind. Fuel isn't a significant cost with nuclear. Looks like the 20 year lifespan figure was incorrect, so it's back to being just 50% more expensive.

LCOE favours renewables, because it does not include the cost of filling in all the holes.

bk

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118667980#Comment_118667980

Hinkly is a good example for us, as they are our closest neighbours, with the same type of legal system, labour laws and planning system and with similar land and construction costs.

Olkiluoto 3 in Finland or Flamanville in France are also ok examples, though with different legal systems.

These are all far more realistic examples then your example of a Nuclear power plant being built in a desert by an authoritarian government, using slave labour by a company found guilty of using counterfeit parts and falsifying safety records!

Anyway, this is all beside the point, even a single 1,400MW APR reactor would simply be too large for a grid as small as Ireland.

YFlyer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118664479#Comment_118664479

Shoog do you know what valleys have been suggested?

In West Cork there is the Borlin Valley and the valley up from Ballylickey. Ideal locations for wind turbines.

Wonder how the Silvermines project is going?

bob mcbob

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118667980#Comment_118667980

Ah obviously from an Irish perspective, it is much more relevant to consider a plant in the UAE rather than the UK.

Also the money for Hinkley was demanded by EDF (state owned French company) and CGN (a state owned Chinese company) in order to guarantee the build.

Shoog

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118668331#Comment_118668331

There was a proposal called "Spirit of Ireland" which set out the principles. It was mainly based upon storing massive wind capacity, but also was intended to form pumped storage for the EU grid buying in cheap overnight grid over capacity and selling it back at peak times.

cnocbui

I predict Germany will soon announce a massive policy change that will see them cancel plans to shut down their remaining reactors and the restarting of those shut down. Putin has seen to that. All this stuff about interconnectors and gas pipelines really doesn't look like a better alternative than energy independence. The Greens and their LNG ban proposals looks so great, right now. Talk about egg on your face.

specialbyte

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118687026#Comment_118687026

Some translation. Third last sentence: "there's nothing better than energy independence". Second last sentence: "the Greens are silly for wanting future investments in renewables that give us greater energy independence instead of relying on imported gas that keeps us dependent on others". Have I got that right?

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118668331#Comment_118668331

Very roughly speaking you need a good 200-300m or more height difference and be within twice that distance to the coast. Like the Silvermines the lower reservoir already exists but the upper one has to be build from scratch. For Silvermines they are proposing external pipes, it's way cheaper than tunnelling. Probably wouldn't get away with that as coast is scenic. Unless you use the cheap trick of hiding the pipes in a forest so they don't ruin the view.

Another scheme I saw used Poulaphouca as the lower reservoir and tunnel through to the east side of Mullaghcleevaun above Glenmacnass

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dinorwig_Power_Station - Area of natural beauty, they undergrounded everything even though it's was a post industrial landscape of an abandoned quarry.

There's 2.5GW of battery storage being looked at.

Short duration only. So in theory could handle a reactor scram. Our grid rules say that you'd have 5 seconds to from 0 to 1.2GW ie. 75% of a 1.6GW reactor. It takes 7.6 seconds minimum to fall 286 meters so you couldn't use pumped storage.

But nuclear plants can stay off line forever so you'd still need full backup at short notice and for extended periods.

cnocbui

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118687314#Comment_118687314

No.

YFlyer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118687419#Comment_118687419

Thanks.

Close to the coast to uptake the seawater?

External pipes would be significantly cheaper indeed. I be guessing reinforced concrete.

SeanW

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118687026#Comment_118687026

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118687314#Comment_118687314

@concbui you are 100% correct. Everything our mainstream environmental movement has done over the last 50 years has made the unfolding humanitarian catastrophe in Ukraine inevitable. And there's likely worse to come. Opposing LNG terminals to import gas from diverse sources. Opposing nuclear energy to keep us reliant on fossil fuels for at minimum decades more than we needed to be. Insisting on the use of power sources so unreliable that they could only be paired with one other power source, i.e. gas.

