Ireland needs to invest in a modern Nuclear Power Plant?

Inquitus

Some context on hydrogen as a fuel, changing opinions, etc.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0Ff0Fg4mTI

namloc1980

It won't happen here. Too much red tape and local objections. We get politician and NIMBYs losing their minds over minor stuff like cycle lanes. Can you imagine the hysteria over a nuclear power plant??

xxxxxxl

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119652470#Comment_119652470

We won't be getting Fusion either with the terribly worded legislation.

Danzy

If these new generation ever leave theoretical or experimental phases,why not.

The current nuclear plants are woefully dear. Even in an energy crisis.

Housefree

No

igCorcaigh

Should have been done years ago. This is one area that I disagree with some of the old Green politics.

2011

I see the cost per unit of electricity in France is about 50% of what it is here at under €0.18 per unit. Link:

https://www.french-property.com/guides/france/utilities/electricity/tariff

France generates over 80% of its electricity from nuclear power.

2011

For those that put all their fair in “green hydrogen” you need to appreciate that no commercially viable green hydrogen plant is in existence.

Also where is the electricity required to make green hydrogen supposed to come from?

mohawk

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119652642#Comment_119652642

I recently came across an engineer talking about nuclear and the waste etc. Impression I got is that nuclear is no where near as bad as the greens made out. I feel like the greens have a very narrow focus on the environmental issues facing us. Carbon bad, wind good. Carbon is far from the only problem our environment is facing. We are poisoning the planet and using up too many resources.

I think that the Irish public are so poisoned against nuclear that it will never happen here.

Thelonious Monk

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119652642#Comment_119652642

I mean it's been FF and FG in power for decades, why haven't they got one built, how are the Greens to blame for no nuclear?

maccored

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119658789#Comment_119658789

norway are working on creating it from water - but agreed - vast quantities of clean electricity is required which isn possible atm. at the same time, is dumping nuclear waste in oceans etc the right way to go? Nuclear might reduce some pollution but it just creates a new kind

2011

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119659153#Comment_119659153

France is the only modern country in the western world with a carbon footprint that is in decline. The are also the largest net exporter per head of population in the world.

Nuclear waste is an issue but in my opinion this is the least **** option that we have by a large margin. What is the alternative? I’m all for renewable energy, I have worked in that sector in a senior design role for years (I’m an engineer). But renewables can only be part of the solution. Sometimes the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine. That is the reality.

Danzy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119658775#Comment_119658775

It's subsidized, that's why they can sell it at that.

I've no problem with nuclear, i think if people want a low to zero carbon future energy it's an important part.

It would break the State here though to invest in it, there are good reasons why private capital mostly avoids nuclear, Why it is totalitarian regimes that are dominant in the sector.

As a strategic asset for Energy may be the EU should have a certain amount, put it on the never never of ECB stimulus.

We should certainly buy energy from nuclear plants, even support one that's already existing.

end of the road

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119658775#Comment_119658775

the french very heavily subsidize nuclear to the tune of hundreds of billions, and it also subsidizes electricity in general.

it would neither be financially viable for ireland to adopt nuclear due to the high costs and high subsidies required, and it definitely wouldn't be able to subsidize electricity to the level france does while using nuclear.

france's electricity is cheap dispite nuclear, not because of it, and it has the benefit of an all state operator from what i can gather.

end of the road

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119658818#Comment_119658818

it's not that they are poisoned against it, it's that they know the money can be better spent elsewhere on technologies more modern, efficient and reliable then nuclear ever can be.

essentially it's an outdated expensive technology.

NIMAN

Nuclear in Ireland? Ha, don't make me laugh. Never happen.

Sure they've been telling us for about 20years we have a western coastline that's one of the best in the world for wind energy, yet over that 20 years have done a tiny amount to exploit it. Way behind where we should be.

And the major announcement the other day that every school is going to get solar panels to help reduce their energy bills. Why did it take an energy crisis to make this happen, or even be considered (I say considered because it hasn't happened yet, and no doubt will be dogged by delays in its implementation)?

