"Wind blows away fossil power in the Nordics..."

old_aussie · 17-10-2014 04:51AM

Ireland should continue to expand wind farms.

Off shore is a good option, low noise and attracts marine growth attracting fish.

There should also be a small nuclear plant built to remove the need for imports of fossile fuels to power the existing plants.

Should something arise to prevent imports, or if the cost of imported fuel becomes super expensive, there would be the wind farms and nuclear power to fall back on.

enda1 · 17-10-2014 08:34AM

Why isn't Europe more of a common energy market? Put the wind turbines where it's windy, the solar where it's sunny, and the nuclear where there's the skill and expertise? Then just sell power to each other. Build proper backbone energy inter-connectors, build many more pumped storage facilities to utilise otherwise wasted surplus in solar/wind/nuclear and use these to offset expensive Russian gas. Incinerators too should be a priority as waste management and secondary power generation.

The obsession of nations to each have a complete portfolio of power is a folly and should be discouraged for efficiency and safety reasons.

Mr.David · 17-10-2014 08:44AM

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

Actually what happens in the real world is that both wind and nuclear are backedup by idling gas turbines because they can ramp up in seconds.

If a nuclear power plant has to be scramed because of a transformer failure , sensor failure or jellyfish* then you have very short window of time to get it back on line before xenon poisoning means you have to stay offline for at least three days.

Gas is about the only thing that can backup unpredictable nuclear. Korea , UK and Belgium currently have reactors offline for extended unplanned outages. I'd nearly say unpredictable but it's the same old story of nuclear industry cost cutting / mis management.

Gas turbines are cheap , but the fuel is expensive so every watt you can get out of wind results in less fuel to buy. Anyway here we have way loads of gas turbines already.

You can't mix wind and nuclear because the costs of nuclear mean you can't invest in wind too. You can't mix them because nuclear takes hours to change the power output up and down , and even then you need to design a different and slightly inefficient reactor. So even though you can forecast wind 5 days in advance, nuclear can't efficiently follow the load.

Our minimum demand is 1/3rd of peak demand and nuclear can't follow that change or even the difference between night and day

*Korea , UK, Sweden, South Africa, California, Florida and IIRC Japan.

Sure, gas is the most responsive and can change load profile quickly and easily. Of course you can use Nuclear and Wind power.....as per the French and Germans?!

You are incorrect about base v peak demand, peak is approx 40% more than base, not 200% more as you assert.

1.5GW of nuke in Ireland could run at full output all the time and not have to ramp up or down to meat the fluctuating demand curve.

What's required is a sensible mix of nuclear, thermal and renewables not just one in isolation.

17-10-2014 08:49AM

I'd rather a badly built wind farm than nuclear plant. I like the idea of fusion but I wouldn't trust our government to oversee a nuclear plant properly. There was far too much cronyism during the boom to ensure good quality construction all the time.

stoneill · 17-10-2014 02:04PM

If decision makers are serious about reducing our dependence on fossil fuels then nuclear power should be seriously considered.

Mr_Red · 17-10-2014 03:49PM

I vote for a Thorium Reactor

Lets experiment. Pop it in the "knowledge box"

dxhound2005 · 22-10-2014 07:42PM

In the UK just for a day and due to a coincidence of factors, wind turbines produced more electricity than nuclear. It has to be one of major elements of future energy supplies. Like other technologies it will probably improve as time goes by. And offshore installations will not offend people as much as those on land.

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-29715796

The UK's wind farms generated more power than its nuclear power stations on Tuesday, the National Grid says.

The energy network operator said it was caused by a combination of high winds and faults in nuclear plants.

But for a 24-hour period yesterday, spinning blades produced more energy than splitting atoms.

Wind made up 14.2% of all generation and nuclear offered 13.2%.

http://www.rwe.com/web/cms/en/1202906/rwe-innogy/sites/wind-offshore/under-construction/gwynt-y-mr/

El Weirdo · 23-10-2014 08:49AM

Xios wrote: »

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/10/15/nordicpower-windfarm-idUSL6N0S530M20141015

I just don't understand why we're not the leading investor/innovators in wind energy, like just look at this wind map and compare the wind off our coasts with the wind on mainland europe and the nordics.

Not sure that it's been mentioned, but I'm pretty sure that Norway's renewables success has largely been built on subsidies provided by the money they get from their fossil fuel operations in the North Sea.

Egginacup · 23-10-2014 09:53AM

Iwasfrozen wrote: »

Nuclear reactors are cheaper, make less noise and produce way more energy. They've also become much safer over the past number of decades.

Then why has Japan shut down all of its nuke plants? Germany too?

I'll bet the farm that you wouldn't live within 50 miles of one.

Gbear · 23-10-2014 10:01AM

Egginacup wrote: »

Then why has Japan shut down all of its nuke plants? Germany too?

I'll bet the farm that you wouldn't live within 50 miles of one.

Populism in the case of Germany.

It's a huge blow to the fight against climate change.

Replacing all their nuclear plants with coal plants is reactionary, mindless, selfish nonsense.

m5ex9oqjawdg2i · 23-10-2014 10:05AM

Iwasfrozen wrote: »

Nuclear reactors are cheaper, make less noise and produce way more energy. They've also become much safer over the past number of decades.

Nuclear waste will never be safe...

smoking_kills · 23-10-2014 10:16AM

Salma Quick Oatmeal wrote: »

Nuclear waste will never be safe...

Well after a few million years it would be.....

blaze1 · 23-10-2014 10:18AM

Would I F**k trust anyone in any position of power linked to this government with nuclear powerstations. We'd be dead within a year.

BoJack Horseman · 23-10-2014 10:20AM

Salma Quick Oatmeal wrote: »

Nuclear waste will never be safe...

As it stands coal power plants kill about 100,000 times more people than nuclear power plants do each year.

Is there a safer form of power generation than nuclear?

Its Only Ray Parlour · 23-10-2014 01:44PM

Salma Quick Oatmeal wrote: »

Nuclear waste will never be safe...

False.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioactive_waste

It can range from a few days for very short-lived isotopes to millions of years if one choses to waste the unspent portions of "spent nuclear fuel".

Capt'n Midnight · 25-10-2014 08:09PM

Mr_Red wrote: »

I vote for a Thorium Reactor

Lets experiment. Pop it in the "knowledge box"

Oddly enough there's enough of them built and decommissioned to debunk the question of " why don't they build thorium reactors ?" The answer is they did and they had technical and economic problems

shipping port - very low conversion rate and lots of extra labour
thtr-300 / avr - pebble bed reactors, which jammed
and that one in the america mid-west that was converted to a gas power plant because of economics

thorium has been tried in reactors since the 1940's so the physics is well understood, a lifetime later and the engineers still haven't delivered the promise.

to get the thorium cycle working you need to breed a lot of extra fuel and breeder reactors aren't commercially viable, even though we've been doing it in multiple reactors since 1944

"Wind blows away fossil power in the Nordics..."

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