Is it time to go nuclear?

Anteayer · 23-03-2019 11:23pm

We had ambitious wind plans but they were derailed by 2008's economic crash. Investors in that kind of stuff are only slowly beginning to regain confidence in our longer term growth from what I can see.

It's the same with housing, everything was knocked way off course.

It's high time we were back to construction of some of these things again.

Capt'n Midnight · 23-03-2019 11:24pm

Anteayer wrote: »

It would be a very flawed policy at this stage and with the relatively poor technology available for nuclear at the moment. Ireland's absolutely not in a position to innovate with nuclear power and we've a small, low density population with massive wind resources...

Solar is now cheap enough that Bord Na Mona will be rolling it out.

We also have some CHP and some of the old peat plants are converting to Biomass.

We have no way to provide enough spinning reserve for nuclear.

How would we meet our carbon targets for the 20+ years it would take to get a nuclear plant agreed to and built and operational ?

Anteayer · 23-03-2019 11:28pm

You could convert Moneypoint to biomass too. Look at what's been done at Drax in the UK.

Macha · 24-03-2019 2:03am

Biomass on a large scale isn't sustainable. You can't simultaneously try to protect and restore ecosystems to act as a carbon sink AND pull large quantities of carbon out of those same ecosystems to burn for energy (and therefore release the carbon). The same applies to biofuels. Both are the last gasp efforts of a dying industry (coal and the internal combustible engine respectively) and are damaging distractions from the major policies that are needed to tackle climate change.

What a lot of people don't understand is that an energy system needs much more than just generation capacity. It needs a broad portfolio of energy resources that work together with the generation fleet. In the case of high shares of renewables, that means not just wind but other renewable like solar, SOME biomass, etc both large scale but also community, residential etc. But it also means having flexible resources like demand response (industrial and residential) load shifting, storage, batteries, aggregators, market coupling between the power, heating /cooling and transport sectors etc etc and a hell of a lot of energy efficiency.

I find a lot of the conversation in this thread is overly focused on the generation part of the energy system. People seem to know very little about the other parts of the energy system.

The nuclear industry belongs to the world of inflexible baseload, a hatred of efficiency and just doesn't fit with the type of energy system that supports large shares of renewables. It is bloody expensive to try to build out what would effectively be two clashing energy systems: one that supports variable renewables and one that can accommodate inflexible nuclear due to massive inefficiencies in market operations and that's even putting aside the cost of actually building the damn thing.

Birdnuts · 24-03-2019 2:28am

Dinarius wrote: »

Every time I fly from Dublin to Gatwick, the flight path takes us over the giant wind farm off the Welsh coast.

Apparently, it produces enough electricity for about 400,000 homes.

Clustered together as they are in a giant forest of windmills, they look quite beautiful.

Wind energy is our free lunch. We need to get over ourselves about it.

We don’t need nuclear.

D.

http://euanmearns.com/the-real-cost-of-offshore-wind/

Amazing the ignorance still out there as regards wind being "free" and powering a certain number of homes etc. I wish such people would try to power their own lifestyles with wind instead of imposing such obvious nonsense on the rest of us:rolleyes:

Birdnuts · 24-03-2019 2:35am

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

Solar is now cheap enough that Bord Na Mona will be rolling it out.

?

The number of solar farms will depend like wind on the government handouts they get. Solar in the UK has dramatically slowed on the back of subsidy cuts which is why alot of firms are over here looking for our Department of Energy to dump on the consumer again.

https://www.icis.com/explore/resources/news/2017/05/15/10106677/subsidy-cuts-begin-to-bite-hard-for-uk-solar-power/

SlowBlowin · 24-03-2019 2:43am

I belive small scale hydro is the answer, certainly in my area. There are so many locations that are suitable for community schemes.

Capt'n Midnight · 24-03-2019 2:51am

Macha wrote: »

Biomass on a large scale isn't sustainable.

More useful as insulation or feedstock for industry. But handy if here is no other use for waste biomass.

In 2016 Drax burnt pellets made from approximately 13 million tonnes of wood, while the UK's annual production is around 11 million tonnes. So the entire UK doesn't produce enough Biomass for the 2.6GW from part of one admittedly large power plant.

Sweden is importing waste to burn in it's waste to energy plants.
In the US a plant that used waste turkey bits went broke because someone found a better way to make money on waste turkey bits.
A lo of biomass is likely to go the same way being more useful as something other than a fuel.