Boggles

How long does it take to build one?

8 to 10 years? So multiply that by 2.5 because it's Ireland, then multiple the cost by pie squared.

If we signed off on in today, it would be at least mid 2030 before it was constructed, it's outdated and expensive now imagine what it will be then.

By 2030-40 large scale battery storage will be the solution to the wind not blowing or the sun not shining.

We should invest money into putting solar on every public building that is suitable, there must be 1000s of square miles of farm sheds and barns to do similar.

It shouldn't be subsided either by grants. As that is just a false economy.

Boggles

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119659421#Comment_119659421

And the major announcement the other day that every school is going to get solar panels to help reduce their energy bills. Why did it take an energy crisis to make this happen, or even be considered

Because we were being pumped with cheap gas, no one was complaining then, but everyone is complaining now.

EOQRTL

It will never happen here, there are too many hippies and wasters that object to anything and everything.

joseywhales

It is logical. Nobody has put forward an argument that satisfied me at least, where the base load can be covered by renewables and interconnections, like there is wishful theory and their are proven solutions.

Modern nuclear is safe.

Nuclear is better for the environment.

Nuclear would give us extra energy security from Geo political risk.

The cons are expense, the small amount of waste and the time it takes to build one.

That last argument is a fallacy, you don't make the wrong decision because the right decision takes too long to implement. Short term thinking is what has us in this mess. It's like investing in a good bridge.

Boggles

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119659820#Comment_119659820

That last argument is a fallacy, you don't make the wrong decision because the right decision takes too long to implement

That's only if you think the rights decision is nuclear.

Anyway as with everything else it will come to cost. Energy at double the price will be a tough sell.

As for security, there is only a handful countries that produce the Uranium required and most of them are basket cases. All though we could say the same about lithium.

knipex

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119659393#Comment_119659393

Really

Can you name a current technology that provides, carbon free, reliable, consistent electricity that's not weather dependent ??

end of the road

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119660290#Comment_119660290

yes, it is outdated technology looking for a big problem in ireland's case that ultimately it would not solve for us as it would create many more.

it would not pass a business case as we would need at least 3 reactors at 40 billion each to construct and the billions of subsidy, and even if we could keep 2 on the go at any one time, one powering and the other acting as a working back up rather then a slightly dormant back up, there would not be enough demand for energy to export and even if there was it would not be at a viable/economic rate to pay back the costs.

it's not carbon free either, it just expells it in a different way.

it's time was in the 50s, 60s at a stretch, after that you can forget it as the costs just don't stack up.

Boggles

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119660290#Comment_119660290

There is no such thing as carbon free anything.

But probably Hydro would come closet to your criteria.

I think Paraguay is 100% hydro, 10% of production for themselves, 90% exported.

Then geothermal, The vast majority of heating in Iceland is powered this way.

igCorcaigh

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119659097#Comment_119659097

I mean the wider Green movement... not the Irish GP.

igCorcaigh

Is fusion the way to go, with massive investment?

There has been some advances made recently... or is the project fools' gold?

Quantum Erasure

It's pronounced 'nuclear'...

Quantum Erasure

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119660851#Comment_119660851

Fusion power is 20 years away, always has been

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119660851#Comment_119660851

Yes they've passed some milestones recently. But still years or decades away. Fusion can be ramped up and down so could would be a much better match with renewables than existing fission power.

It won't be too cheap to meter. ITER is costing something like €20 billion and it'll have an experimental lifetime of about 20 years which means it will be a while before they mass produce them.

end of the road

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119660851#Comment_119660851

probably fools gold in all honesty, as it has taken decades for fusion to even get to those tiny developments and by the time there is a major development it will be long out of date.

the investment to really get R&D going would be beyond affordable so i think the current experiments continuing for as long as they can get funding is the best bet really.

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119659820#Comment_119659820

Nuclear can't follow demand so you still need dispatchable generators like gas or massive amounts of storage for day/night summer/winter.

