Ireland needs to invest in a modern Nuclear Power Plant?

end of the road

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119685342#Comment_119685342

and yet all of the evidence is backing the bike man in relation to nuclear.

ireland has had proper debate on nuclear and that, with all of the evidence is why it hasn't and will not happen.

it just makes no economic/financial sense and it does not have the reliability needed and requires large scale back up anyway.

back up that can be used to even greater scale at a nanno fraction of the cost of nuclear.

cnocbui

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119685477#Comment_119685477

I asked you for numbers related to offshore wind costing and you didn't/couldn't supply them, and here you are making baseless statements ('all the evidence') without any references to this evidence. Words don't cut it. Back them up with something tangible. Provide this evidence.

TheWonderLlama

Imagine a nuclear power plant built by the lowest bidder, who has a history of building defective buildings with defective building materials and ignoring safety rules on fire stopping, insulation and structural integrity, because the government said he could self-certify with no supervision or controls.

Imagine the contract for disposal of nuclear waste awarded to a lad who ran a recycling company and was found to have illegally dumped millions of tonnes of waste illegally, but can't be touched because the company went into liquidation.

Imagine some lifer bureaucrats, whose first and last thoughts are "how do I make sure my ass is covered?" and "how much extra am i getting paid?" who would be great at powerpoint presentations, but not have the first clue in how to make a decision be the people responsible for making sure an extremely complex system works safely, ensure it is kept maintained and make sure interdependent warning systems actually work to prevent a meltdown.

Welcome to irish Nuclear. The two scariest words on the planet.

end of the road

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119685607#Comment_119685607

you were provided with all of the evidence in the infrastructure thread and you dismissed it all.

mountains of it were provided by many different posters.

cnocbui

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119685655#Comment_119685655

This won't happen and isn't how things are done. Pure stupid scaremongering and utterly typical of this country - I give you iodine tablets as exhibit A.

What actually happens is a country like Ireland gets someone who can and has built nuclear reactors, like a South Korean company, and they build it to spec. That's what happened in the UAE.

Poland, for instance, has recently been in talks with a South Korean company to build 8 reactors, likely the same one that built the 4 reactors for the UAE.

cnocbui

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119685715#Comment_119685715

No, nuclear discussions are banned in that thread, try again, spoofer.

joseywhales

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119685727#Comment_119685727

And remember it's a nano fraction of the cost so it cost x/10^9 !

end of the road

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119685727#Comment_119685727

nope, it's not.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058220157/nuclear-future-for-ireland/p1

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058216150/should-ireland-go-nuclear/p1

knipex

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119680493#Comment_119680493

Just because you keep sayign somehtign doesnt make it true,

Post some evidence to support it.

knipex

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119680668#Comment_119680668

Horse ****.

Its a nice soundbite but its still horse ****

Find me 10 physicists that would agree with you..

end of the road

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119689746#Comment_119689746

no but the fact it is fact makes it true and the evidence has already been posted in the thread by others.

i have also linked to 2 threads from the infrastructure forum which will have all the information you require, 1 of them is substantial.

Shoog

It scary to think that someone would reference the risk of sabotage of HVDC interconnects and then advocate building a sitting bomb as an alternative. How many defensive fighter jets does Ireland have by the way. Obviously at the back of the queue when sense was been handed out.

Remember folks that in the last few months we have come very close to a Chernobyl 2.0 with the military activity around the nuclear facilities in Ukraine. What people also conveniently forget is that Chernobyl almost burnt through to the water table - which would have rendered much of Europe uninhabitable for generations. Fukushima will end up costing the Japanese 100's of billions to clear up in the end and the loss of valuable real-estate in a densely populated industrial zone are significant.

The risks associated with any nuclear are massive even if they only fail extremely rarely.