The nuclear industry belongs to the world of inflexible baseload, a hatred of efficiency and just doesn't fit with the type of energy system that supports large shares of renewables. It is bloody expensive to try to build out what would effectively be two clashing energy systems: one that supports variable renewables and one that can accommodate inflexible nuclear due to massive inefficiencies in market operations and that's even putting aside the cost of actually building the damn thing.

I'd argue that the additional infrastructure needed for Nuclear is similar to that required for renewable. Pylons, nimby's , pumped storage, load balancing gas turbines and what not. Of course the pylons would be in different places.

With renewables you need a lot less spinning reserve, there is less chance of a single incident taking out a large chunk of generators for a long time, installation is far quicker and a lot cheaper.

Fission ?
total investment in ITER is only about the same as a large nuclear plant

Capt'n Midnight · 24-03-2019 2:58am

SlowBlowin wrote: »

I belive small scale hydro is the answer, certainly in my area. There are so many locations that are suitable for community schemes.

It's a local solution. Great if you have the resource.

Nationally we'd need to add a full Shannon Scheme every year. ( average 40MW ) And that's not micro hydro. Biggest project of it's type when it was built. It's the reason we had a national grid before the UK.

SlowBlowin · 24-03-2019 3:11am

Yes you are right, and it was not a answer to the original post so pretty off topic. I do think that the decentralization of power production via small/mid sized schemes is well worthwhile,..

Dinarius · 24-03-2019 9:53am

Birdnuts wrote: »

http://euanmearns.com/the-real-cost-of-offshore-wind/

Amazing the ignorance still out there as regards wind being "free" and powering a certain number of homes etc. I wish such people would try to power their own lifestyles with wind instead of imposing such obvious nonsense on the rest of us:rolleyes:

Erm...the problems about too much or too little wind are well documented. There are ways around this. That’s why wind farms continue to be built.

The presumption of ignorance is entirely yours.

D.

Anteayer · 24-03-2019 12:32pm

Begreffer wrote: »

You can not make the argument that wind is cheaper when it is still unproven if wind can supply all our requirements. Is relatively safe but more dangerous than nuclear. But the real issue with wind is the rural industrialization. At this stage there probable isn't a major mountain range outside of the tourist areas that lacks a wind farm.

By what measure is wind relatively more dangerous than nuclear? It's a completely passive technology.

You can't steal a wind turbine and use it for terrorism. If a wind turbine goes horribly wrong the worst it can do is fall over whereas a nuclear plant going wrong could make a region uninhabitable for a very, very long time.

Reprocessing has also proven to be very dirty, certainly in the ways it was done at Sellafield over the years.

Markcheese · 24-03-2019 8:49pm

Nothing is in isolation, be it wind, nuclear, interconnecters , or gas.. Everything has to be part of a balanced system, (the grid),each part has advantages, and disadvantages..
And keeping the system balanced in itself has costs,
You can't just go all nuclear, or all wind,
And you can't just quote a simple cost if you haven't included balancing the grid and spinning reserve...
Wind energy as it matures is becoming way cheaper, but as more comes on stream there is significantly more cost to balance the grid..
New grid scale batteries that are being developed would allow much more wind utilisation, but there still needs to be extra traditional generation (and its spinning reserve, and that's back up) for that almost wind free day or week..
And duplicating systems costs, no one builds and runs billions of euros worth of gas generators for no return, just because its not being generating or even spinning doesn't mean its free..
That would go for nuclear too, if we built and ran a nuclear power station, we'd still need to pay for its spinning reserve, and that reserves back up... Obviously 1 giant turbine would need an equal amount of spinning reserve,
We could just go for gas entirely, shut down moneypoint, and build a couple of new gas generators,as long as the gas keeps flowing and the price of it stays low...

Birdnuts · 25-03-2019 2:16am

Dinarius wrote: »

Erm...the problems about too much or too little wind are well documented. There are ways around this. That’s why wind farms continue to be built.

The presumption of ignorance is entirely yours.

D.

Really?? - and heres stupid me thinking it was all about the subs they get:rolleyes:

AngryHippie · 25-03-2019 3:41am

Subsidies are a factor.....as they would be for any method of power generation, storage and transmission.

Whats your magic bullet birdnuts ?

Macha · 25-03-2019 3:42am

Birdnuts wrote: »

Really?? - and heres stupid me thinking it was all about the subs they get:rolleyes:

You think policy makers don't know about the variability of renewables? Take a look at the recently agreed EU Electricity Directive and Regulation.

The funny think about all the focus on the 'intermittency' of renewables is that they're rarely intermittent at all. They are variable, which means their output fluctuates in a predictable way. And prediction technology is constantly improving.