Grid improvements mean that we now have a grid where only 25% of the demand is baseload and soon that will be just 5%. Base load can be covered by dispatchable generators like hydro, biomass , CHP , pumped storage etc. and gas which will drop to 20% by 2030 and then 1% a year until 2050. Add in generators from data centre and demand shedding to load balance too.

The non-baseload can be non-synchronous like wind or solar or interconnectors (2.2GW soon) or battery storageoday that can up to 75% but that will rise up to 95%. We already get half our electricity from wind in February and we'll be doubling the amount of installed wind, and adding 5GW of solar too. So lots of renewables coming on line.

All nuclear fuel would have to be imported. If there's a nuclear renaissance then the cost of uranium doubles with each doubling of global demand. So doesn't have security of supply unless it remains a niche fuel.

Build time for nuclear is longer than the payback time of wind or solar. Which means not only are they cheaper and quicker to deploy, you could wait for the next generation of generators to prove themselves before needing to invest.

Also Sweden is the latest European country to have a nuclear reactor with an planned outage that's become an unplanned outage now extended till the end of winter. A German reactor is due to shutdown for a week (ha!) even though the operators said previously it would keep going until the end of the year when it will be retired. Don't kid yourselves that nuclear is anywhere near as reliable as advertised. You will absolutely need massive amounts of backup.

If you factor in from scheduled start date then the average modern nuclear power plants in Europe and the US has a single digit % uptime.

igCorcaigh

So, either we can't sustain society (or at least some of it!) by continuing using energy the way it has been doing, or we burn all of the fossil fuels up, which will mean we can't sustain society, and in the process kill most of the ecosystem.

Muahahaha

Used to be in favour of nuclear for Ireland but wouldnt be anymore due to the eyewatering costs. The French and German state broadcasters just a released a co-produced documentary on their nuclear industries there a few weeks ago, watched it last night and the stuff in it is a real eye opener. Things like barely half of all of Frances nuclear power plants are currently operating due to concrete cracking in them, others were designed for 30 years and theyve pushed it out to 40 years and soon 50 years, its into dangerous territory and the original designers are warning about it but not being listened to. Then their flagship new generation plant at Flamaville in Brittany has been a nightmare of a project, was supposed to cost 3.3bn and be operational by 2009 and its still not operational till 2023 and the cost has almost quadrupled to 12 billion. They have 800 welders in there right now fixing every single weld in the entire structure because it wasnt done to spec in the first place, yet people hold France up as experts in nuclear and if Ireland ever did go nuclear it would be their company we'd likely be buying it from.

They showed another decommissioned plant in northern Germany, again problems with the concrete. They thought it would take 5-7 years to decommmission and about 800m euros, the current bill is now 6.3bn and counting becasue they have to painstakingly remove everything off the walls millimeter by millimeter for fear of disturbing radioactivity becasue the building is soaked in it. The engineers there said they will easily be at it for at for a further decade and maybe even beyond that, you could hear how forlorn their voices were talking about working on a never ending job day in day out will progress taking forever.

And then there was the storage facilities for spend waste, the French had to tunnel 500m underground and build a laboratory and huge storage pods. Before they even do that they have to put the spent rods in gigantic underground swimming pools, the rods are taking 7 years just to cool down and they are fast running out of space with all the waste coming towards them. These facilities are full of scientists and engineers and will have to be run for hundreds of years, its iike signing massive a blank cheque that goes on forever.

In any case the Celtic Interconnector from France to Ireland is going ahead and AFAIK construction will begin next year. So by 2026 we will be able to buy French nuclear power through that. Im not sure how many megawatts it is but they should double it and just buy nuclear energy from there. That way we dont have the inevitable time and cost over runs of building at least two nuclear plants, none of the decommissioning costs plus we avoid spending billions storing the waste for hundred of years. All of that is worth paying a premium for IMO. At the end of the day Ireland is never going to be a manufacturing powerhouse the way France and Germany are, nuclear might make sense for them but I cant see any way it does for us.

anyway this is the doc, its an interesting watch. Isnt biased one way or the other, it just lays out the history and present of France and Germanys nuclear industries

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65FwPDbKJyc

Ham_Sandwich

thats all we need getting blowned up by homer simpson

timmyntc

Most countries in mainland europe are net importers of electricity - as of this year, that includes France.

