Nuclear - future for Ireland?

Nuclear is intermittent now?

In recent years the capacity factor for South Korean power reactors has averaged up to 96.5% – some of the highest figures in the world.

The US thinks nuclear is unreliable and intermittent also, which is odd, as it's capacity factor averages 92%:

https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/nuclear-power-most-reliable-energy-source-and-its-not-even-close

Nuclear energy has the highest capacity factor of any energy source, and it's not even close.

Office of Nuclear Energy

March, 24 2021

https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/nuclear-power-most-reliable-energy-source-and-its-not-even-close

To say you just make up sh​it and selectively report negatives out of context would be putting it extremely mildly.

Our total area is 70,000 sq kilometers so you could not technically, let alone practically, have turbines with a seperation distance of 1Km.

76,500 turbines has nothing to do with matching minimum demand. It`s the number that would be required to match the demand when onshore wind drops for extended periods providing just 6% of installed capacity. Periods during which demand is at it`s maximum, not it`s minimum.

If you slash half the turbines you slash half the supply. Our requirements are projected to double between now and 2050 to 14GW or higher, so where are you going to get 7 GW that will not be there due to half the turbines being slashed when we have already seen that when wind has dropped of the scale here, it has also dropped of the scale for the rest of Europe and how are you going to get it here ? We have no interconnectors capable of handling 7 GW, nor have I seen anything to say we are going to have.

Insulation reducing demand by 1 GW would equate to 7%. It would still leave you short 43% of maximum demand.

When it comes to crazy amounts of backup, to each their own, but for me 76,500 turbines in an area of 70,000 sq.km, with an installed capacity of 230 GW to provide 14 GW, would be difficult to top when it comes to crazy amounts of back up.

Just to point out , 92 % reliability means 8 % unreliable - so that's 7 or 8 hundred hours a year that they're not on ,

it's the single large generator being offline for a time that means you have to be able to cover that , and at some point in the 40 year life of a 2 reactor plant it's likely that both reactors are gonna be off at the same time , so in the case of the french system, you have to be able to cover 3.2 GW ,

Obviously this happens to any and all generators, it has happened to 2 of our newer gas generators, that they were both down -un scheduled, for almost a year ..

Germany is not the world's largest exporter of energy, it's an importer. When it was exporting, it was cheap energy derived from coal.

France regained its place as the leading exporter of electricity in Europe in 2023 – far ahead of Sweden and Norway – thanks to its nuclear strategy. Maintenance problems in 2022 saw a historic drop in production, with France importing electricity for the first time in more than 40 years.

…

Germany imported 10 TWhin 2023, a first since 2002.

This situation can be explained by the abandonment of the last three nuclear power plants in Germany, even if they represented only 6 percent of the electricity produced in the country.

Their absence is enough to create some tensions as soon as the wind fails in wind farms, Emeric de Vigan, vice-president in charge of electricity markets at Kpler told AFP.

For other experts, the decline in German electricity exports is mainly a question of price: Germany used to flood its neighbors with cheap coal-generated electricity, electricity which is now more expensive in due to higher CO2 pricing.

"We expect Germany to maintain its position as an importer in the near future, particularly as a number of coal and lignite plants are scheduled to close in 2024," Rickson said.

37GW offshore is being seriously proposed with some expecting our electricity generation to have net zero emissions by 2050 after spending over €200 Bn. when the mathematics show it will leave us 5 GW short of our projected requirements. 5 GW is the generation we are currently getting from fossil fuels, so we would be spending that unviable sum just to stand still.

Nobody may be expecting we would need 260GW of installed onshore capacity to get us to net zero emissions by 2050, but for supply to match demand for the extended periods we have seen onshore wind generation fall to 6% (and less) when our demand is at its highest, that is the installed capacity that would be required.

Okay that's with no installed storage , no interconnectors, and to be fair net zero is an aspiration,a dream .. it's never gonna happen ,

Nobody can build an energy system without mining and refining - steel -concrete -copper

Nuclear needs fuel , gas needs fuel ,oil needs fuel , wind and solar don't directly need fuel but they ain't getting built or installed without it ,

And they all need back up and reserve , so now if we plan on using batteries ,legacy gas and ancient oil boilers,and interconnectors as back up for both nuclear and renewables what's the difference?

You'll probably have to use the back up fuel more for renewables , for those calm weeks or months - but your not bringing in a mined and refined concentrated fuel so it probably equals out ..

The UK approved 5 new interconnector last month, including 2 more to Ireland.

https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/press-release/empowering-great-britain-clean-and-flexible-energy-future-next-generation-interconnectors

All five, including the one to here and the other to NI are supposedly for the export of U.K. North Sea wind generation if memory serves me correctly are they not ?

As we have now seen on numerous occassions when we experience a Dunkleflaute so does the rest of Europe and like us it`s when their demands are at their highest levels. Other than where European offshore generation is going and at what cost, (Equinor has recently pulled out of offshore for Spain and Portugal), with North Sea future generation in particular where Denmark could not get a single bid for 3 North Sea offerings, the largest offering in their history, that leaves Europe relying on nuclear from the U.K., Sweden, France and hyrdo from Norway plus increased use of fossil fuels to fill the gap.

