Time for Ireland to introduce Nuclear..?

cnocbui

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119483871#Comment_119483871

Offhore wind costs more than nuclear, particularly if your aim is to contrive a system that is the central plank in a zero CO2 grid. Of course you could build a nuclear power plant in 10 years, for less than half the cost, and get a 92%+ zero grid CO2 17 years earlier than the 2050 target, which won't be met with current hopium relying on stuff that doesn't exist, and have plenty of capacity for EV's, heat pumps and data centres.

is_that_so

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119488463#Comment_119488463

For production or upfront costs? I don't think anything matches nuclear on the initial outlay and the construction phase.

Brief_Lives

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119488463#Comment_119488463

36 months for small modular reactors.

https://www.nuscalepower.com/benefits/cost-competitive

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119490698#Comment_119490698

shorter nuclear construction period of less than 36-months from the first safety concrete

That's assuming they already have a factory churning them out, then it would be 3 years if all the heavens align.

There's no factory. All they have is a design that only exists in a computer. If it worked as promised there'd be a long queue and uranium prices would shoot up. Also 35 times as much waste as normal reactors.

We need solutions for 2030. Nuclear isn't one.

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119490125#Comment_119490125

Large Hydro or pumped storage is in the same order of magnitude as nuclear. But lasts longer and costs less to run. Ardnacrusha start to finish took 4 years and 20% of government budget. It was the world's biggest hydro project when it started generating in 1929.

Hinkley-C increased in price by another £3Bn this year. Interest costs are a bitch on something that's 10 years overdue.

The government don't pay for offshore wind construction just the power so you have to look at how much the government are on the hook for nuclear. And the hidden subsidies for spinning reserve and insurance.

Hinkley was at £106.12£/MWh in December but it's indexed linked so ratchets up and will continue to ratchet up until generation starts and then for another 35 years. (that's the discounted price if a second power station is ordered before startup otherwise add another £4 or thereabouts )

Offshore wind fell from £155/MWh in 2014/15 to £39.65/MWh in 2019. New software algorithms will allow rotating of turbines so as to not intefere with each other and promise another 5% of energy from existing wind farms.

cnocbui

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119490125#Comment_119490125

Project cost. It's hard enough finding even a project cost for offshore wind farms, let alone a breakdown.

cnocbui

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119490698#Comment_119490698

18 conventional reactors have been built in 3 years. 85% of reactors have been built in 10 yers or less.

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119491552#Comment_119491552

How many reactors have been completed (fully operational) in the Americas, and Western Europe in the last 18 years ? (hint see graph at bottom)

More importantly for our 2030 target how many have been started and competed within the last 7.5 years ?

Almost half the reactors under construction are behind schedule. 26/56. Almost all of the ones on schedule are being built by the Russians and Chinese. There's two in India but they've six behind schedule.

https://www.worldnuclearreport.org/reactors.html#tab=iso;status=C;delayed=DEL

Here's the number of new reactor builds outside of Asia (mostly China now) and Eastern Europe (mostly Russia).

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119491536#Comment_119491536

Nuclear costs governments billions directly and in financing and indirectly in subsidies so the project cost is very important. And the electricity costs a bloody fortune on top of all that. And you have to pay for backup power during construction delays.

Scotland got paid £700m in the last capacity auction so offshore wind has a negative capital cost from the governments point of view, it costs less than free. So project cost isn't important. The electricity will cost a faction of nuclear, which will be subsidised £66 more per MWh than wind.

When the wholesale price will be £50/MWh wind will only get £39.65/MWh but nuclear will get the full £50 AND be subsidised to the tune of £56/MWh to get a total of £106.12/MWh.

Are you are seriously suggesting that a windfarm with 20 years to pay back construction costs is more expensive than nuclear which has 3 times as long to payback costs and all the while is getting 2.5 times the income per MWh ? There's about a magnitude of difference in the total income.

cnocbui

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119491802#Comment_119491802

You are ignoring or forgetting the capacity factor difference, just for a start. When the capacity factor is half, you have to double the cost when comparing. If you have even the slightest interest in matching nuclear's low CO2 numbers, ie. not using gas the other 53% of the time, you not only need to slightly more than double the installed capacity of OSW, you also need to add the cost of the whole grid, 12 days reserve energy storage solution, which the tech for doesnt really exist yet. That alone will cost as much, or more likely more, than the cost of the NPP, alone.

And as if that weren't bad enogh, you then have to factor in the 20 year lifespan of turbines vs the 60 year lifespan of a modern NPP.

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119491990#Comment_119491990

Does the government pay for the capital costs of wind farms ? Or do wind farms pay the government for licenses ?

Capacity factor isn't an issue as those costs are borne by the developers. The wholesale price is locked in at less than 40% of nuclear.