Nuclear power would never have been commercialized if there was not a military need for plutonium and no commercial operator would ever have commissioned a single plant without government incentives at every stage of development and operation - it never made sense in off itself and it never will in the case of Ireland. Constantly repeating that proof of concept mini commerical reactors will see the renaissance of nuclear (even though they create an even greater distributed strategic risk to national security) and fast breeder technologies that have never been made commercially successful. Your not making a credible case for this dead technology one tiny bit. The markets know it and is the reason only governments invest in these vanity projects.

Support for nuclear is a fetish for a certain type of fact immune right wing zealot , they are quite prepared to crap all over their own economic ideology to support their totem phallic worship.

Why does the person keep reviving this zombie concept every time he fails to convince anyone on other threads - its getting more than tedious at this stage.

cuttingtimber22

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119685655#Comment_119685655

What country are you talking about? We have very strong safety records with infrastructure. ESB has a very good reputation.

zell12

Nuclear power stations are banned under the Planning and Development Act.

The use of nuclear fission electricity generation is banned under the Electricity Regulation Act.

cnocbui

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119691763#Comment_119691763

When I need to pass through my front door, and find it locked, I unlock it.

breezy1985

Seeing as every other "national facility is built inside the M50 I'm assuming this plant will be built in Dublin if it happens 😁

Only fair really.

joseywhales

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119691701#Comment_119691701

Wait so the largest nuclear power plant in Europe has been in the middle of a war zone for months now, occupied by a country that openly threatens the use of nuclear force and yet there has not been a major incident at the plant such as a meltdown, despite shelling and power disruption. Surely that's an endorsement for the safety of nuclear even under extreme conditions.

Also why are you emotional about this subject, why is there such a rush to shut down the discussion? The rude derision just makes me suspicious. I'm not sure if people are worried about the physical security of a specific interconnection as they are about geo political risk to global energy markets pushing up the price of energy via such connections.

I would like to hear a breakdown of cost over a long term period(50-100 years) that would support the national grid without risk of instability of supply and with low carbon emissions, using existing technology and a proven energy strategy from another region of similar demands to Ireland.

I see countries such as UAE are investing in nuclear which seems crazy given that they have almost unlimited access to energy already.

Shoog

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119693149#Comment_119693149

Russia has not as yet decided to directly target any Ukrainian nuclear plant - that fact is not remotely reassuring given their current trajectory.

But what is really critical to consider here is not a single watt of potential nuclear installed capacity could be dispatched to the grid for a minimum of 15years, a point at which we would have missed all of our legally binding carbon reduction targets and would be paying significant fines to the EU on a daily basis.

A strategic decision to invest in the minimum of two nuclear power plants we would need would displace almost all investment in other low carbon alternatives for the forseeable future - the worst possible outcome.

end of the road

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119692989#Comment_119692989

good for you, that is what you are supposed to do. how else will you get through otherwise.

not relvant to nuclear however as hardly anyone wants it here and it's not viable, so no point in changing legislation for something that isn't going to happen.

cnocbui

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119693797#Comment_119693797

Whoosh...

If its not viable, then why would the president of the Irish instution of engineers imply it was by saying there should be debate about it,?

Slovenia has a smaller population and they have one.

end of the road

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119693892#Comment_119693892

the same reason why a small minority want it dispite the realities, they like it and it sounds good to them.

We certainly need it in Limerick, as Ardnacrusha seems to have gone boom and taken power out for half of Limerick city. Over 10,000 homes & businesses out.

TheWonderLlama

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119691745#Comment_119691745

LOL.

Apartment blocks without fire stopping ring a bell?

Mica, pyrite. These things didn't just happen.

Schools falling down while the same builder gets awarded new contracts?

https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/arid-40788807.html

80% of apartments built between 1991 and 2013 have defects. Not a good track record.

https://www.irishtimes.com/ireland/housing-planning/2022/07/15/repairing-construction-defects-could-cost-state-28bn-as-over-100000-homes-found-to-be-affected/

cuttingtimber22

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119694886#Comment_119694886

Did the state build those apartments?

Shoog

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119697743#Comment_119697743

The state isn't in the business of building infrastructure - its in the business of hiring contractors to do it for them.