The idea that Ireland can rely on interconnectors to provide our energy needs is unfounded. It is a decision that will leave us in dire straights in the next decade. The best time to build a nuclear plant was 20 years ago, the second best time is now.

Podge_irl

While I am ambivalent about nuclear for Ireland (pro the technology, but there are factors such as market size counting against it in Ireland), I do feel that many of the discussions around the cost of the waste are misguided. Waste disposal and storage may be expensive and cumbersome, but fossil plants essentially abrogate this responsibility by spewing their waste into the air. That cost is never fully accounted for.

knipex

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119660367#Comment_119660367

And you see significant oppertunity for Hydro in Ireland ?/ Multiple green lobby groups calling for closure on Ardnacrusha due to impact on fish,,

Boggles

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119672837#Comment_119672837

You never mentioned Ireland, your question was not specific to any country.

Muahahaha

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119666271#Comment_119666271

And thats why public policy here is towards renewables, we can get away from the environmental costs of fossil fuels but also avoid the costs of nuclear and storing that waste for hundreds of years and putting the risks of doing so on future generations. Its a huge undertaking. Fossil fuels will provide part of the mix during transition but once that is complete we can end up being a net exporter of energy from wind alone.

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119672837#Comment_119672837

Ardnacrusha is on the biggest river in the country. So there won't be more of them. Had thought they'd improved the fish ladder thing there a while back too. Besides flood control is one of the main uses for the weirs upstream too.

When our grid gets to 95% non-synchronous generation then Ardnacrusha's 92MW peak / 40MW average synchronous generation will allow 20 times that much renewables on the grid. So when the wind is blowing or the sun is shinning it would enable a nuclear power plant's worth of renewable energy to be harvested.

This completely destroys the economics of nuclear which absolutely relies on guaranteed baseload demand at a high price.

Nuclear needs the grid has to be flexible enough to handle day/night and summer/winter changes in demand because nuclear can't. The grid would also need to be able to handle unplanned outages and/or planned outages that extend for months. Any grid that can do that can handle renewables.

EDF's "modern" power plant was designed in the 20th century to be 15% more fuel efficient. But since construction costs have quadrupled and build times are insane it's a moot point. Fossil fuel plants got way more efficient since then, Germany was replacing old coal with fluidised bed coal with nearly twice the efficiency before they stopped building coal. Combined Cycle Gas Turbines can hit 60% efficiency. Nuclear is falling behind. If you seen any figures for how many tonnes of coal is replaced by a tonne of uranium check the date and check the location. US power plants are dirtier than European ones.

SMR's are snake oil. Rolls Royce have been building them since forever. But they want £32 billion in orders and will produce 7GW by 2040 or something. The Chinese have built one but it took 15 years to get the prototype developed. If they don't have the problems the Germans had with the same type of reactors (there is nothing new in nuclear) they would only be for use in remote locations. The point remotest from the sea is in China sort of remote. Also SMR's produce 35 times more waste than large ones. Hundreds of naval reactors have been used safely by western submarines and carriers but with enriched uranium. Other than that economics are the only reason they haven't been in use everywhere for the last 70 years.

Over the time it would take for a nuclear power plant to break even renewables prices will drop through the floor. Solar historically has been getting 7% cheaper a year for the last 30 years. They've recently figured out how to use copper instead of silver on the front of solar panels so that's another 10% reduction to look forward to. Wind is similar. Lithium battery costs fell 90% in the 2010's.

Politically nuclear power means the people involved in the decision making will have safely retired by the time the chickens come home to roost.

