Nuclear - future for Ireland?

Sam Russell · 10-02-2023 10:06pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120225801#Comment_120225801

And how long for a Metro?

cnocbui · 10-02-2023 10:34pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120224647#Comment_120224647

He's wrong, like all who peddle this tripe. France arguably has too much nuclear capacity, which is why they have been able to export so much for decades. The excess capacity has historically generated enough income from to fund the building of a new reactor, every two years - not that they used the income for that.

He clearly hasn't familiarised himself with the ESBs plans or their energy requirement calculations, or the EU energy strategy.

The ESB calculate an additional 66 Twh of renewable energy generation capacity is required to decarbonise energy usage in Ireand, which includes heating, transport, industry and electricity. Given that's renewables, you can safely asssume less than half that if you were to get the energy from nuclear. So let's say 30 Twh. That means that not only isn't a large NPP too large, it isn't large enough.

cnocbui · 10-02-2023 10:47pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120225792#Comment_120225792

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.

Markcheese · 10-02-2023 10:55pm

So five years of design and 5 years of construction, if Poland gets it right ..

cnocbui · 10-02-2023 11:02pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120226489#Comment_120226489

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.

Capt'n Midnight · 11-02-2023 1:20am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120226418#Comment_120226418

On the other hand the UK, US and France , like most countries with nuclear power haven't started and finished a reactor in the last 30 years.

You can't compare series production of debugged 1970's designs with today's larger, more complex designs which still have teething problems even after multiple builds.

7.5 years is a long time in renewables. It's wishful thinking in nuclear. Finland's Olkiluoto 3 took more than 7.5 years to build. It was late by 7.5 years. And now it's late by ANOTHER 7.5 years, by contrast Finland increased it's wind power by 75% last year.

The EPR power plants so far are the Chinese one with a reactor offline for a year for repairs, the Finish one that will take at least a year to go from grid connection to commercial operation because of repairs and the French one that if it goes on online this year will have to be shut down next year for repairs. (spot a pattern yet ?) The UK ones recently got a three year extension to cater for delays (and repairs ??). Those plants were supposed to take 5 years to build too.

Of the reactor constructions started in the US in the last 30 years 50% were abandoned and the rest are way overdue and way over budget. . All by Westinghouse who went bankrupt. It'll work out at $20Bn and counting per completed reactor. So now you know about Westinghouse but go digging, it get's worse the deeper you dig. The three most recently completed US reactors started construction in the 1970's

It takes months for a wind turbine to offset it's construction.

For a nuclear power plant that's been delayed 15 years, it will take 15 years to offset the carbon emissions of the fossil fuel used in it's place, only then can you start talking about the construction and mining inputs. Also you'll also have to take into account the end of life decommissioning and waste repositories. There's already a fully recyclable wind farm in Germany.

Nuclear power is an all or nothing gamble, where rolling a 1 means you lose everything. On the other hand you can start getting power incrementally when rolling out GW's of wind or solar or other renewables.

Birdnuts · 11-02-2023 2:40am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120227171#Comment_120227171

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

Birdnuts · 11-02-2023 2:42am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120224647#Comment_120224647

Fitzgerald thinks monoculture spruce plantations on peatlands are "green", so no suprise he would write such drivel

Capt'n Midnight · 11-02-2023 11:02am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120227327#Comment_120227327

https://www.newscientist.com/lastword/mg24332461-400-what-is-the-carbon-payback-period-for-a-wind-turbine/ "In 2006, turbine manufacturer Vestas studied the carbon payback period for various turbines. This took into account extraction and manufacturing of raw materials, production of the turbines, their transport, erection, operation, maintenance, dismantling and disposal, and the same for their foundation and the transmission grid. The figure was between seven and nine months, depending on the type of turbine. Other analyses have come up with similar figures."

That was back in 2006. Today's processes and turbines are more efficient.

They shut down the wind farm that had the incident 20 years ago. Around the same time that construction started on the new Finish nuclear power plant that's still not ready for commercial use.

