Should we go Nuclear?

westtip

ninja900 wrote: »

That smacks more than a bit of a poor-mouth-shure'n-aren't-tings-terrible response - the attitude that held this country back for decades after independence.

There is no reason whatsoever why, if we decide to do this, we cannot make a great success of it.

yes lets put FAS in charge of the safety training......

Judgement Day

ninja900 wrote: »

That smacks more than a bit of a poor-mouth-shure'n-aren't-tings-terrible response - the attitude that held this country back for decades after independence.

There is no reason whatsoever why, if we decide to do this, we cannot make a great success of it.

Would that be like the UK making a great success of it? As far as I know not a single UK nuclear power plant has been fully decommissioned, as yet, and the cost of so doing is still unknown. I could be wrong as I have only a passing interest in this as I feel that the ordinary citizen will have no say in whether or not we go nuclear.

Look at this link - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_Decommissioning_Authority

to get some idea of the costs involved in decommissioning these power plants that were supposed to produce electricity that would be "too cheap to meter"!

Hotblack Desiato

UK plants designed in the 50s and 60s were never designed to be decommissioned! So it's hardly surprising it's difficult and expensive. It's also totally irrelevant to any modern plants we might build in Ireland. It's like comparing a Model T Ford to a Prius.

Judgement Day

ninja900 wrote: »

UK plants designed in the 50s and 60s were never designed to be decommissioned! So it's hardly surprising it's difficult and expensive. It's also totally irrelevant to any modern plants we might build in Ireland. It's like comparing a Model T Ford to a Prius.

Have you evidence to back up this outlandish claim? I never yet heard of anything being built without a projected life expectancy - nothing is expected to last forever. It is true that Nuclear Power plants were built with no thought for the future i.e. somebody else would have to worry about clean-up costs.

GeneHunt

I too watched the David McWilliams program “Addicted to Money” it was a very well put together program.

I voted yes in this thread, because the question is “Yes, I think we should consider it.” (Nuclear Power). We as a country have to consider it and other hard questions and we need to consider then very soon, as a power plant could take 10 to 15 years before it’s up and running. Can Ireland take this length time or will we run the risk of going back to a 1930’s Ireland. International companies will run out of this run this country if the energy costs go up as other locations around the world remain cheaper. Ireland had a look down that road recently went oil and gas prices rocketed up and the cost of utilities quickly followed. In resent days, oil prices have started to rise with demand again, our whole transport infrastructure is reliant on oil. A carbon tax is forecasted for the next budget, which I hope will be a good thing – it will focus the publics mind on energy use much like the new car tax system, however the Green Party will probably be punished hard for it in the next election. But its previous governments who should have been punished for not pushing for better energy efficiency e.g. If we had much better building regulations even in the early 90’s we’d hardly need to use the heating systems in our homes today. Strikes are going to become common here again soon and went the ESB go on strike again, we’ll see then what it’s like to live in this addicted to oil country.

We should at least consider nuclear power but I think building a nuclear power plant is another story considering the protests against the location of a gas pipe/terminal in Mayo!

There may be another option if possible, how much more gas is in Kinsale (in years) does anyone know? We could use carbon capture with a new Moneypoint type station in Kinsale and use the old gas field as a natural storage site or pipe the carbon from Moneypoint, god knows the protests that could start (a pipe from Clare to the Cork coast!).
Here’s the link
http://www.corkindependent.com/local-news/local-news/kinsale-gas-field-to-be-used-for-carbon-storage/

Hotblack Desiato

Judgement Day wrote: »

Have you evidence to back up this outlandish claim? I never yet heard of anything being built without a projected life expectancy - nothing is expected to last forever. It is true that Nuclear Power plants were built with no thought for the future i.e. somebody else would have to worry about clean-up costs.

The cold war was at its height and the UK was trying to build up a plutonium stockpile as quickly as possible (Magnox reactors were inefficient power producers but good plutonium breeders.) Politically it was also desperate to reduce the stranglehold of the miner's unions on the electricity supply - there was little gas generation in those days, loads and loads of filthy coal.