For us if we were 100% wind powered that very large gap getting filled, and the lights staying on, would be dependent on interconnectors from the U.K. and France, where regardless of the number of them nothing would be flowing through them other than U.K. and French nuclear and Drax "carbon neutral" electricity from the U.K. With the E.U. having pulled out of the Energy Charter Treaty there would be no onus on the U.K. to supply us with anything (the same for Norway and gas), and with high demand would most likely sell to the highest bidders

when we experience a Dunkleflaute

Ah yes the infamous Dunkleflaute - the phenomena which should cause us all to tremble in fear. The thing that makes wind and solar unviable 🙄

Except we have experienced them, but nobody actually notices. Because when they occur, absolutely nothing actually happens…… the grid doesn't collapse, kettles still work, the lights remain on, life goes on.

Maybe because those grid engineers understand statistics and the management of electrical grids a bit better than you? A crazy idea I know.

This Chicken Licken act has been doing the rounds for years - but anyone with half a brain can just look up and see that no, the sky isn't actually falling down. Just like they can see that long periods of low wind and high cloud cover DO NOT cause countries with large renewable penetration to experience black outs.

The biggest global electricity supply failure of the last 5 years was the Chinese electricity crisis of 2020/2021 where weeks long rolling blackouts affected multiple provinces (caused by issues with coal supply). Arguably the 2nd worst was the 2022 French nuclear power crisis but they managed to avoid region-wide blackouts by leaning heavily on their neighbors for imports.

Interestingly, the Chinese reaction to the coal-caused crisis was to pivot completely and pour investment into wind and solar. And because these technologies are so quick, cheap, simple and scalable to deploy, they've been breaking records every month for renewable share of generation within a year of the program starting and are currently hitting monthly peaks of around 45% renewable. The 2020 Chinese goal of 1,200 GW of solar and wind capacity by 2030 has already been exceeded by a wide margin - by July this year, nearly 1,300GW had been deployed and the pace isn't slowing. Coming in on budget and 60% ahead of time is an achievement no nuclear project has EVER come close to achieving and I'm will to bet will never achieve.

This is a country already heavily invested in nuclear, and committed to the technology but even they know that if you want to add capacity quickly and cheaply and develop energy independence (instead of lining Australia's pockets), lots of wind and solar is the tool of choice.

if you have a high dependency on wind generation and that generation drops to just 6% or less when demand is at its peak, you are not going to fill demand UNLESS…

Exactly Charlie - "UNLESS" - that word is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. Let's just focus on it for a minute and there might be some hope for you.

Let's try a few continuations:

• UNLESS… grid engineers know that wind is a variable source of energy?
• UNLESS… enough reserve is kept available to handle the variability?
• UNLESS… we've gotten way better at predicting wind energy yield in advance?
• UNLESS.. we've expanded alternative on-demand sources like interconnection capacity?
• etc.

Wind generation VERY FREQUENTLY drops to 6% or less in Ireland, yet.. we have NEVER seen blackouts caused by a lack of wind, do you agree?

Could you explain why this is the case charlie? Given you're convinced it's just not possible despite the evidence of everyone's own eyes over the last 5 or ten years?

2021 a Think Ireland survey showed a 50/50 split between those that favour nuclear and those that did not with 60% of 18 -25 year olds in favour. With us since having the highest electricity charges in the E.U. and an insanely propsed 2050 wind/hydrogen plan that would not even meet our 2050 projected requirements and have a strike price 50% higher for consummers than your bogeyman Hinkley C someone running for election favouring nuclear would have a much better chance of getting elected than being opposed.

We do not have any storage, and other than the hydrogen lunacy we do not have any plans for storage. We do not even have an LNG terminal or stoge facility. Hydro is taped out here, solar has a Winter capacity factor of ~5%, the French opened a tidal generation plant 60 years ago,( it`s still the second largest in the world as far as I know supplying 96MW) and never went any further with the idea. Burning wood is as harmful to the environment or even more so than burning coal, and geothermal is basically fracking where we have banned the use of LNG where fracking is used to extract the gas. Carbon capture is another insanely expensive day dream like hydrogen.

So how are we going to get to this magic net zero by 2050 using basically just wind power other than massively over installed wind capacity to compensate for wind dropping off to near zero for extended periods. ?

This is why we settled on Carnsore Point for our Nuclear plans. The prevailing south-westerly winds would have irradiated Britain in the event of an airborne leak, and the sea currents would have washed any sea contamination out into the Celtic Sea.

I may be making a cheap joke just there, but I’m also not sure if it wasn’t also a major reason for choosing that site.

So we'd lose Roslare harbor then. And if we have a southerly most of the east coast and population wound get irradiate. Nice you've really thought this through then.

https://www.maps.ie/draw-radius-circle-map/?lat=52.190772371135374&lng=-6.383056640625001&radius=29096.330575098964

Oh come on.. I know well that it's hard to convey sarcasm, but I would have thought the bit where I literally said I was making a joke might have been a hint?