Do you want me to go back over some of the nuclear failures in the last 20 years , remembering that a delay of 7-9 months would have been enough to make a wind farm carbon neutral ? We could also do the costs of powering up the grid while waiting for nuclear.

The pro-nuclear lobby present the most optimistic rose coloured glasses view of what might happen if all the ducks are lined up going downhill with the wind behind you. I'm letting people know what actually happened because the past is the best predictor of the future.

cnocbui · 11-02-2023 1:11pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120227746#Comment_120227746

The most cutting edge offshore wind project at the moment is Dogger Bank A in the UK, which will be largest in the world when B and C phases are complete.

It's cost is £3bn, for a capacity of 1.2 Gw. The capacity factor will probably be the same as the other recent builds off Scotland at 47% The strike price is £50 per MW in 2022 money. So that project has a payback of 11 years. Actually, it will be longer than that, probaly by a couple of years because that doesn't factor in interest on borrowings or maintainance and operating costs which amount to 30% of the total cost of energy from an OSWF.

The O&M costs of a wind farm can make up around 30% of the levelised cost of energy of an offshore wind farm

If anyone wants to invest their own money, then it might be best not to take a turbine manufacturers figures for ROI.

Just for fun, I calculated the UAE's Barakah NPP ROI period as being just 9 years, based on the same strike price - lol.

josip · 11-02-2023 1:34pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120227746#Comment_120227746

I think some posters are more "anti-wind" than "pro-nuclear" per se.

Capt'n Midnight · 11-02-2023 3:22pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120228133#Comment_120228133

The UAE's plant started construction 11 years ago and still isn't complete.

It was built with more or less indentured labour on desert land in an autocracy. Construction costs here would likely double and there'd be more delays and gal challenges so there's that too.

The CfD for wind here is for 10 years. Any nuclear plant here would have to compete with the marginal cost of existing wind on the open market.

In the UK the CfD for Hinkley-C will run until at least 2062 assuming they don't need the 3 year extension they got recently. And half the time it's "always on" power won't be needed which effectively doubles the price.

cnocbui · 11-02-2023 3:56pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120228620#Comment_120228620

Trotting out the slave labour bullshit again.

Barakah is based on South Korean built APR 1400 reactors. It's got 4 of them and factoring in the whole project cost, that works out at $6.1b a piece

In South Korea, in Dec, they commisioned two new APR 1400 reactors - Uljin 1 and 2. The only costing I can find for them is $3b a piece.

The South Koreans a few months ago offered 6 APR 1400 reactors to Poland for $4.45b each.

Clearly if ireland were to build an APR 1400 based NPP, it should make sure to get it's slave labour from Korea, or maybe Poland, at a pinch - that UAE slave labour is far too expensive.

Capt'n Midnight · 11-02-2023 8:45pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120228838#Comment_120228838

Shin-Hanul in Ulchin was expected to cost $6Bn in 2012 but it was been delayed years so costs must have escalated ? Also add in the billions per reactor for decommissioning on top of previous costs.

Nuclear power is a political football in Korea, alternative governments blowing hot and cold on it.

Shin-Hanul No. 1 started in December. Construction began on the 1,400 megawatt reactor in 2011, with commercial operations originally scheduled for April 2017. ... "The formal opening was repeatedly delayed, once for a software glitch and once due to a nearby earthquake. Safety evaluation problems were reported, and changes in regulations related to building materials also caused problems."

"Shin-Hanul No.2 was supposed to go into operation in April 2018. The Safety and Security Commission has pushed the approval to March 2023, citing concerns similar to those expressed about the first reactor."

"It has taken more than a decade for the two new nuclear power plants to be completed since ground was broken in April 2010." , Unit 2 is scheduled to begin commercial operation in September 2023 - which means the plant is taking 13 years to build which means 5 extra years of fossil fuel being used to keep the lights on.

