Nuclear - future for Ireland?

I would use a combination of strategies:

• Decrease use of existing hydropower installations so that there is more "storage" available for emergencies. Consider developing more hydro or pumped hydro schemes.
• Develop more interconnection with Britain both directly and via Northern Ireland. Also do the Celtic Interconnector to France, so that "spinning reserve" can be shared with the UK and France.
• Designate some output of a nuclear power plant as being for export. In an emergency, that would be the first thing to be cut.
• Make limited investments into hydrogen energy storage & generation.

This would be incredibly wasteful of both arable land and fertiliser components. The energy crops would require fertiliser and the animal waste could be used as fertiliser.

That's a real problem because the worlds ability to access fertiliser is going to become much more problematic in the coming decades and centuries. Particularly phosphates.

You could use gas turbines, which is how renewables are backed up, hence our high CO2 emissions, but given you only need that backup for 5% of a year, it's hardly a problem emissions wise, by your own admission, seeing as how you think the zero CO2 goal is unnecessary anyway.

Or you could use nuclear reactors to backup those powered down for refuelling or other maintenance.

The 2050 plan is to decarbonise transport using hydrogen generated from wind. It's more viable to use nuclear energy since electrolysers need a constant and steady energy source. If the wind stops blowing you have to keep electrolysers going from some other energy source. Nuclear is cheap and reliable and is an ideal source for generating hydrogen for fuels. Given the hydrogen for transport requirement detailed by the ESB, and the storability of hydrogen, you could easily build up a several month reserve of hydrogen, that way when you need to maintain a reactor you could switch a hydrogen generating reactor over to the grid and run transport from the reserves.

Despite all the endless BS on this forum, the truth remains that nuclear is the most dependable and reliable energy generation source generally in use.

Our projected 2050 energy needs are more than double what we currently use, so we could easily accommodate 10 1.4 GW reactors, some of which would be doing hydrogen generating duties, so it's not like you have to have the capacity to backup all 10 simultaneously, just 2 of them probably, at the outside, which would easily be accomplished with the hydrogen->grid switching.

Do you think the 10 reactors should be co-located on a single site or distributed? I assume they would need to be at least somewhat distributed due to grid constraints. Have you identified any suitable locations? Again, I assume by the coast somewhere to use seawater for cooling, or would you hope to use fresh water from a river?

Korean nuclear needs 5% backup, our current renewables need more than 50% backup. If you were to do it with hydrogen, then the scale is quite different. But I'd be happy backing up that 5% with NG.

Interconnectors are just a bad idea as they are way too expensive and generate nothing. Just that Celtic interconnector people seem to love so much is €2 biilion for a paltry 700 MW capacity. When a generate nothing interconnector costs €2,857 per KW and a Korean NPP costs €3,290 per KW, the interconnector is a huge waste of money, IMO.

With Russian subs scoping out all of Europe's subsurface infrastructure, you'd have to be thick to not opt for complete self reliance, particularly when the costs for dependency on others is so high comparatively, just in infrastructure cost terms.

Renewables are not cheap!

Commercial scale solar in Ireland, given a capacity factor of only 10% works out at €9.27 Billion per GW.

The world's latest and largest OSW farm, Doggerbank, is costing €4.48 Billion per GW given a capacity factor of 47%

If you really want to throw your money away by the giant sackfull, then floating OSW is your man, at €9.896 Billion per GW given a capacity factor of 57%, which is a guesstimate based on Hywind Scotlands performance. Based on Hywind Tampen, the latest and largest OSW project just completed

Korean Nuclear costs €4.22 Billion given a capacity factor of 95%, based on Barakah NPP costs.

This doesn't even begin to show the true scale of how expensive renewables are comparatively as it's just using a simplistic over capacity model of multiplying by 1/capacity factor. The actual backup cost using hydrogen from electrolysis and the real over-capacity required is basically not possible to calculate as no country has ever done it and we don't even have the commercially available infrastructure to base costs off, like full scale low nox hydrogen fueld gas turbines. With 100% certainty I can say it will be a lot more expensive than my simplistic cost model.

Renewables are very expensive in a real world net zero sense, not that LCOE BS.

Whichever you go with will require backup and the only plan here at present is wind backed up by hydrogen. That is clear from the 2030 plan on offshore wind of 7 GW with 2 GW of that 7 going to hydrogen production. Basically the ESB 50/50 plan on consumption and hydrogen. With our needs to double between now ans 2050 that would require 70 GW of installed capacity offshore. The Capex alone for the offshore turbines alone would be around 50% of our GDP, and that is before you include the extra cost of the floating terminals, (comprising 26% of those turbines afaik), the cost to the consummer who would be required to pay double for what the consume to cover the electricity used in the hydrogen production, plus having to pay for all those offshore companies produce even if we do not need or use it. And for all of that you are talking a source that has half the capacity factor and one third the lifespan of nuclear. It is simply not economically feasible.