You actually have a much bigger and much more serious intermittency problem with nuclear (and coal plants) because they can go offline without warning pretty quickly. And often at the worst time. In the past few years, they have been tripped offline across Europe because of things like jellyfish getting stuck in pipes.

But more concerningly, nuclear plants use a hell of a lot of water for cooling purposes and as summers are getting hotter across Europe, nuclear plants are increasingly having to shut down at times of peak demand (everyone throwing on their air conditioners at full blast) because water levels are too low and/or water temperature is too high and they run the risk of causing fish kills by piping out water that's too hot.

Water shortages are also becoming a more serious concern due to climate change and it isn't wise to invest in energy technologies that rely on large amounts of water (that's another reason coal sucks by the way).

And of course you have a much bigger problem if one enormous nuclear plant goes offline unexpectedly. And the systems you have to build to cope with that are expensive - or just don't get built. Last summer, nuclear plants in 6 European countries had to shut down or run at reduced power due to heat related problems. That doesn't include the Belgian reactors that are offline due to safety concerns..

Markcheese · 25-03-2019 7:33am

Birdnuts wrote: »

Really?? - and heres stupid me thinking it was all about the subs they get:rolleyes:

Those subs are real, and time limited, the widfarms in question will go on selling energy to the grid well after the subs go..
As to what level any government sets subsidies at going forward, that'll probably decide how much new wind generation comes in to the system..

Macha · 25-03-2019 10:10am

Heh, does anyone here really think the nuclear industry never got a subsidy? Or doesn't continue to enjoy massive subsidies and benefit hugely from its close relationship with governments?

Even the European Commission said in a document last year that the choice to build nuclear is a 'political one', ie not an economically sane one.

Hinkley Point C is going to be the most expensive manmade thing on Earth if it ever gets built. But yeah. Renewables subsidies are the real problem..

Capt'n Midnight · 25-03-2019 7:38pm

Macha wrote: »

Heh, does anyone here really think the nuclear industry never got a subsidy? Or doesn't continue to enjoy massive subsidies and benefit hugely from its close relationship with governments?

Even the European Commission said in a document last year that the choice to build nuclear is a 'political one', ie not an economically sane one.

Hinkley Point C is going to be the most expensive manmade thing on Earth if it ever gets built. But yeah. Renewables subsidies are the real problem..

The ISS was costed at $150Bn in 2015 , Hinkley C is looking like costing about half that.

The UK was planning on build six nuclear plants.

Hinkley is coming in at about £20Bn , I'm going out on a limb and betting this will increase just like almost every other nuclear plant
but there's another £50Bn in subsidy over the lifetime as the agreed price for the electricity is double the market average. The costs of financing the £20Bn is insane too as it works out at 9% when the guberment could get finance at 2%.

One huge hidden cost in nuclear is the % of projects that don't get completed or are delayed for years and years. Gotta keep paying the loans until it's up and generating.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/hinkley-point-cost-could-soar-to-50bn-6brnph9q7

The storm surrounding the construction of the Hinkley Point C nuclear plant was set to break out anew today after it emerged last night that the cost to consumers could mushroom to £50 billion.

The new official estimate is more than eight times higher than the £6 billion that the National Audit Office estimated the plant would cost consumers when ministers first struck a subsidy deal to support it in 2013.

The spark that ignited the explosion in the estimate is a decline in electricity prices, which in turn have hugely inflated the subsidies that the project is expected to require.

antoinolachtnai · 25-03-2019 8:36pm

Wind has this same problem - when gas prices decline, then the subsidies required go up. Without subsidies, there would most likely only be gas plants.

Nuclear and wind are different in that Nuclear is to some degree dispatchable (although the control is limited) and provides baseload (electricity that you can rely on to be there all the time).

It takes a lot more wind capacity (in MW) than gas or nuclear to generate the same amount of electricity. The problem is that you can't rely on the wind to be always blowing in a particular place. (Overall, on a continental level, sure the wind will always be blowing, but you need a lot more turbines to provide the extra cover this variability requires).

The good thing about wind and solar is that there is a lot of expertise available in how to build them. There is little expertise in the world on the building of nukes. This is in large part because the nuclear energy industry operated in lock-step with the military. When the Cold War wound down, the building of nuclear power stations wound down with it.

The great hope is that SMR reactors should solve a lot of the problems of nuclear.

Capt'n Midnight · 25-03-2019 9:24pm

antoinolachtnai wrote: »

Wind has this same problem - when gas prices decline, then the subsidies required go up. Without subsidies, there would most likely only be gas plants.