Shin-Hanul Unit 1 has been criticized for its lack of preparation for the passive catalytic hydrogen material combiner (PAR) safety problem and the risk of terrorism and disaster. This article also lists the escalating costs and interest payments in Won and mentions that Korea's reserve power will be reduced to 4GW, which is scary considering how many reactors are on each site and what happened in Texas.

Shin-Kori reactor No.5 was supposed to start operating in October last year, while the No.6 reactor was supposed to go into operation in October this year, but the schedules were delayed.

The thing about nuclear is the more you look the worse it gets.

It's not flexible so the grid has to accommodate it when it's up and cover for it when it's down. Same with renewables but in the UK new nuclear power costs 2.7 times as much as wind and you've to provide the subsidy for 2.3 times as long and wind power is generating while new nuclear is still years away.

cnocbui · 11-02-2023 11:40pm

Whataboutery to deflect from your previous BS being exposed for what it is.

11-02-2023 11:58pm

The EPR project will eventually have all of its bugs ironed on and become much smoother. All of those technologies are done on such a small volume of examples that they have enormous problems in their initial builds. In the past they costs were often just hidden away in other budgets, particularly into defence research etc etc in places like the UK, US and France etc back in the day.

The technology was just seen as strategically necessary - France in particular just wanted energy independence after the oil crisis in the 70s and it was a money no object project, involving French tech. The UK AGR project was a matter of national pride and being a 'nuclear power' etc etc back in the 50s-70s. It only became a commercial thing in the Thatcher era and they never built another one.

The majority of European nuclear sites were built by old ESB-like energy monopolies that were state owned. Few were ever built by entirely commercial entities.

I quite honestly cannot see Ireland going for a nuclear power solution to energy here. You would really struggle to get political support for it because there's no public support for it and there's no way the commercial sector would ever build one.

If we did go for it, and it would be a huge if, it's almost certainly going to be a choice of a technology that can be supported easily within Europe or the US. I really don't see us going for a one-of-a-kind type solution. It'll be something tried, tested and used by European peers and there is an extensive set of European atomic energy regulations going all the way back to Euroatom's foundation.

I would also suspect that Ireland's approach to something like this would be extremely conservative and risk averse, so you're not going to just go for cheapest solution.

However, the likelihood of it ever happening is slim to non existent. It's fairly clear the public attitude to nuclear energy is pretty strongly against it.

Capt'n Midnight · 12-02-2023 2:22am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120230586#Comment_120230586

The EPR's have had 20 years of construction to get it right. And in that time renewable and storage prices have just fallen off a cliff.

Maggie lost interest in Nuclear after the miners unions had been beaten in '85 because the interest was political rather than commercial.

Then apart from nuclear which no one wanted they sold off electrical generation to private companies who then went on a "dash for gas" in part due to the high interest rates that befitted Southern England at the expense of manufacturing and capital investment in the rest of the country and Scottish North Sea gas. CCGT efficiency improvements also helped.

12-02-2023 2:36am

The UK dumped the ridiculously expensive and very technically limited graphite moderated, gas cooled AGR project in the mid-80s. It effectively was the end of it. Absolute white elephant stuff.

Sizewell B was basically an off-the-shelf Westinghouse PWR (Pressurised Water Reactor) with a few extra safety features, and built by a consortium which included Franatome (Areva, now EDF and renamed Franatome again...). They began building in 1987 and finally went online in 1995.

All of those plants had horrendously long delivery times, usually around 20 years.

Big, rarely projects like this, involving massive engineering and specialisation are very hard to deliver due to the infrequency of the projects. It's a weird industry.

Jim2007 · 13-02-2023 4:39pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120228221#Comment_120228221

Has any of them actually lived beside a plant? It won't technology or approach that decides this, but people because you eventually have to actually put it somewhere and I expect that is where these arguments will die. Because nobody wants it next door them and you can expect years and years of complications. And the long it goes no the less attractive it will be.