I've been warning of the danger of relying on Russia for gas for years. Unfortunately, I can't take any pleasure in saying "I told you so" because of all suffering being inflicted on the people of Ukraine, but the simple fact is that our insane energy policies have emboldened Putin to simply do what he likes, and we should have isolated ourselves from Russia by any means necessary long ago.

@specialbyte How does investment in renewables make us less dependent on gas? The arguments I've seen against nuclear energy is that since renewables are so unreliable, they need very flexible power sources to back them up, the only option for which is gas. Thusly, according to anti-nukes, the very presence of renewables on a power grid is an argument for gas instead of nuclear, as current gen nuclear reactors cannot scale up and down with the insane flexibility required to react to changes in the weather affecting other generators. Guess where much of Western Europe's gas comes from? I'll give you a clue, it's big, cold, East of here, and they've just sent lots of so-called "men" with names like Ivan and Vladimir into Ukraine to murder children in hospitals with attack helicopters.

Because for all the hot air about renewables going back maybe half a century, the fact is that in current service today there are only two known working methods for a (near) fossil fuel free power grid:

1. Be fortunate enough to have favourable geography with river valleys for hydroelectricity and geothermal resources (like Norway, Iceland etc)
2. Use nuclear energy (like France)
3. A combination of 1 and 2 (like Sweden)

https://app.electricitymap.org/

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118688819#Comment_118688819

By 2030 we have to reduce emissions by 80% (not 2035, not that nuclear could be build here by them)

So we'd only need 20% as much gas so less imports and gas fields last years longer. We have some gas and import the rest from the North Sea / north of Scotland and they allocated 28GW of offshore wind so far this year.

We are getting 40% of our electricity from renewables already. Installing lots more wind should easily get us to 80% in conjunction other upgrades.

If we add double our existing capacity of wind then about 60% of the time the grid could be powered from wind alone and the other 40% of the time from a mix of wind and not-wind at an average of 20% each. Initially most of that not-wind would be gas, but even gas could move to bio-methane / hydrogen.

Demand will go up for e-cars and heat pumps and data centres. Nuclear's long lead time means if we can't predict the future accurately then we either tie up huge amounts of capital in white elephants or we have a shortfall later on.

Wind is far more flexible in construction. If you build half a wind farm you get half the power. If you build half a reactor then you still have loans to pay.

Birdnuts

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118688940#Comment_118688940

Well the German example suggests epic fail on all those fronts

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118689211#Comment_118689211

Do you mean the German grid that stopped building new coal plants in 2007*, has removed most of nuclear, and handled a rapid drop of 15GW in solar because of an eclipse, and hasn't increased pumped storage much ?

Or the one with rolling blackouts ?

*Datteln 4's approval wasn't legal.

bk

I think it needs repeating about Germany and Gas. The Germans mostly use gas for home heating, it only makes up a relatively small 15% of their electricity generation.

There is no risk to German electricity generation here. The issue for them is their home heating, not electricity.

specialbyte

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118688819#Comment_118688819

The question is how to secure energy independence for Ireland. When talking about electricity generation, there's really only two ways: using renewables, using our own domestic fossil fuel resources extracted by a state owned fossil fuel company, or a mix of both.

It's important to look at where our gas comes today. One third is from the Corrib gas field in Mayo. Two thirds come via Scotland from the North Sea. It's estimated that only 3% of our gas comes from Russia. Source: https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/electricity-customers-to-save-60-on-annual-bills-as-public-service-levy-to-be-all-but-abolished-41378584.html

It is worth pointing out that strictly speaking even the domestic supply of gas from Corrib isn't earmarked for the Irish market. A private company operates that gas field and they can sell the gas to whomever they like at market prices. In reality though the gas is likely to be exported that far.

It's also useful to look at wind situation in Ireland. The more we can use wind power the smaller the volume of gas we need to burn to generate electricity. If we reduce our gas requirements it will give us two advantages: we can import less gas onto the island and we can reduce how quickly we need to extract gas from Corrib, which will give the Corrib gas field a longer life expectancy.

There is lots of opportunity to increase wind usage in Ireland. We're currently only generating 40% of our electricity from wind. EirGrid have a plan to be generating 80% of our power from wind by 2030. Most of that extra wind power is displacing gas from our grid, meaning we burn less gas. Our reserves will last longer and we will need to import a smaller percentage of our energy.