Bottom line if the neighbours can't do it properly then we can't either. Because they have the advantage of building and running nuclear since 1953 on a much bigger grid which has more backup and building on sites that are already developed for nuclear and are in the market for repeat orders. The debacle of the UK trying to order 6 power plants in 2011 is sobering. Most of the companies offering nuclear power then have gone bankrupt. Or been bought out because they were close to bankruptcy.

cnocbui

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119652494#Comment_119652494

Depends on what you call 'dear'. At less than half the cost of offshore wind, I'd call them reasonably priced.

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119666205#Comment_119666205

"The best time to build a nuclear plant was 20 years ago, the second best time is now."

LOL Find out the construction start dates of the nuclear power plants most recently connected to the grid in the UK, US and France. Those countries have quite literally forgotten how to build nuclear power plants because the principle people have long since retired.

Excluding Chinese, Indian and Russian companies where they are mostly delayed , ALL other nuclear power plants currently under construction have serious delays. Delays that mean fossil fuel being burnt for longer. And in the UK's case inflation will make the original estimates of Hinkley-C seem like a fantasy , it's a risk with long build times.

cnocbui

In South Korea, the Shin Kori 1 reactor took 4 years and 2 months to build being commissioned in Aug 2010. the Shin Kori 2 reactor took them about 4 and a half years to build, being commissioned in Jan 2012. Then they slowed down a bit with SK 3 taking almost 8 years and SK 4 taking almost 10 years.

The south Koreans took 10 years to build the UAEs Barakeh nuclear power plant.

While nuclear plants can take longer to build, they more than make up for that in terms of longevity, which is currently estimated at about 60 years. An offshore wind farm would have gone through three complete sets of turbines in that time, which is partly why they cost 5 times more than nuclear over 60 years.

end of the road

the offshore wind costing more then nuclear claim has already been destroyed, and is not and never will be true because nuclear's costs are and always have been going up while the costs of renewables are falling through the floor.

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119674037#Comment_119674037

Turbines are only a small part of the cost of offshore wind. The replaceable bits like blades and gearboxes are an even smaller part of the cost.

It took the UK from announcing Hinkley-C in 2010 until 2017 to start construction, it may be ready by 2027. Maybe.

The UAE plant is being built with indentured labour in a desert wasteland by an autocracy. Not on EU wages or EU health and safety. I've posted the real costs before. Ground breaking started in march 2010 and construction is ongoing. Middle of next year until it's fully commercially operational.

No nuclear plant will be complete by 2030 by which time we have to reduce emissions by 80%.

After 2030 we have 20 years to reduce emissions by an average of 1% a year.

But any nuclear plant built today will have to be cost competitive mid-life with the alternatives available in 2050. How cheap will fracking be in 2050 ? Because that technology is directly transferable to geothermal which can have multiple small dispatchable units with impressive uptimes. Solar is dropping in cost 7% a year. Weather forecasts are likely to be three days further out than now which means renewables will be more predictable. The UK used to have gas storage for a third of annual demand with the Rough Storage Facility which they closed to save €75m a year. Based on that the Hinkley-C cost increase so far this year would have paid for 40 years of grid scaled hydrogen storage. Yes it's that cheap. Overall cycle efficiency is only 40% but it's cheap and the infrastructure already exists. Did I mention that hydrogen storage is cheap ?

I'm tired of reminding you that Teeside goes through something like 30TWh of hydrogen a year. Not green , it's from North Sea gas but it shows that hydrogen is a mature grid level technology and has been for a considerable time. 1% of all energy use is in fertilizer production using hydrogen.

Nuclear can't follow demand so you still need dispatchable generators like gas or massive amounts of storage for day/night summer/winter.

False : https://www.ans.org/news/article-1264/responding-to-system-demand/. Plus we should be looking at SMRs.

Grid improvements mean that we now have a grid where only 25% of the demand is baseload and soon that will be just 5%. Base load can be covered by dispatchable generators like hydro, biomass , CHP , pumped storage etc. and gas which will drop to 20% by 2030 and then 1% a year until 2050. Add in generators from data centre and demand shedding to load balance too.

Source? And a stable 5% means the other 95% is filled from unstable sources. I find that very difficult to believe.