I live within a couple of clicks from a nuclear power station, we have the A geiger counters, the iodine tables, the alarms that are tested quarterly, I have my assigned bunker and have been there a couple of times and my 'survival' kit [really an overnight bag in my opinion] is packed if we have to go.... That is the reality of it and once people start to realise this, they won't want it in their county never mind next door. So Ireland and nuclear power is just pie in the sky at the end of the day.

timmyntc · 13-02-2023 5:30pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120236574#Comment_120236574

It's well enough for the people who get free district heating or even in some cases free power altogether, as payment for having a plant sited near them.

The idea that its all doom and gloom and looking over your shoulder waiting for the impending disaster (that never comes) may be your experience, but it is not the experience of the majority. Or else property would be nigh unsellable near nuclear plants as a function of low demand. this is not the case.

Capt'n Midnight · 13-02-2023 8:55pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120236790#Comment_120236790

Remind us how that worked out for the people of Fukishima and Chernobyl and how Cockcroft's Follies prevented 95% of fallout from the Windscale and Three Mile Island wasn't that bad and how this time it'll all be different...

timmyntc · 14-02-2023 12:32pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120237525#Comment_120237525

yawn

https://www.statista.com/statistics/494425/death-rate-worldwide-by-energy-source/

Markcheese · 14-02-2023 12:44pm

Is that graphic for operation ? , operation and construction ? or operation ,construction and polution , ?

Including mining the fuel ? Including the mining and quarrying for the construction. .

Could go down a lot of rabbit holes

cnocbui · 14-02-2023 3:30pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120236574#Comment_120236574

How much are you currently paying for 1kw of electricity?

cnocbui · 14-02-2023 3:38pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120239173#Comment_120239173

That graphic is what it is, as much as you don't like. Most of the problems and dangers associated with nuclear energy can be summed up in a single word, or two if you to nit pick - Russia/USSR. Those people are mental. If you removed from those stats, everything Russia related, nuclear power wouldn't even be on the graph.

I'd post a link to something else, but you would like it even less - a US study which shows that nuclear energy has saved far more lives than it's ever taken, even including Russian related stats.

Markcheese · 14-02-2023 4:39pm

Post away , I'm not completely against nuclear , I remember first seeing the stat about deaths from wind turbines versus nuclear power and being surprised ,I went looking and the wind turbine figure included construction where the nuclear station didn't , so I kind of disregarded the stat from there , there's a lot of extrapolating and picking favourable time frames for both sides of the debate ..

And no shortage of concrete and mined/refined resources for wind turbines,

cnocbui · 14-02-2023 6:03pm

https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/the-curious-wavefunction/nuclear-power-may-have-saved-1-8-million-lives-otherwise-lost-to-fossil-fuels-may-save-up-to-7-million-more/

A new paper from NASA’s Goddard Institute authored by Pushker Kharecha and James Hansen in the journal Environmental Science and Technology purports to do just that. Hansen is well known as one of the founders of modern global warming science. The authors come up with the striking figure of 1.8 million as the number of lives saved by replacing fossil fuel sources with nuclear. They also estimate the saving of up to 7 million lives in the next four decades, along with substantial reductions in carbon emissions, were nuclear power to replace fossil fuel usage on a large scale. In addition the study finds that the proposed expansion of natural gas would not be as effective in saving lives and preventing carbon emissions. In general the paper provides optimistic reasons for the responsible and widespread use of nuclear technologies in the near future. It also drives home the point that nuclear energy has prevented many more deaths than what it has caused.

There you go, and I'd add the untold number who's lives might have been saved by the radio nucleotides made in nuclear reactors, not to mention the uncompromising sterility of the trillions of single use medical consumables exposed to gamma ray sources.

Capt'n Midnight · 14-02-2023 11:12pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120240589#Comment_120240589

30% of global medical radioisotopes are produced in the 45MW (thermal) High Flux Reactor in the Netherlanders which has nothing to do with nuclear power.

Only 30% as each continent has it's own source because of travel time compared to the half life of molybdenum-99 of 2.75 days and it's daughter technetium-99m of 6 hours. Also you'd be doing well to get 20MW of electricity out of the 45MW thermal output.