There's two areas where we can increase wind usage:

1. Grid operation improvements: currently we artificially limit ourselves to a maximum of 75% wind at any one time. EirGrid are working on changes to operating rules and grid investments so we can use up to 95% wind at any one time. The full details on what we need to do on the operational side is here: https://www.eirgridgroup.com/site-files/library/EirGrid/Full-Technical-Report-on-Shaping-Our-Electricity-Future.pdf
2. Build more wind farms: the nameplate capacity of all of the wind farms on the island of Ireland is 5,585MW. Peak demand is 6,500MW. There's still room to add more wind farms. More wind equals burning less gas, particularly imported gas.

For the times when we need to burn gas because the wind isn't blowing (on average 20% of the time) we can rely on our own gas supply from Corrib or gas from Scotland. I'd rather be relying on only sourcing 20% of our electricity from potentially imported fossil fuels than our current 60%.

There's no country in the world fully isolated from world energy markets. If we are nuclear powered we also would not be energy independent as we have no source of uranium for our reactors. Though I will grant it is easier to stockpile years worth of uranium fuel than gas etc.

Birdnuts

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118690366#Comment_118690366

It would be the Germany that despite current actions in Ukraine - is in no position to sanction the Russian Gas/oil industry

Birdnuts

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118693217#Comment_118693217

You seem to think that nameplate capacities on wind turbines actually mean something in the real world🙄. It amazes me that your type continue to believe in this nonsense when it has clearly failed in place like Germany which is now more dependent on imported power than ever. The facts are that building any amount of windfarms will make FA difference to our energy dependency cos during poor wind conditions, 50 windfarms are just as useless as 5.

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118695108#Comment_118695108

And yet Germany has already stopped Nord stream 2, a €9.5Bn project

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118695133#Comment_118695133

Renewables and pumped storage in Germany over the last month compared to total consumption. So a lot of fossil fuel displaced.

Nuclear over the last year wasn't producing anything near renewables. And output not as stable as biomass.

specialbyte

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118695133#Comment_118695133

You're like a bull to a red rag anytime anyone says "nameplate capacity". The point of the paragraph was that current nameplate capacity in Ireland is less than peak demand. It doesn't matter if nameplate capacity is something that rarely, if ever, will be reached in Ireland. The point is that we don't have enough wind turbines to power the whole country even if the grid could take 100% wind power. As a result more wind turbines can be added to the grid to generate more wind power, which would displace more gas power, which lowers the volume of gas we need to burn, which given our reliance on imported gas would increase our energy independence.

Birdnuts

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118696632#Comment_118696632

That will only be temporary until the Ukraine situation sorts itself out - in the meantime they are sourcing LPG from the likes of Qatar and its notable that they will not be sanctioning any Russian banks that handle the payments for current Russian gas imports

Birdnuts

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118698149#Comment_118698149

That is simplistic nonsense that has no real world application. Covering seas and land with wind turbines has not made Germany anymore energy independent then it was 30 years ago and it will be the same here.

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118700844#Comment_118700844

And yet Germany is importing less fuel since the start of the year.

SeanW

Considering that the alternative is to buy LNG from Russia, thus helping Vladimir Putin to murder children in Ukraine (and potentially other countries in the future), it stands to reason that the Japanese would support alternatives.

Wish I could say the same about other places ...

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118875981#Comment_118875981

That's far from the only alternive. As early as February Japan was diverting shipments of LNG to Europe

Japan gets less than a tenth of it's LNG from Russia. And the Russians still haven't returned some islands after WWII so there's that too.

Most of their LNG is imported from Oz , Malaysia and Qatar , the USA , Brunei, Papua.

BTW Oz , Vietnam and the Netherlands moved all moved 10% of their electricity production from fossil fuel to renewables in the last two years.

SeanW

From the Japan Times article above:

It comes amid surging power prices and warnings of electricity shortages in Tokyo.

And this is with Russian LNG imports. It does not say much for the other "alternatives" sounds like they're having serious problems because of their decision to stop using nuclear energy without having anything to replace it with ...