Nuclear is only cheap if you've already written off the capital cost and only talk about the marginal cost of extra power. But 90 year old hydro and 40 year old solar panels have much lower marginal costs. Wind can be refurbished at 20 years for a fraction of the cost of building a new wind farm. It practically halves the LCOE. And LCOE is meaningless for new nuclear construction given the delays and cost increases.

If a nuclear plant is a decade late then there's a decade of baseload produced through coal. Very roughly Hinkley-C's delays will have caused 100,000,000 tonnes of coal to be burnt unnecessarily. That is not a low number. And most of which would have been avoided by ploughing all those billions into renewables. At best this adds another decade to the how long it will take it to become carbon neutral on top of construction, mining and fuel processing.

I've reckoned 2.5 x capacity of OSW to provide 80% demand from wind without storage, without other generators based on UK offshore wind data measured every 30 minutes for 5 years. This would leave a lot of surplus wind to export or use for storage. And yes the tech exists. A 100 MW Hydrogen plant will be built in Felixstowe for £1.5/Watt, before Hinkley-C whose price increased by £1/Watt this year goes live.

Brid Hegarty

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119458469#Comment_119458469

Did you bother investing since?

Brief_Lives

I did....

Brief_Lives

Some sense coming from engineers...

https://www.independent.ie/news/environment/engineers-urge-dropping-of-nuclear-power-ban-as-energy-crisis-persists-42079091.html

BuckoA51

Seems to me with the rapid pace of battery storage tech there won't be need for Nuclear, but I'd still prefer it to more fossil fuel burning. I mean they can even store energy with compressed air https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/green-tech/a36300986/compressed-air-grid-energy-storage-system/

Brief_Lives

This is a batterery for excess energy storage... you still need to produce that energy... and the energy that Irelands grid needs, is only going to increase in the future...

cnocbui

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119800971#Comment_119800971

The $2.5 trillion reason we can’t rely on batteries to clean up the grid

Fluctuating solar and wind power require lots of energy storage, and lithium-ion batteries seem like the obvious choice—but they are far too expensive to play a major role.

https://www.technologyreview.com/2018/07/27/141282/the-25-trillion-reason-we-cant-rely-on-batteries-to-clean-up-the-grid/

And no, battery costs are not declining fast enough to change this and they will never decline in cost enough to ever change this because the basic costs that go into making batteries are never going to fall to near zero. Lithium prices have near doubled in 2022 and the price of batteries has gone up.

Brief_Lives

The Sand batters that the Finns have invernted are brilliant... simple, effective.. genius really... looking forward to seeing their introduction to Ireland in the future...

I might have posted it before... maybe not...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sol9FOaKTr0&t=157s

mazdamiatamx5

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119478812#Comment_119478812

We're not remotely overpopulated, even bearing in mind that the CSO statistics most likely significantly underestimate our population due to the PC consensus. Even if you factor in an upgrade of 20% or so to the figures , we're still not overpopulated.

Agreed on the services not being up to scratch, but a high % of the population is obsessed with the idea that either middle class surbubia with long commute times, or landlordism, or homelessness is the the only way to live.

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119801028#Comment_119801028

Perhaps you can explain how nuclear will meet demand at peak times and all through winter ?

Places like the US, Korea and Japan have cooling demands in summer so 18 month refuelling cycle makes sense as you'd alternate during spring / autumn. But here you'd need a 12 or 24 month cycle , the first increases downtime %, the second means you'd have to reduce output for fuel economy, like they are doing in Torness, which increases the cost per unit.

Padre_Pio

How many solar panels and battery backups can you buy for the cost of a nuclear power plant?

Not just for home, but also commercial.

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119802081#Comment_119802081

Grid scale batteries are grand for an hour or two. They smooth out intermittency and give you time to start up the generators if needed. They won't keep the lights on overnight.

Our annual gas demand is about 50TWh. The UK closed the 30TWh Rough Storage Facility in 2017 to save £75m a year over 10 years. Had it been open last winter it would have saved UK households an average of £100.

If you have planning permission you can buy and install solar fairly quickly and probably pay off any loans before you'd have a nuclear plant approved here.

snowstreams

The synchronous compensator in Money point might be a better solution to relying on batteries for very short term storage.

Even with batteries we might need more of these compensators if we plan to rely on much renewables.

https://www.dieselgasturbine.com/news/Siemens-Energy-World-s-largest-flywheel-shipped/8019928.article

A nuclear power plants large steam turbines could do the same job as this wheel though by default.

cnocbui

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120120173#Comment_120120173

ESB is to spend €10 billion to upgrade the network to try and accommodate 80% renewables - €10b for not even 1Mw generated. That's nearly 41% of the cost of the Barakah nuclear plant in the UAE that generates 5.6 GW, almost enough to power this whole country. But nuclear power is too expensive. Mind blowing.

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120153876#Comment_120153876

That plant had already hit $32Bn in 2018, it was supposed to be $20bn and the costs will continue to increase until it's finished.