Nuclear and wind are different in that Nuclear is to some degree dispatchable (although the control is limited) and provides baseload (electricity that you can rely on to be there all the time).

It takes a lot more wind capacity (in MW) than gas or nuclear to generate the same amount of electricity. The problem is that you can't rely on the wind to be always blowing in a particular place. (Overall, on a continental level, sure the wind will always be blowing, but you need a lot more turbines to provide the extra cover this variability requires).

The good thing about wind and solar is that there is a lot of expertise available in how to build them. There is little expertise in the world on the building of nukes. This is in large part because the nuclear energy industry operated in lock-step with the military. When the Cold War wound down, the building of nuclear power stations wound down with it.

The great hope is that SMR reactors should solve a lot of the problems of nuclear.

Hundreds of small modular reactors, been used by the Navies of the world since the 1950's. The western ones have a good track record and tick most of the boxes , except economics.

You can't rely on wind but you can predict it a week out, which is close enough since you have dispatchable generators too.

Nuclear is all your eggs in one basket. You can't predict when a reactor will be taken off line because of jellyfish , transformer fires, politics, or bad design or construction finally catching up on you.

Our grid can take up to 65% of non-synchronous generation, the target is 75%.

That leaves just 25% guaranteed baseload.

And nuclear is very expensive to use for baseload, it just can't compete in normal grid auctions. http://lg.sem-o.com/Pages/default.aspx

TimeToShine · 25-03-2019 9:49pm

Nuclear powers capacity factor is over 90% which is double that of the nearest baseload equivalent, it isn't fair to use predictability as a point against it. Nuclear at this moment in time isn't feasible but having that guaranteed 50% baseload come online once we have an additional 3 GW of interconnector capacity (10 years I suspect) could prove to be very economically shrewd.

antoinolachtnai · 25-03-2019 9:56pm

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

Hundreds of small modular reactors, been used by the Navies of the world since the 1950's. The western ones have a good track record and tick most of the boxes , except economics.

The Nuscale people think they can deal with the issues it seems. They think they can build a 684MW plant for $3bn. That's $4.5 million/MW. A wind farm costs maybe $1.5m/MW, but the capacity factor is only around 37 percent. So the difference is not that big.

You can't rely on wind but you can predict it a week out, which is close enough since you have dispatchable generators too.

The fact that you predict the wind is going to be low is not a great deal of help. If you want to be able to keep the lights on, you have to match every MW with either remote wind, or a gas plant. This greatly increases the true cost per MW.

Nuclear is all your eggs in one basket. You can't predict when a reactor will be taken off line because of jellyfish , transformer fires, politics, or bad design or construction finally catching up on you.

Being reliant on gas as the backup to wind is also all the eggs in one basket. Most of the gas coming to Ireland has to come through a single valve. There are also political risks. Everybody worries about Russia, but Brexit is also a curve-ball.

Our grid can take up to 65% of non-synchronous generation, the target is 75%.

That leaves just 25% guaranteed baseload.

That assumes that on a particular day, that 75 percent of the maximum demand is available. It often isn't. You end up calling as gas to take the place of the wind.

Solar PV is practically no help. The sun never shines at times of peak electricity demand.

And nuclear is very expensive to use for baseload, it just can't compete in normal grid auctions. http://lg.sem-o.com/Pages/default.aspx

What is that diagram supposed to represent?

The problem is that if you reduce everything to price, the only thing you would ever build is gas plants. Gas is a great resource, but there are some serious problems (political and environmental) with depending on gas alone.

In the end, there is no cheap way to generate clean electricity.

Capt'n Midnight · 25-03-2019 10:15pm

TimeToShine wrote: »

Nuclear powers capacity factor is over 90% which is double that of the nearest baseload equivalent, it isn't fair to use predictability as a point against it. Nuclear at this moment in time isn't feasible but having that guaranteed 50% baseload come online once we have an additional 3 GW of interconnector capacity (10 years I suspect) could prove to be very economically shrewd.

Nuclear's power capacity is because it's not dispatchable so it's limited to baseload only, it's a one trick pony.

The problem is that wind is predictable but nuclear is unpredictable.

Far too many things can take a nuclear plant off the grid.
How do those involved in Italian nuclear power factor in their entire industry disappearing overnight thanks to events far away over which they have no control ?

That happened actually happened.

Twice. ( 1987 and 2011 )

Birdnuts · 26-03-2019 2:07am

Markcheese wrote: »

Those subs are real, and time limited, the widfarms in question will go on selling energy to the grid well after the subs go..
As to what level any government sets subsidies at going forward, that'll probably decide how much new wind generation comes in to the system..