Birdnuts · 15-02-2023 1:19am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120227746#Comment_120227746

A Vestas funded survey - give me a break!! about as credible as the BS the WEI and BNM came out with yesterday on public attitudes to windfarms and energy prices. Anyways you only have to see the amount of damage and scale of concrete haulage etc. to build wind turbines on BNM peatland to see that those figures are total BS

15-02-2023 5:53pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120242282#Comment_120242282

bout as credible as the BS the WEI and BNM came out with yesterday on public attitudes to windfarms and energy prices.

You mean the one that said 80% of the public supported them?

You might be interested in this. Looks like boards posters attitudes closely align with that survey finding

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058284296/would-you-support-a-windfarm-in-your-area

Capt'n Midnight · 15-02-2023 11:46pm

Today the UK was getting more from solar (yellow) than nuclear (grey) between 10:10 and 14:30 - mostly because nuclear output dropped.

Number of reactors in service: 4 of 9 , However, only there's only two of nine on "nominal full load" because

Sizewell B - where Turbine generator 1 is Reducing load prior to statutory/refuelling outage

Hartlepool - Reactor 1 is Reducing load prior to outage to address a steam leak

Capt'n Midnight · 15-02-2023 11:49pm

France so far this year with nuclear and fossil fuel removed for clarity

Exports of power when renewables are producing, imports when they aren't.

josip · 17-02-2023 3:37pm

EDF made a loss of €18bn last year.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-64674131

cnocbui · 17-02-2023 3:45pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120246614#Comment_120246614

The grey area is about 3 times the yellow area, but slag away and arrange the goal posts to suit your agenda.

cnocbui · 17-02-2023 3:54pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120253432#Comment_120253432

And in the UK, where the government isn't handicapping them with price caps, EDF's profits have surged in 2022.

https://www.energylivenews.com/2023/02/17/edfs-uk-profits-soared-to-1-1bn-in-2022/

josip · 17-02-2023 5:08pm

Nuclear generation was down 9% yoy in the OECD in November. Does anyone know why?

The latest IEA's Monthly Electricity Statistics report including November 2022 data shows that for Total OECD:

Total net electricity production amounted to 851.3 TWh in November 2022, down by 1.8% y-o-y compared to November 2021.

Electricity production from renewable sources increased by 9.7% y-o-y at 295.3 TWh, mainly driven by solar (+41.3% y-o-y) and wind (+15.6% y-o-y), with hydro remaining stable (+0.3% y-o-y). Overall, the share of renewables in the OECD electricity mix settled at 34.7%.

Nuclear electricity production dropped by 9.0% y-o-y at 136.0 TWh, continuing the downward trend observed during previous months. This decrease was mainly driven by OECD Europe (-19.5% y-o-y), followed by the OECD Americas (-1.8% y-o-y) and OECD Asia Oceania (-1.4% y-o-y). Overall, the share of nuclear in the OECD electricity mix was 16.0%.

17-02-2023 5:19pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120253946#Comment_120253946

In a word, France. They are having a terrible time with maintenance/refurbishment issues with their nuke plants

19-02-2023 11:00pm

The clusterfark that is decommissioning of a nuclear facility 🤦‍♂️

https://gothamist.com/news/dumping-radioactive-water-hudson-river-best-option-indian-point-nuclear-plant-owner-holtec

Sam Russell · 20-02-2023 11:35am

One of the comments on the article quoted above sums up the point about nuclear power generation .

Quote: 'I read a quote from a scientist about 20 years ago, and it has always stuck with me: "Inventing nuclear power without inventing a safe way to deal with its nuclear waste is like inventing the airplane without inventing a safe way to land it." '

The cost of the decommissioning contract was US$2.4 billion - add that to the costs of the original power plant, and they are just dumping the contaminated water into the Hudson for free.

I think that just about sums up the chances of Ireland ever sanctioning a nuclear power plant on the island of Ireland. Add in the unlikely event that any community in (rural) Ireland would give anything but outright open opposition verging on warfare to such a development, and that puts it into the NEVER, NEVER, NEVER category favoured by a certain Northern politician.