Academic anyway as labour costs, planning and land values are very different to here.

Academic anyway as we don't know what the wholesale price is. It's the one that matters.

Academic anyway as it was delayed years proving yet again that there is no role for nuclear for our 2030 emission reductions, even if nuclear was reliable once delivered.

And the Korean nuclear industry is dodgy https://www.technologyreview.com/2019/04/22/136020/how-greed-and-corruption-blew-up-south-koreas-nuclear-industry/

cnocbui

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120154055#Comment_120154055

In 2011, Bloomberg reported that following detailed finance agreements, the build cost was put at $30 billion and financed with $10 billion equity, $10 billion export-credit agency debt, and $10 billion from bank and sovereign debt. South Korea may earn a further $20 billion from operation, maintenance and fuel supply contracts.[7] A later Bloomberg report indicates the price as $25 billion.[8]

As of 22 March 2018, the pYroject's total cost was refined to $24.4 billion to complete. Startup of Unit 1 was delayed to late 2018.[9]

I believe that $32 billion includes the service contract for 20 years of maintainance and fuel, so it's not the construction cost.

Various figures have been quoted for Barakah, ranging from $20 – 30 billion; it’s hard to pin down an exact figure since it appears at least part of the quoted contract value pertains to a 30-year fuel and operations contract tied to the main build. For the sake of discussion, let’s take the middle of that range at $25 billion, or $6.25 billion/unit. https://euanmearns.com/an-overview-of-the-kepco-apr1400/

It took only 8 years from construction start to beginning of operation and 11 years till full operation, with unit 4 scheduled to be running later this year, the other 3 were all operational in 2022. It's going to take the ESB 8 years just to upgrade the grid, so no different to building a reactor, including delays.

The labour cost argument would apply to anything then, including offshore wind, right? So those OSW farms are going to cost more to build than anywhere else, right? Scotland already has the ports and support vessel construction industry from the Scottish North Sea oil industry. We have to start from scratch with all of that, and it's a massive additional cost. We no more have an established OSW building industry than we have an NPP building industry.

Besides that, The UAE costs are not slave labour as some allege, as the construction costs in South Korea are in line with the UAE. The recent Polish contracts are also not out of whack with those.

According to Polish media, KHNP could construct six 1.4GWe reactors at a total cost of $26.7 billion compared $31.3 billion for Westinghouse and $33 billion for EDF. KHNP also proposed post-construction technology transfer to Poland.

Thats. $3.17b per GW taking the Korean bid. Barakah was $4.36b per GW, So looks like the construction cost nonsense that the UAE is somehow vastly lower is untrue.

Yes, Barakah was delayed but it's still up and runnig in a very reasonable time frame. 8 years 'till you start getting 96% capacity factor without having to waste $10b upgrading the grid for variable renewables with less than 50% capacity factors, located in numerous inconvenient and costly to service locations with flywheels and giant batteries and so on and so on, is actually very good. The ESB ugrade is twice as long a project as the estimate for building a reactor in Poland, which is 4 years.

No country has ever constructed the OSW and hydrogen production, storage, and generation nonsense required to get 96% capacity factor zero CO2 energy to match a NPP, ever, let alone in 10 years or 8 years or 4 years. It's never been done, so saying a NPP takes too long to build is horse sh​it.

The Korean nuclear industry was chosen by Poland. Yes there were irregularities, but those have been addressed. And while some people love to trumpet nonsense like 'fake parts' none of the parts were fake, there were irregularities with their inspection, not source of manufacture. Journalistic hyperbole designed to get clicks. For all the hot air about it, the safety record per GWH of nucear energy is still exceptional.

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120156414#Comment_120156414

Nuclear is all or nothing. A 99% complete reactor produces no power.

Even when complete a rough rule of thumb is another 6 months to get it commissioned. Last March Finland connected their new reactor to the grid. It will be this March at the earliest before it's fully commissioned. The Finn's will be one nuclear plant short from 2009 when it was supposed to go on line, to whenever the plant they cancelled last year gets built, which will be long after 2030.

Last year Finland increased wind power by 75%. It's done incrementally so you get the benefits on a rolling basis, like the ESB upgrades.

We have to reduce our electrical emissions by 80% in the next seven years. Here's a list of countries have started construction of nuclear power plants, we can't even get to the starting line without changing laws. In the last thirty years none of them has started and competed a single plant. Not a single one.

Argentina,

Armenia,

Austria,

Belgium,

Brazil,

Bulgaria,

Canada,

Cuba ,

Czech Republic,

France,

Iran,

Italy,

Kazakhstan,

Germany,

Lithuania,

Poland,

Mexico ,

Netherlands,

South Africa,

Spain,

Sweden,

Switzerland,

Taiwan,

UK ,

USA

Ukraine