The non-baseload can be non-synchronous like wind or solar or interconnectors (2.2GW soon) or battery storageoday that can up to 75% but that will rise up to 95%. We already get half our electricity from wind in February and we'll be doubling the amount of installed wind, and adding 5GW of solar too. So lots of renewables coming on line.

Can't find anything more recent but as you can see, wind is highly variable. Adding more capacity won't change this. You don't specify which February.

All nuclear fuel would have to be imported. If there's a nuclear renaissance then the cost of uranium doubles with each doubling of global demand. So doesn't have security of supply unless it remains a niche fuel.

Canada and Australia are major uranium producers. Plus 2nd gen reactors use nuclear "waste" to power them and render the waste far less radioactive. And grid interconnectors are also vulnerable. Look at Nordstream 1 and 2 now, same thing could happen to an undersea electrical cable.

Build time for nuclear is longer than the payback time of wind or solar. Which means not only are they cheaper and quicker to deploy, you could wait for the next generation of generators to prove themselves before needing to invest.

Small Modular Reactors solve this.

Also Sweden is the latest European country to have a nuclear reactor with an planned outage that's become an unplanned outage now extended till the end of winter. A German reactor is due to shutdown for a week (ha!) even though the operators said previously it would keep going until the end of the year when it will be retired. Don't kid yourselves that nuclear is anywhere near as reliable as advertised. You will absolutely need massive amounts of backup.

If you factor in from scheduled start date then the average modern nuclear power plants in Europe and the US has a single digit % uptime

Come on man .... clutching at straws here.

Is a big reactor suitable for Ireland? Probably not. But SMRs are. Definitely should be part of the mix, and they are near deployment. Should be strongly considered to replace fossil fuel plants.

cnocbui

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119676697#Comment_119676697

No it hasn't. The maths is quite clear and simple. You are alleging something to be true, that isn't.

Look at Europe - OSW is the most expensive form of energy.

Capital Costs

wikipedia.org has a resource that lists the different energy sources and their estimated capital costs (cost to construct)

From that wikipedia.org resource, the cheapest to most expensive energy sources and their capital costs are:

gas/oil combined cycle power plant – $1000/kW 

onshore wind – $1600/kW

solar PV (fixed) – $1060/kW (utility), $1800/kW

solar PV (tracking)- $1130/kW (utility) $2000/kW

battery storage – $2000/kW

conventional hydropower – $2680/kW

geothermal – $2800/kW

coal (with SO2 and NOx controls)- $3500-3800/kW

advanced nuclear – $6000/kW

offshore wind – $6500/kW

fuel cells – $7200/kW

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_of_electricity_by_source

And so on, and so on.

Find the cost of building a windfarm off the Irish coast - go on, find it.

rob316

I'd be all for nuclear power, we need energy security but I can't see it a goer at like 20 billion for a reactor.

Danzy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119659820#Comment_119659820

If it made financial sense then the waste and time frame would be readily overcome.

It will have to be a State led, financed and Guaranteed because you get private capital to back it, numbers don't add up.

There is not a single thing wrong with nuclear bar the insanity of the economics.

May be in our lifetime new plants will come that make it financially viable.

end of the road

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119680298#Comment_119680298

SMRS are nowhere near deployment for civilian use regardless of the claims otherwise.

the military ones still can only power a sub and that is about it.

ireland can't afford to spend hundreds of billions on R&D for them either.

fact is that nuclear has been superceeded by ultra-cheap reliable technologies and until there is a very major development in nuclear technology that won't change and therefore it will not be viable in ireland especially.

end of the road

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119680389#Comment_119680389

it is clear off shore wind is cheap compared to nuclear, has a low pay back time and is cheap and easy to deploy and all of the available evidence backs this and the costs are falling while nuclear's are increasing.

nuclear also will require other energy forms to back it up anyway so realistically there is just no business or any other case for it in ireland as its easier cheaper and more reliable to just go with the other energy sources we would be using anyway to back it up, and use them at scale.