20-02-2023 6:27pm

Fukushima decommissioning is going well, 500 tonnes of contaminated water to be released daily for the next 30-40 years

Anyone want to go for a swim?

https://www.euronews.com/green/2023/02/20/fukushima-japan-prepares-to-release-13-million-tonnes-of-treated-wastewater-into-the-sea

20-02-2023 8:55pm

I don't think you'll see a massive rollout of new nuclear sites in Europe or the US generally. You might get plants built on existing sites that were selected back in the 1950s and 60s when people saw nuclear power as being all about progress and jobs, but attitudes have changed a lot in the intervening decades.

Birdnuts · 21-02-2023 2:14am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120266359#Comment_120266359

How many Fukishima's have occured in the West?? Where as we are guaranteed countless tonnes of microplastics into the marine environment via wind turbine blades https://docs.wind-watch.org/Leading-Edge-erosion-and-pollution-from-wind-turbine-blades_5_july_English.pdf

josip · 21-02-2023 10:26am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120268281#Comment_120268281

According to those lads, after 11 years the entire leading edge of the blades has worn away.

But the lifespan of a turbine blade is 20-25 years. Do they operate for another 10 years without a leading edge?

21-02-2023 4:28pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120268281#Comment_120268281

I’d hardly consider Japanese standards to be anything other than part of the group of countries we tend to describe as “western.”

That plant was a very standard General Electric Boiling Water Reactor, broadly identical to similar installations in the U.S. (several still running) with a Mark I type containment.

It was close to full retirement when that happened and had operated for decades entirely uneventfully.

There are also a number of plants located on faults and seismic risk areas like California.

Fukushima was a major wake up call for a lot of those and similar installations that are in high risk areas.

I’d question the logic of building nuclear plants in highly seismic areas, particularly when it’s possible to place them elsewhere and link by HVDC and etc as it would be in the US. There’s literally no reason for nuclear plants in coastal California.

If anything, more Japanese plants are extremely well adapted to earthquakes, but the design of that 1960s era plant didn’t anticipate the scale of the tsunami and the plant being entirely cut off from both the national grid and backup generators being simultaneously and completely submerged under water, and the site becoming inaccessible.

Capt'n Midnight · 21-02-2023 7:59pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120270700#Comment_120270700

Onagawa which was closer to the epicentre than Fukushima would have failed if Yanosuke Hirai hadn't insisted it be build 14.8m above sea level, and a cooling water reserve. "Matsunaga-san hated bureaucrats," Oshima said. "He said they are like human trash.

Fukushima Daiichi failed because they cheaped out. The original sea wall was 35m above sea level they reduced it to 10m above sea level to reduce the costs of pumping cooling water from the sea. And because they didn't learn the lessons of the earlier French nuclear power plant flood.

Fukushima Daini nearly failed The Heroic Mission to Save Fukushima Daini - they lost multiple redundant systems at once.

Of the eight heat exchanger buildings, only the building on the south side of Unit 3 had miraculously escaped damage. That reactor was still being cooled, thankfully. The members of the reconnaissance teams believed that by using cables to share the reactor three power supply with reactors one, two, and four, which were arranged in a line, they would be able to restore cooling relatively quickly.

This proposal was rejected by Masuda, however: “We’ve got to protect the Unit 3 cooling system at all cost. Don’t overload it.”

Instead, Masuda directed his team to obtain power by running cables from a waste-processing building some 800 meters away. The cables were 5 centimeters thick and weighed about 5 kilograms per meter. The team laid a total of 9 kilometers of cables, which they snaked around buildings and other obstacles. While the task would normally take 20 people using construction equipment an entire month, a team of 200 TEPCO employees and contractors were able to complete the task in just 30 hours, finishing late on March 13.

