Nuclear - future for Ireland?

You do not appear to know that all U.K. cfds are at 2012 prices.

I do, but you added an inflation adjustment to these prices in your calculation. You were double counting.

The 40% - 60% increase in the price for offshore wind has nothing to do with covid or interest rates. It has created an inflation bubble unique to itself.

Seriously? You wanna bet? If interest rates are lower, then the strike price at the next auction will be lower. If I win, you donate 1k to the Green Party, and if you win I'll sent 1k to a Koch brothers disinformation organization of your choosing?

I tried being civil and argue with good faith but it's now clear that you have no interest in an honest discussion since in your response, you've entirely avoided the fact that you inflated the cost from 100 per MWh to 200MWh by adding the cost of reserve to the cost of wind but did not do so for that for nuclear. You want to try your calculation again?

While you're at it, feel free to also include the cost of the transmission infrastructure required to support >1GW plants on the Irish grid.

Unfortunately you do not do good faith honest discussion. You do condesending and belligerent and that is the third time in just a few days you have accused me of lying and posting false data, where like the other two occasions, this time again you are wrong .

If you did understand the U.K cfd pricing structure you would know that. FFS I even showed you how it worked and how to convert it to euro at todays`s value. I didn`t add any inflation adjustment to those figures, nor was I double counting anything.

The rise in the cfd price bids from offshore providers has little or nothing to do with annual consumer rates of inflation. If that is all it was due to, then offshore and nuclear would be increasing at the same percentage level which is catered for both offshore and nuclear in the cfd contracts for both. The increase in cfd prices for the U.K. is due to the hugh jump in the construction costs for offshore wind. And it`s not just for U.K. offshore, the same is true world wide. U.S. Empire Wind and Sunrise Wind strike prices were increased from $110.37 per MWh to $150.15 when they refused to honour the original $110.37 contracts due to increases in costs. But them I am probably lying about that as well as far as you are concerned!

And no, I did not inflate the cost from €100 per MWh to €200 per MWh by adding the cost of generation for hydrogen for giggles. That is what the effective strike price to the consumer would be due to our proposed wind/hydrogen plan based on the current U.K. price , (which imo is highly unlikely we will get), which leaves it even without the strike prices of hydrogen being included, 25% greater than the present cfd price for Hinkley.

I'm not avidly a fan of nuclear - but it is perfectly possible to build a nuclear power station here ,

Obviously you'd need the right team to oversea, design, and then get the thing built , commissioned and operational,

You'd probably bring in an experienced team,so from overseas .. and use a proven design..

A project that big would probably need overseas construction staff ,(our construction sector is already stretched ) as well as experienced engineers ..

Picking a site ,Getting past the legal challenges,and the protests would be the challenging part - that and the 30 to 40 billion cost ..

I can't see too many nuclear contractors queuing up to build the first ever Irish reactor,

I'd imagine it'd need to be like Poland , gov committing to spending the first 10 or 15 billion euros from the national purse to get the whole project up and running,and then planning on getting international finance involved for the remaining 20 to 25 billion euros / dollars what ever

And remember, each time a government changes, there's a risk to the project, and risk means cost ..

Alot of hypocrisy there given the level of supports wind/solar gets from guaranteed prices, grid access etc. plus other government largesse's, yet still leaves a massive back up power deficit. As for investors, of course there going to cash in on wind developer led energy policies like ours. Same in Germany having burnt threw 500billion euros via the disastrous decision to go with wind instead of nuclear that has seen spiraling power prices and large parts of their industrial base relocating abroad.

Birdnuts simply cannot handle the uncontroversial fact that nuclear electricity is expensive. All knowledgeable nuclear proponents accept this basic fact - even the industry lobbyist group the World Nuclear Association, ffs.

But like the Russian shills on the Ukraine thread - instead of accepting the basic facts for which there is ample and endless evidence - instead let's distract and obfuscate by highlighting perceived "hypocrisy" followed by some whataboutery (take your pick from: Germany, Hydrogen, Eamon Ryan, Dunkleflaute, etc). They think they're still fighting some ideological divide from the 1970s (hippies vs nuclear instead of teenage marxists vs the west).