Theoretically 9 x 1.6 reactors would fill our 2050 predicted needs and carbon neutral using the already installed 6 GW of installed capacity of wind, hydro and solar being backup for 2 of those reactors being offline at any one time for whatever reason. But in reality that would not work either due to all three being unreliable and intermittent. That leaves you with stored gas as a backup or hydrogren which as far as I`m concerned has a lot of questions to answer as to would it work to scale, as well on storage and distribution. But then if you do decide to go with hydrogen then one other 1.6 reactor would provide energy to produce enough hydrogen much more efficiently than wind to replace at least one of those reactors being offline where the other would be then covered by the reactor being used to directly provide electricy to the grid. You could even do a pro-rata deal with the U.K. and France for imports and exports on refueling schedules.

For me those are the options and economically the offshore wind plan does simple not stack up.The harping here to me by some on us not considering nuclear as an option due to Hinkley Point is simalar to some in another country saying they should not build a childrens hospital because of the over-run on budget and time delays. Times have moved on very rapidly where offshore wind is concerned with prices now gone through the roof. Even with all the delay and over-run on budget Finlands`s latest 1.6 GW nuclear plant came in at €11 Bn. The UAE 5.6 GW plant with a 90%+ capacity factor and a lifespan of 60 years cost €22.5 Bn. with a construction time of 9 years. That is the equivalent of less than €65 Bn. for our 2050 needs. There is also the price Poland has agreed for their first nuclear plants.

Offshore wind does not come within a country mile financially of supplying the same. Not even for the Finnish plant that was years late and over budget.

Hinkley has twice the capacity factor of the OSW Doggerbank and 3 times the lifespan.

As crazy as it may sound, even the worst price anti- nuclear can find still comes out ahead of wind.

Cut out the nonsense. Finland didn`t use slave labour and neither will Poland.

The only reason you are looking to Hinkley point is because it the most expensive example you can find. Which even when you take capacity factor and lifespan into account leaves it cheaper than Doggerbank offshore.

So lets go with the €110 Billion over budget and much delayed OL-3 example that would deliver 15 GW of electricity for 60 years which would leave us carbon neutral and tell me how much your wind plan will cost for the same. Including or excluding hydrogen which ever you wish, (not including decommissioning etc.)

Currently offshore wind is a mess with companies refusing to even bid a price for our neighbours and others refusing to honour contracts they signed, not just for our neighbours but worldwide.

How is the idea of Ireland going 100% wind, which for all intents and purposes is what the current plan is in reality, any smarter than going nuclear. ?

You really are a master at scraping the bottom of barrels and ludicrous assertions. The cheapest place Korean reactors are built is Korea, which last I checked was considered a democracy free of slave labour.

Germany are neighbours with Poland. They have different views on nuclear energy. I don't see any natural law of geographic proximity dictating an obvious synergy of energy generation policies. Sout korea doesn't border either the UAE or Poland, nor does Poland border the US. This UK Ireland synergy being an unassailable and obvious natural law is all in your head.

Ireland is contemplating a near pure renewables driven hydrogen economy when no other country is. This may come as a shock, but France already has 100% nuclear capacity, which is why every time I checked last year when a lot of reactors were having some repair work after 30 years of near constant use, the share of nuclear in their energy generation hadn't changed much from the usual 60-70% range. it would seem they didn't export as much as usual and even imported for once.

Today at 17:00 today, France was exporting over 14 GW while their domestic nuclear share was 67% and wind was 7%. You can bet most of that huge export was from nuclear. Their nuclear capacity is 61.37 GW but their total demand at that time was 55.46 GW. They could in theory have 100% domestic nuclear generation but instead they choose to mix it up and earn €3 billion a year in exports.

We already have 4+ GW of wind capacity so I was never truly advocating Ireland going 100% nuclear. It was more of a mental exercise. Even though the French likely could stop burning gas entirely, they don't.

The only wow would be the cost. Wind here has dropped to 6% and lower for extended periods,so if you are going with wind and hydrogen to cater for 14 GW demand by 2050 it will require 70 GW of offshore nameplate capacity. Go for just wind and solar with solar`s capacity factor plus the long winter months when it wil be asleep for long periods adding nothing when demand is peak, the required GW`s from offshore would not be discernibly less.

If you are reliant on wind and solar what difference is weather forecasts going to make. Even if you knew 6 moths in advance that wind was going to drop off the scale, what are you going to do, erect enough wind turbines in that 6 months to negate that drop ?

You were also predicting wind costs to become cheaper not long ago when others were pointing out it was only going to rise. How did that work out for you ?

Finland`s import nighrmare on imports, as you term it, ended much faster than you earlier predicted, and that was due to nuclear coming on line, not wind.

France has made it clear that they are not going down the German road you favor of them shutting down their nuclear plants. They are adding to them. With them having the lowest emissions in Europe by some distance, even while generating a surplus that they are getting oodles of money for exporting, it really isn`t difficult to see why.

Very convenient for you on this thread is it not that you can pick and choose whichever area you feel like to argue against nuclear, especially on cost, when you cannot be challenged likewise, (even with verifiable data), on your own wind prefered plan. A plan that you or nobody else can come up with a price for. As I have said before, in the real world of engineering and economics that has you holding a wish list, not a plan.