Tōkai started construction in 1961. It finally got it's 4.9m seawall increased to 6.1 meters in 2011. Two days later the tsunami hit with a height of 5.4m. Two days. The Tokai plant suffered a loss of external power-supply. The levee was overrun, but only one of three seawater pumps failed,

Japan and the entire nuclear industry got lucky , it could have easily been a lot worse because the failure modes are systemic when try to do nuclear on the cheap.

21-02-2023 9:15pm

Take a look at where Diablo Canyon NPP was built in California .. it's not quite as prone to tsunami as Japan, but there's a distinct possibility of one given how seismic California is.

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

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

My point though is that these things are 'beyond calculated risks' and if it could happen in Japan, it could happen in plenty of other places. I know the tsunami risk isn't an issue in most places, but there are likely other eventualities that are being short cut.

The biggest risk at this stage is the ageing of plants and the endless pushes for life extensions.

Capt'n Midnight · 21-02-2023 9:57pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120272049#Comment_120272049

That's the NPP where they build the earthquake shields for one of the reactors backwards.

Here's the risk map from https://ncdp.columbia.edu/library/mapsmapping-projects/nuclear-power-plants-earthquake-risk/

The bit in the centre is where the New Madrid earthquakes of 1811-1812 happened. The area wasn't heavily populated or built up then.

Birdnuts · 22-02-2023 2:04am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120270700#Comment_120270700

How many Tsunamis and major earthquakes do you expect to occur in Ireland over the coming decades or in the UK, France etc.??

22-02-2023 2:21am

None, but the risk is always some random event that’s outside the scope of what was assumed to be possible - with most other technologies the consequences of that are problematic but short lived. With a nuclear contamination issue, it’s rather more drastic.

You can see why a lot of people aren’t as enthusiastic about the technology as they might behave been back in the 60s when it was promising all sorts with zero risk or zero public understanding of any potential risks anyway.

It’s a technology that’s absolutely great and usually works very well, but the consequences of the rare occasions when it does go wrong are a tad worrying.

Chernobyl is the only one that’s a total outlier. I think using that as a benchmark is rather pointless. The design was fundamentally awful - it literally had no containment, just a simple biological shield, and the Soviet culture it ran in was hugely problematic for the kind do safety culture you need around something like nuclear power. They even tried to cover up the accident until it was impossible to deny!

Chernobyl shouldn’t have happened because RMBK type power plants should never have been approved or built. They quite literally “fail dangerous” rather than “fail safe.”

The actual incident was pretty much a run away reaction that led to simple steam explosion, exposing the hot, flammable graphite core which readily burned when exposed to air spewing chunks and particles of radioactive material everywhere as debris and plumes of smoke.

Chernobyl isn’t relevant to anything, other than the RMBK plants still running in Russia.

A ‘black swan event’ - something that’s totally unexpected, despite what is assumed to be best efforts, good regs and good design is always a possibility. No system is perfect or can foresee every permutation and combination of circumstances. That’s where all nuclear power has an issue.

Economically, none of these systems seem to stack up unless you’re deliberately ignoring the time scale to build, the spent fuel storage / reprocessing / disposal costs and the utterly ginormous lifetime costs involved in decommissioning, which in most countries seem to be dumped on the state in the end (in many to be fair though state entities built them in the first place.)

Capt'n Midnight · 22-02-2023 2:26am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120273438#Comment_120273438

30th January 1607 was the last major flood in Wales. It would have taken out Hinkley, Oldbury and Berkeley. They had to increase the sea walls on UK nuclear power plants when finally understood that yes, it could happen again.

I've already mentioned the French plant that was flooded, that was just bad weather, but they were relying on the other reactor on site for backup power. Which went as well as expected. Cue major rollout of backup systems at a cost of billions. Bad weather also caused the droughts that reduced cooling water and the heatwaves that restricted how much heat they could dump into rivers.

Unlikely to be a repeat of the Storegga Slides or a collapse of the volcano on the Canary Islands soon. BUT nuclear power plants supposedly last a long time which shortens the odds.

And these are all events that have happened and will happen again in time.

Nuclear - future for Ireland?

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