Yesterday you had not one iota on Contracts for Difference, even when it was explained to you at least twice, and now today you are an expert on interest rates. Your notion that the 60% increase in the cost for offshore is due to an increase in interest rates is straw clutching nonsense. Even if it had any credibility any drop in interest rates would also benifit nuclear, as in sauce for the goose and sauce for the gander.

Along with CfD and interest rates you now make it clear that you have no iota either of what the proposed offshore 2050 plan here is for generation to be zero emissions by 2050 and are talking about some unspecified plan of your own. This 2050 plan, which will not even provide our projected needs for 2050 never mind it being carbon zero, is for 37 GW of offshore with a 50/50 generating split between electricity for the consumer and hydrogen production. How you do not know that at this stage is a real mystery.

You would not need the same backup reserves for nuclear as you would for wind powered grid. If you were operating a 14 GW grid with nuclear and had one reactor down then you would need backup of 7%, 14% for two etc. For a wind operated grid when wind drops to 6% or less for extended periods your backup requirement straght away would be 94%. It just basic mathematics.

Nuclear has been running on our grid for years now and it hasn`t fried it. If anything transmission problem are more wind related than nuclear in that you are using the grid to transmit an intermittent source from all corners of the country to where it is actually needed. Take a look at Germany, that one time great overlord of green ideologies Energiewende. Their wind generation is in the north of the country, their demand in the south. They need to build a transmition grid of 12,234 Km to get electricity from where it is generated to where it is need, which in June 2023 had only covered 1,740 Km and has run into serious trouble, and expense, from the public demanding that it goes underground rather than overland. In the meantime Germany is paying wind operators not to generate, and companies are leaving because they cannot get the electricity they need at a competative price.

Where are you finding this "nominal" strike price or CfD ?

There is nothing "nominal" about either or strike price for wind or the U.K.s CfD for wind or nuclear. With the exception that our strike price includes a guarantee that we will take all these offshore wind companies generate, both strike price and CfD are fixed price index linked for the length of the contracts, which when compared show that the strike price to the consumer here is higher (and set to go more so) per MWh than U.K. nuclear even when compared to Hinkley and without any add-on for hydrogen So where is this "nominal" price of yours coming from ?

Any chance you would do at least a bit of research rather than you doing this continuous nonsense of accusing me of lying and falsifying data and having me wasting my time showing you how continuously wrong and ill-informed you are ?

I have always acknowledged it, in fact, I made a huge point of it when I calculated the cost difference between OSW and nuclear, where I pointed out the cost savings for nuclear were so great you could afford to gold plate your backup gas turbines and you would still be billions ahead.

It remains the case that the backup required for nuclear is 4-5% of capacity whereas for solar it's 89%, OSW is 53% and onshore is 70%. The difference in CO2 consequences and COST of that backup are gargantuan by any measure, which is why nuclear has a vastly greater CO2 reduction effect than any renewables, it even thrashes hydro.

A Norwegian paper estimated that had the Germans devoted half as much money as they have wasted on that Energeiwende boondoggle to building more reactors and not shutting down the ones they had, the CO2 reduction would have been 70% greater than it has been wasting money on renewables.

And it is a waste - half the cost for a 70% better CO2 outcome.

Renewables advocates have lost the plot - I mean really, really lost the plot, which used to be CO2 reduction to mitigate climate change, it's simply become renewables for renewables sake, with not a jot of 'give a sh​it' about CO2.

If it were actually about CO2 reduction, we wouldn't have the head spinning insanity of the EU commission threatening financial sanctions against France for abandoning renewables in favour of more reactors - which are what? 140% more effective at CO2 reduction in cost terms?

Someone should investigate the EU commission to find who's taking Gazprom bribes to influence the pro renewables bias - because renewables equate to burning a lot of gas, nuclear equates to burning hardly any, which is readily apparent when you look at how much gas France burns.

Gas is the red line:

And that makes clear France doesn't rely on renewables for it's energy exports, which are the grey area. France has enough nuclear capacity when/if all their reactors are operating, to meet more than 100% of their energy demands, that grey area is exported nuclear from that unneeded capacity, primarily to keep Europe's street lights lit, from the look of it.