I worked in the water industry - a similar situation - and I can tell you that things are done on the cheap and corners are cut every single day.

Sellarfield recently had a nitric acid leak which carried plutonium and uranium around the containment facility and it went undetected for over 8 months. clean up cost estimated at €300 million and the facility offline for months. This sort of accident goes largely unreported but happens in the nuclear industry all the time. None of this inspires confidence in its overall safety.

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119680893#Comment_119680893

It took 15 years to build. Construction started in 2010. It's a pebble bed reactor like two that Germany built ( AVR / THR which had thorium which keeps failing to live up to expectations ) and then they shut down because of problems with pebbles not being tough enough, dust, jamming etc.

Besides it's only for remote areas in China, a country which has a 12GW 3,000Km 1.1 million volt DC transmission line. And the point furthest from any oceans and lots of desert.

The transmission line means that Europe could build 3,000 km lines for renewables from Norway, to the Sahara, or across several timezones.

Rolls Royce as I'm sick of explaining will not get out of bed for less than £32Bn (+inflation) in firm orders for 16 SMR's which will produce 7.04GW by 2040 or thereabouts , down hill with the wind at your back numbers. And RR have been building reactosr for the Royal Navy for ages which puts then miles ahead of any of the startups. It also begs the question of why do they need hundreds of millions of £'s to develop reactors and why are they so sure of prices and dates and reliability if they need to spend 100's of millions of £'s to develop them ??

Capt'n Midnight

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

Xenon poisoning is one problem that stops you ramping reactors up and down. If you have highly enriched uranium you can do it, like the naval reactors. NB. Shipping Port used thorium too. It's not new technology despite what all the startups looking for funding claim. Fort St Vrain was another nuclear planthere willt that used thorium, it got converted to a gas power station. I keep mentioning thorium because there is no new nuclear fission tech out there that hasn't already been tried over many decades in multiple countries.

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

LOL. The sun doesn't shine at night. There are calm days without wind. There is no movement of water at high or low tide. But when renewables work they are way cheaper than fossil or nuclear.

The grid won't be running on 95% renewables all the time. But with EXCESS renewables they will supply most of our power most of the them. And there will be times when we will be exporting, which means we will be importing at other times. We can still use up to 20% of current emissions until 2030, so the existing gas plants will be peaking plant rather than baseload.

SMR's are snakeoil. Come back when they are in series production and debugged. Also they produce 35 times as much waste as larger reactors which are the trend for economies of scale.

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119683062#Comment_119683062

So what ? British Rail had plans for a nuclear powered flying saucer.

Until it's in series production and debugged it's a prototype and the customer is the guinea pig.

Do I have to keep explaining that almost all nuclear plants under construction are delayed apart from some of the ones being build by Indian, Russian and Chinese companies and there is no way in hell we should buy from them.

There's a high correlation between nuclear power and corruption , nuclear and billion's in cost over runs , nuclear and years of delays during which fossil fuel has to be burnt to keep the lights on.

If any Irish politician starts talking about nuclear you need to start following the money.

It's really just an ideological position for you. You know full well the delays and cost overruns are caused by political reasons in the West. Nothing to do with science or engineering obstacles. The planning and approval process adds billions, most of it unnecessary to the cost.

As you said yourself, this tech is well proven. It's in ships and submarines for decades FFS. If it's so terrible, and renewables are so wonderful and reliable, why aren't there any wind and solar submarines and military ships?

And solar in particular is an environmental disaster.

end of the road

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119698390#Comment_119698390

actually the delays and cost over runs are mostly down to other factors rather then planning, approval or politics, and we know this because even in the countries where there are no rights and no construction standards, there are huge cost over runs.

they are down to the technology in general which is just ultra-expensive with a high payback requirement and high levels of funding and subsidy required and high bills as well to make the lot some way viable.

the only reason there are nuclear powered submarines is stealth and no expence spared when it comes to military kit.

nuclear as a technology just cannot compete in ireland via all possible cost metrics.