Nuclear - future for Ireland?

Miscanthus is usually grown for bio-mass , and harvested when the leaves are dead , so in winter ,

It can be grown on poor ground in Ireland, but usually poor ground means wet ground , so increased cost to harvest

France making the sensible decision to dump the 50% target for nuclear and in fact are accelerating the procedures to build new plants.

A clearly sensible approach

https://www.liberation.fr/environnement/nucleaire/le-gouvernement-renonce-a-lobjectif-de-reduction-a-50-de-la-part-du-nucleaire-dans-la-production-delectricite-20230117_YTOTKZDPTFHNHISIORQKFMZ6PM/

The draft law says it's the accelerate new builds but that does not mean they won't keep existing ones longer .

Some of the stuff you post is fairy land.

Germany now generates more than a third of its electricity from coal burning plants according to Destatis the German federal statistical office. In 3rd quarter 2022 it`s generated from coal was 13.3% higher than for the same period a year earlier. What German CO2 emissions has to do with their grids not being ready to take 95% renewables I have no idea. Their electricity generation from all renewables is not even half that 95%.

They may be rolling out more offshore wind, but they are also building and leasing LNG terminals as fast as they can build or get their hands on, and their 100% renewables plan, whatever that is with the present shambles they are in, and one they caused for many other European countries with their championing of Putin`s gas, is not going to be cheap. Forbes estimates it will require an investment of €5 Trillion over the next few years. And that is for wind that has less than half the rolling capacity as nuclear, and with wind turbines that have half the life expectancy of a nuclear plant.

You do go with the worst example you can find where nuclear is concerned, but hey if you do not like Westinghouse, then check out the price Poland received from South Korea. It was even cheaper. Westinghouse got the contract due to U.S. political pressure, so it doesn`t look as if the U.S.Democrat administration has the same concerns on Westinghouse as you do.

You do not need to use today`s figures as a guide on emissions. You can look at any day over the last decade and compare France and Germany that will show you that France continually beat Germany up a stick on CO2 emission due to their use of nuclear. And if the bellwether on climate change is CO2 emissions, then nuclear will do that 100% regardless of wind blowing or sun shining at a fraction of the offshore construction costs alone for wind.

Actually is it possible to split Germanys green push (energywiende ? ) into sections ?

A lot of their solar seemed to be on individual houses , heavily subsidized, it seems more a greenwash campaign/way of keeping your voter base happy ..

I assume they're more production focused now , ( rather than capacity focused)

Regarding Poland's decision, you know the background/history of the Westinghouse AP1000 - the design they've signed up for?

Westinghouse spent the 1990s designing the AP600 but didn't manage to convince anyone to build one. So they evolved the design into the bigger AP1000 - roughly a 1GW design - which was certified in 2005.

Of the 8 AP1000 that started construction:

The "success" is that they've actually completed 4 such reactors in China. But at the end of the construction, the Chinese have said they're not going to build any more and have abandoned the design because of cost overruns and delays.

One of the most infamously disastrous nuclear power projects in the last few decades is reactors 3 and 4 at Vogtle in the US was a AP1000 project. This has been going since 2009, is already 6 years late and $20B over the initial budget of $14B. Reactor 3 was supposed to go into operation in 2016. Latest news (this month) is that it will be delayed again until the middle of 2023.

The last "flagship" AP1000 project was at the VC Summer plant in South Carolina. This was the largest business failure in the history of the state. $9B dollars spent between 2009 and 2017 before an audit revealed completing the pair of reactors would cost at least $25B and the project was abandoned. The average South Carolinian is now on average paying $30 a month on top of their electricity bills to fund this $9B investment into what is now a a large field of concrete.

Nuclear is only viable in a fantasist's world - in reality every nuclear reactor project started in western Europe or the US since 1995 has been a disaster one way or another. The biggest proponents (and opponents, to be fair) of nuclear are generally terribly uninformed about the industry and it's history, it's record of project failure, cost-overruns and 10 year, 20 year or even longer schedule overruns.

It's seems as if the German energy policy was concocted in the Kremlin ,

Just outsource your energy supply to Russia , shut your nuclear , but more gas .. even their renewables policy was definitely suspect ,lots of big subsidies for small ,roof top solar , in a north European country. The public love the feel good factor and the payout , meanwhile buy more Gas ...

It'll be interesting to see how polands new nuclear scheme pans out - and costs out . And what's included ,or excluded from the headline figure , intrest rates being the big big one, grid costs ,

Oh and where the fuel comes from , can't see them getting it from Russia 😁, so north Africa (would the french be helpful if it makes Edf look bad ?) Canada ?

Yeah , we're not the same energy market that we were 20 years ago , all those data centres ect are running 24 / 7 ,

A pair of reactors wouldn't be unreasonable in the scale of things ,

Of course the spinning reserve for that would be a bitch , and wouldnt link in with wind at all ..

And where would you put it ? Moneypoint?

And even with no objections ect. It'd be 15 years minimum to get it built

The average time to build the 441 operating nuclear reactors was 7.3 years. Poland is hoping for 5 years from construction start and to have the first reactor operational by 2033.

I don't know about Westighouse's reactor, but the NPP the Koreans will build is based on a design they have built mutiple of in Korea and the UAE, so I don't think design should be much of an issue.

Building NPPs will get you to zero CO2 faster than trying to do it with renewables.

Months for a turbine to offset its construction you say?? Sounds like utter BS going on the damage, number of long haulage materials etc. involved in the construction of the ones on peatland I have referred to here before in North Mayo