Nuclear - future for Ireland?

I don't need to provide costs. Because there's no alternative.

Because until at least 2046 it's going to be the exact same cost to keep the lights on whether we go nuclear or not.

To challenge that you need to explain how going nuclear can save us money before it produces power.

Nuclear will need more backup and will need more spinning reserve, and there's the whole waste issued. That's extra costs for nuclear. There's also the eyewatering interest payments that could easily cost more than the plant. And insurance for larger risks.

Nuclear will also need to be paid for until it's up and running reliably and there's only so many times (in purple) when it can sell it's power (as long as storage isn't cheaper) . It won't show up until we are over 95% emissions free AND have most of the extra capacity installed. So there's no economic justification waiting for it.

With the best will in the world, and a lot of railroading, the earliest possible date for a reactor being fully operational is 20 years time.

When emissions would already be down to 4% of 1990 levels. And that reactor could only produce ~10% of peak demand.

10% of 4% is Sweet FA. Two years later you might have two reactors, but by then it's 20% of 2%. Nuclear missed the bus big time.

Carbon taxes and EU fines means renewables have a headstart when it come to least cost technically acceptable.

I can see no reason to deviate from the current plan in order to lock in costs for half a century to save a lifetime total of 1% of our 1990 emissions. The maximum possibles emissions savings from the whole 50-60 year life of multiple nuclear reactors is about the average we'll save each and every year form 2030 to 2050 without nuclear. It's insanely diminishing returns.

"The present strike price for offshore wind is €98.72 per MWh." This is 2/3 the cost of Hinkley-C even with the Sizewell discount. NB. this contract will end long before any nuclear one would. So the proper comparison for most of the life of nuclear would be renewables O&M costs vs. locked in nuclear price increases year after year after year.

For fuel to energy and burning in CCGT it's more like a 40% round trip efficiency so using your numbers stored power would cost us €267/MWh , ie 165% of what nuclear costs , rounds up to 5/3.

So with wind costing 2/3 the price of nuclear and storage costing 5/3 of nuclear the break even point per MWh is when you are using wind two thirds of the time and fuel to energy storage a third of the time. (ignoring solar & interconnectors and demand shedding etc.)

Except that nuclear power won't have any income during the summer because of solar and storage, which effectively doubles it's cost. And you won't need to use fuel to energy storage if there's battery or interconnector or other sources available, because it's the last resort storage or would that be demand shedding , remembering that right now datacentres use 22% and with Uisce Eireann we'd get to 30% easily.

For battery storage you'll get 90% of the electricity back - which would be €110/MWh. vs Hinkley-C strike price of €149.50 so wind / solar would completely eviscerate nuclear for half of the year if you do the maths and realise how many batteries you could get for the price of a reactor.

Even with nuclear Dunkelflaute days in winter were always going to use gas turbines as a last resort because there's no way in hell that nuclear can meet peak demand or anything close to it. The key point is that renewables don't need backup for the lengths of times of nuclear outages, planned, unplanned or planned outages extending beyond forecast return date.

Yes it's a market, but all of today's renewables will be out of contract and operating on O&M costs, which in the case of solar is next to nothing. That's the market nuclear would be trying to make itself relevant in.

Totally agree that market needs to be fixed,

The point I've been making is that the length of nuclear's downtimes mean that you need far more backup than for renewables. Therefore a grid that could handle nuclear would be well able to handle renewables. Except we can have renewables a lot sooner than nuclear. And they have shorter contracts so less time on the never , never. And if something better comes along you aren't stuck with White Elephants.

I do not need to provide a cost because we are already on that path. It is what it is. You need to how it's possible for nuclear to be cheaper during the next 20 years.

Then you need to show how on a grid that's already 96% decarbonised and dropping 1% a year , how nuclear which can only save 1% over it's entire life time, is even worth considering especially when it's need for installed backup capacity is greater than renewables.

I have explained that for batteries it's €110 so the overnight cost of nuclear is too high if there's any sort of renewables during the day. Looking at the falling price of lithium iron phosphate cells, in 20 years time how much storage could you get for the price of a reactor ?

40% is from 80% electrolyser efficiency and 60% CCGT efficiency. Which actually works out at 48%. And I was using a price of €267/MWh for fuel to energy.

25% is where you'd be burning hydrogen in OCGT at 2/3rd power like you'd need to provide massive spinning reserve for nuclear. Just because nuclear needs subsidies doesn't mean other generators need them to the same level. Electrolysers and fuel cells gets you 80% and 80% yielding 64% round trip. While were are near the limit of CCGT and OCGT , electrolysers and fuel cells should improve over time.

So yes electricity generation from hydrogen would be more expensive than from wind but only where there was no renewable production. Like I said the break even point is where one hour in three would come from that last resort energy source. But we won't be using wind to hydrogen one hour in three because we will also have solar and batteries reducing the times when we'd need biomass/gas/biogass/hydrogen from wind/etc.

While the sun shines or it's windy wind and solar are cheaper than nuclear.

And like I said for less than the price of a reactor we'd get - thank you for some numbers - 72GWh of storage. And that's at today's prices. It will be significantly cheaper in future.

It would mean for half the year we could supply at least 6GW for 12 hours because Solar pretty much beats nuclear all summer long. And wind would be taking nuclear's lunch money most of the rest of the time.

Only then would hydrogen or whatever be considered and it wouldn't be 1/3rd of the time. And you also have to factor how long nuclear outage's last , batteries won't be much use.

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72 divided by 12 is 6. You don't need batteries so much if you have solar and daylight.

In winter wind will be charging batteries a lot of the time.

When there's no renewables, and the batteries are discharged , only then would stored fuel be used.