If you really want to reduce CO2 - turn off the bloody lights at night. Perth Australia used to turn off all the lights at around 1am up until at least 1973, when I was able stand in the street in front of my house at 4am, only 120m from a major highway, and see the night sky alight with stars and comet Kohoutek was easily visible, from within a city. These days you would have to travel more than 100km from most cities and towns in the world to have even half the chance.

You are wrong, as usual. The problem is that LCOE is a fallacious unit of measure. Apart from sheer laziness I can't imagine why it's still being used to compare energy source costs:

When LCOE is used to cost solar, for instance, it completely ignores the elephant in the room, which is the consequence of the low capacity factor - LCOE doesn't account for capacity factor - in other words, it doesn't account for the massive costs required for backup.

If you were to try and power Ireland with solar, how would that go cost wise? You would be getting 11% of your energy cheap and the other 89% would be burning gas. But solar is oh so cheap - right - because it doesn't account for the costs for the 89% of the time when it's a complete fail.

If you cost Irish solar vs the Finish OL3 reactor - which was an experimental French design that ran into problems and was 6 times the original estimated cost - in terms of the actual energy produced and accounting for 11% capacity factor vs 95%, say in a year, the nuclear option is far cheaper - and that's even without accounting for grid stability costs, grid connections, backup batteries or gas turbines and the gas they burn.

The kicker is that there are cheaper and better nuclear options than OL3, it's a worst case example and it's still cheaper.

You may have been discussing Contracts for Difference since 2019, but from your posts it`s clear you had absolutely no understanding of them until I had to painstakingly repeatedly explain them to you over the past week. But then you have also most likely been discussing the 37GW offshore wind plan for here for years as well and didn`t know until a few days ago that it entailed half the installed capacity going to the production of hydrogen. Whoever you are having these discussions with you need to find a different source as neither of you has obviously even the first clue.

There is nothing "nominal" about Contracts for Difference. They are both the same for wind or nuclear. They are index linked fixed price contracts for the specified duration period of the contracts. Anyone with even the most basic understanding of finance would understand the advantages of a fixed price contract for 35 years over a 15 year one for wind when we have seen Contracts for Difference prices for wind skyrocket by 60% in just two years.

I explained to you where the real problem is with transmission. I even gave you the example of Germany but you just refuse to acknowledge it. To quote @cnocbui we could power the country with OL3 reactors at their over budget costs, build a completely new grid, gold plate the lot and we would still be quids in compared to the cost of a 2050 37GW offshore plan that will not even come within providing 70% of our generation requirements for net zero for 2050.

To use your own parlance. Get out of the ring champ, you are punch drunk and have no idea what you are supporting or opposed to.

Was just about to write fair play to you, I stand corrected until I saw 5% of capacity needed as nuclear backup. Completely incorrect as another poster has pointed out already.

Again you are focusing on the cost of OSW instead of discussing the steps involved with delivering nuclear for Ireland. Constant misdirection to renewable bashing is a waste of time. Especially when it has been pointed out many times that a national scale OSW wind strategy is modular. The early deliveries will generate electricity from the get go - unlike nuclear. If costs spiral or any other reason should occur the modular nature allows the build out to be paused or cancelled but with operating turbines in place. When nuclear projects are abandoned they just leave a massive concrete failure in place that had never generated a single kWh of electricity.

We are well aware of the benefits of modular construction as nuclear SMRs and their potential benefits were discussed many times here. Every time a mega cost is pulled out the ether for OSW it just highlights that benefits modular design is being wilfully ignored to make a cheap shot at renewables, completely undermining the post.

I agree the EU should probe an awful of business led EU decisions, such as the pivot to diesel cars across the EU. Fancy that all the German marques were neck deep in diesel. Germany's reliance on natural gas should also be investigated but it might not reveal a smoking gun.

I agree with turning off streetlamps in theory but for bird welfare not just energy saving. Use of LED has most likely saved enough to justify not needing switch off time.

When demand is 14 GW and wind drops to 6% and you need to provide 13GW of reserve, firing up a 50MW gas plant is not going to prevent blackouts either, so what are you going to use to fill that hole.