That remains to be seen -as my earlier link from Germany shows, alot of these windfarms can't survive without them and are likely to be mothballed.

Birdnuts · 26-03-2019 2:18am

Macha wrote: »

Heh, does anyone here really think the nuclear industry never got a subsidy? Or doesn't continue to enjoy massive subsidies and benefit hugely from its close relationship with governments?

Even the European Commission said in a document last year that the choice to build nuclear is a 'political one', ie not an economically sane one.

Hinkley Point C is going to be the most expensive manmade thing on Earth if it ever gets built. But yeah. Renewables subsidies are the real problem..

France has one the cleanest and cheapest power grids in the EU - whats not to like?? Its hilarious folks who push the likes of wind/solar at any cost giving lectures on costs when you look at the league table of power costs in the EU:rolleyes:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_pricing#/media/File:Cijena_elektri%C4%8Dne_energije_2017.jpg

It is notable though the malign effect of EU energy policies on energy costs across the EU at a time when oil and gas prices are half the prices they were in 2008 - Macron and the previous Government have been pushing wind/solar strongly for the past 5 years and its notable that their energy costs are starting to rise sharply though still well below the likes of Germany, Ireland etc.

AngryHippie · 26-03-2019 3:51am

Birdnuts wrote: »

France has one the cleanest and cheapest power grids in the EU - whats not to like?? Its hilarious folks who push the likes of wind/solar at any cost giving lectures on costs when you look at the league table of power costs in the EU:rolleyes:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity_pricing#/media/File:Cijena_elektri%C4%8Dne_energije_2017.jpg

It is notable though the malign effect of EU energy policies on energy costs across the EU at a time when oil and gas prices are half the prices they were in 2008 - Macron and the previous Government have been pushing wind/solar strongly for the past 5 years and its notable that their energy costs are starting to rise sharply though still well below the likes of Germany, Ireland etc.

Are you maybe underselling the cost of purchasing peaking power from other more expensive European countries for the sharp rise in their prices ?

I think you are ignoring the very real consideration of time as a factor here.

France's Nuclear Power supply was created as a response to the 1973 Oil crisis.
On the balance, this was a reasonable decision at the time albeit subject to is critics both then and now.

Making the same decision to start a largely government owned agency to build and operate a domestic nuclear power grid in a far smaller (Ireland) and less industrial country in 2019 (Larger seasonal and peaking ranges relative to baseload) is either feasible or sensible, it is too late in the fossil fuel endgame to start this process now.

Considering the total cluster**** that has been every nationally significant project in Ireland and the fact that the government continually and dramatically fails to get any sort of value for money in its infrastructure procurement and construction functions, this adds a whole new risk of total failure when you consider the level of engineering knowledge, material quality, design durability and lifetime maintenance into the mix.

Nuclear on an Irish scale is a pipe dream at present. We can't afford to invest in the industry to the level where the next generation of reactors could be designed and project managed without out-sourcing to a multinational construction company. Out sourcing work of this sort will inevitably lead to the taxpayers getting screwed for another flagship pink elephant.

Anyone with the political understanding of this dynamic and the project management and engineering understanding of the magnitude of such a project will run a mile from this idea leaving behind the usual cast of clowns and gombeen men to spin the fan wheel and get hit by the poo.
If that wasn't the case, ESBI and ESB would have been screaming about it for years. They know whats involved and it's a big expensive toxic nightmare.

Aside from the fact that over its life-cycle it has a similar carbon output to those of wind (offshore + onshore) and solar. I can't understand your enthusiasm for a nuclear power grid on an Irish scale.

Markcheese · 26-03-2019 8:15am

I just looked at the diagram as well now, and I'm not sure am I reading it right...
Why did the electricity (auction??) price spike so much at 4am, it was off the chart...

antoinolachtnai · 26-03-2019 8:55am

Markcheese wrote: »

I just looked at the diagram as well now, and I'm not sure am I reading it right...
Why did the electricity (auction??) price spike so much at 4am, it was off the chart...

I think you are looking at the ex-ante price.

The price shown here is not the result of any sort of auction. It is a ‘pool price’. Electricity is no longer priced this way. The systems and technology have moved on.

The same is the case for nuclear technology. It would make no sense to build an EPR in Ireland. But we are talking about 10 or 15 year timeframes and there are new options coming down the track. Some of these may suit our needs.

Graces7 · 09-06-2019 11:15am

the_syco wrote: »

Are you referring to the Three Mile Island incident?

and Chernobyl . where deformed babies are still being born, and Fukushima, where we lost family

a risky source

Is it time to go nuclear?

Comments