Nuclear - future for Ireland?

Even at the absolute maximum nobody is saying Hinkley will cost more than 30 Bn. It will provide 7% of the U.K. requirements and our population is 7% of that of the U.K. The absolute minimum based on U.K. offshore costs required to provide the 30GW the E.S.B. is talking about is 82Bn. and that does not include the addition expense of hydrogen and the associated problems.

For 82Bn. you could build a nuclear plant the size of Hinkley, gold plate it and it would still be half the price of the E.S.B proposal, have twice the life span, with the added bonus of no need to go faffing about with hydrogen.

The up front cost of 30 GW of offshore is 82Bn with an intended 50% of what it generates earmarked for hydrogen production. So at the very minimum for all the set up costs that would be required for hydrogen, you are looking at three times the up front cost of Hinkley.

The population of the U.K. is presently 68,692,129. Ireland 5,023,109. Ireland has 7.31% of the U.K. population, not 10%, and Hinkley will supply the U.K. with 7% of their needs. If you are worried about our average of 4 GW being greater than the 3.2 GW from Hinkley, then do we not presently have renewables with nameplate capacity of 80% of our average ?

That renewable capacity theoretically should be capable of an extra 3.2 GW, which alongside 3.2 GW of nuclear would provide over 50% more than our needs and no requirement to go faffing around with hydrogen and all the unknowns associated with it, plus a spend of 60 Bn less for twice the lifespan of offshore. Roughly 12,000 euro for every man woman and child in the country. Or put another way, 40,000 euro for the average Irish family.

You are so funny with your attempt at deflection, trying to insinuate the UAE had a nuclear program and lots of expertise before they had Barakah built.

So they did not have a deep base of nuclear expertise before contracting the build, they acquired that expertise after the program started.

Try and stick to facts, there's a good lad.

So saying a NPP might involve grid upgrades when these are needed for all alternatives as well, is being misleading, at best.

Perhaps it might be better for Ireland to develop a 'can do' ethos, rather than double down on it's 'can't do, won't do' attitude you so beautifuly exemplify.

The current upfront cost of 30GW of offshore wind is €82Bn, and that is without any consideration for the cost of the whole hydrogen requirements.

The current upfront price of Hinkley is £30Bn.with no need for any consideration for the cost of hydrogen and will have twice the lifespan and twice the rolling capacity for 1/3 of the cost. Inflation may increase those costs, but it will be the same for both.

Yet again there is no indication that wind will become cheaper. Especially for offshore where both Shell and the ESB`s own offshore partner Equinor both having no interest, and the May strike price for onshore was 30% more expensive than two years ago and is now the same as the U.K. strike price for Hinkley.

In no universe does the price of 30GW of offshore wind at a cost of €82Bn, plus the additional Billions required for hydrogen, economically stack up against a nuclear plant which has both twice the generating lifespan and rolling capacity of offshore wind turbines.

Yesterday your problem was that nuclear would not be sufficient to fulfill our need, now it`s there would not be enough demand. If we have more than we need than we can export it. Is that not what greens are claiming should we have excess from renewables we would do, so why should it be ant different with nuclear ?

For the "nuclear not being sufficient to fulfill our needs" I explained that Hinkley will provide 7% of the U.K.`s needs, that our population is 7.31% of the U.K.`s and that we have 4,300 MW of wind nameplate installed capacity, 30 MW of solar plus hydro, which at least in theory for nameplate capacity of renewables, would be a guarantee of being sufficient for our needs. There would also be the added benefit of neither the expense or all the unknowns of hydrogen.

I don`t see how renewables and nuclear can not mix. The U.K., Sweden,Spain, France, Belgium, Czech Republic etc are already doing it, As is Turkey, after recently joining the nuclear club, and the UAE and Egypt who are building nuclear power plants are going to do as well..

Now I`m off on holidays for a few weeks, so I`ll leave you at it.

For the record, this thread was formed as a result of my posts advocating nuclear energy not being welcomed in the main grid infrastructure thread.

I don't get your mania about 'current infrastructure' and why you consider upgrading or changing infrastructure to be something uniquely negative about nuclear power, when the current plans for Ireland achieving net zero involve massive infrastructure upheavels and upgrades.

The ESB plan for 30 GW of Offshore wind is going to require vastly more grid related expansion and upgrades than a NPP would, the comparison wouldn't even be close, not to mention the H2 aspect of their mad plan.

Did you know that the current plans call for Ireland to transition to an all EV fleet of vehicles and for home heating to be shifted to heat pumps? Both of these alone will require significant grid upgrades and can't be accommodated without changes to current infrastructure and the introduction of significantly more generation capacity.

this thread should be preserved to teach children the perils of online argumentation - motivated reasoning, cherry-picking, tertium non datur ("the fallacy of the excluded middle"), petty ad hominem passive aggression, assumption of bad faith. We've got it all right here, folks.

Not totally clear what it is about the nuclear vs renewables debate that makes people lose their minds so badly. I guess the fact that it's an existential crisis, and that the well of public discourse has been thoroughly poisoned by decades of petro industry propaganda that promoted environmentalist infighting while obscuring the economics of energy generation from the general public. Ah well.

Not political, but... people who know an awful lot more than stupid politicians have shown support:

And...

And another...

But in true Irish fashion, let's ignore those idiots and hang on the every word of someone with a distinguished career in organising bike tours. The Island of scholars bike tours.

Solar power is worse than useless in Ireland - our peak energy needs are during winter nights. That's directly inversely correlated with solar panel output. It doesn't matter how cheap you make the solar panels, they will never produce peak output during the coldest nights of winter. Windmills also require natural gas backup specifically because they are so unreliable, hence making us reliant on windmills by the backdoor makes us more reliant on dictators like Vladimir Putin. And insanely destructive to the natural world. Lethal to large birds species like eagles, and existential threat to bat populations exceeding that of White Nose Syndrome, which is itself and extinction-level threat to many bat species. That's in addition to needing to spoil otherwise pristine environments like mountain and hilltops in addition to the coast line, not just with the turbines themselves but with the additional electricity wires that are needed to reach them. That and they're just butt ugly.

I for one do not consent to this lunacy and think we need alternatives.

We know that it is possible to almost totally decarbonise our electricity supply because the French did it - by accident! - starting in the 1970s. Now call me crazy but if someone supposedly cares about "climate killing carbon emissions" and genuinely wanted to reduce them dramatically, then surely one would at least display some intellectual curiousity about how this was achieved let alone actually wondering how such a success might be replicated. And we know the cost was reasonable because nuclear reactor construction projects came in on time and to reasonable budgets as late as 1995 with Sizewell B in the UK.

As to the oft-quoted problem of the need to replace a reactors' output within 5 seconds of a SCRAM or something, it should be noted that the island of Ireland is not only a large power market with 7 million people plus associated industrial energy needs, but we also have interconnectors with the British mainland and another planned with France. We could easily share spinning reserve, in addition to other storage tools like our hydropower dams, and whatever energy storage should prove to be useful.

Also, it must be noted that a decision could be made to use some nuclear energy output on tasks that are not urgent. For example, nuclear energy can be used to make clean hydrogen, and it can also be used to power desalination for drinking water with such output being sent to for storage in reservoirs. Thusly, in Capt'ns "replace the output within 5 seconds of a SCRAM" scenario there would be a menu of options:

• Stop exports or increase imports to/from Northern Ireland, Britain and/or France.
• Open the gates of dams and activate any energy storage facilities (batteries, pumped hydro etc).
• Stop any hydrogen production facilities, and stop any non-critical water desalination.