Of course the plants were designed with a finite life (which was extended in many cases) but cleaning it up was Somebody Else's Problem(tm) and nobody really minded because in those days the whole industry was government funded. The intent at the time was probably to remove fuel rods and coolant only and leave the rest in place for decades to cool off. That's the least expensive option.

It doesn't make sense to claim, as you have, that after several generations of evolution of new, more efficient and better designed nuclear plants, they will be just as difficult and expensive to decommission as the dinosaurs. The old plants were less efficient and had short lifetimes (60+ years is now possible) which made the eventual decommissioning far more expensive per kWh generated. A lot of reactors from the 50s and 60s were one-off designs which each present unique decommissioning problems - which increases the expense again. To an extent, the designers were learning as they went along. But that was fifty-odd years ago.

Judgement Day

ninja900 wrote: »

The cold war was at its height and the UK was trying to build up a plutonium stockpile as quickly as possible (Magnox reactors were inefficient power producers but good plutonium breeders.) Politically it was also desperate to reduce the stranglehold of the miner's unions on the electricity supply - there was little gas generation in those days, loads and loads of filthy coal.

Of course the plants were designed with a finite life (which was extended in many cases) but cleaning it up was Somebody Else's Problem(tm) and nobody really minded because in those days the whole industry was government funded. The intent at the time was probably to remove fuel rods and coolant only and leave the rest in place for decades to cool off. That's the least expensive option.

It doesn't make sense to claim, as you have, that after several generations of evolution of new, more efficient and better designed nuclear plants, they will be just as difficult and expensive to decommission as the dinosaurs. The old plants were less efficient and had short lifetimes (60+ years is now possible) which made the eventual decommissioning far more expensive per kWh generated. A lot of reactors from the 50s and 60s were one-off designs which each present unique decommissioning problems - which increases the expense again. To an extent, the designers were learning as they went along. But that was fifty-odd years ago.

ninja900 - I'm quite happy to bow to your superior knowledge of nuclear power but now matter what you maintain I'm afraid it frightens the bejaysus out of me. I don't trust those in authority here or in the UK to handle the whole issue properly. I don't like the secrecy surrounding the whole thing in the UK particularly and the military aspect. When you look at the state that some of the UK's nuclear plants are in - see here for a report on Wylfa in North Wales it would frighten any thinking person. http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/files/pdfs/migrated/MultimediaFiles/Live/FullReport/3244.pdf

Hotblack Desiato

Don't you think that Greenpeace might be just a teensy, weensy bit biased on this question?

Incidentally, one of their founders, Patrick Moore, is now an advocate of nuclear power (he left the organisation long ago.)

What went on in the UK 50-odd years ago as part of a top-secret weapons programme at the height of the Cold War has no relevance to the question of whether Ireland should have a modern, civil nuclear power programme. The inadequate reactor designs they were lumbered with (as a result of 'not invented here' syndrome) aren't relevant to this topic either. We're not going to build another Wylfa any more than we would build another Chernobyl. It's a red herring.

In reality if we were to do this we would get someone like EDF to design, build and operate it for us. The Irish government would have little input into the regulatory environment either as the EU and IAEA set mandatory safety standards and conduct inspections.

Macha

After this topic came up, I did a bit of research and found a paper by Amory Lovins (Rocky Mountain Institute) debunking four nuclear myths:

1. variable renewable sources of electricity (windpower and photovoltaics) can provide little or no reliable electricity because they are not “baseload”—able to run all the time;
2. those renewable sources require such enormous amounts of land, hundreds of times more than nuclear power does, that they’re environmentally unacceptable;
3. all options, including nuclear power, are needed to combat climate change; and
4. nuclear power’s economics matter little because governments must use it anyway to
protect the climate.

I'd recommend anyone interested to read the paper here.

BTW - did anyone go to the Spirit of Ireland talk in the RDS last night?

Amtmann

taconnol wrote: »

BTW - did anyone go to the Spirit of Ireland talk in the RDS last night?

If they did, could they please post any comments here.

Sponge Bob

taconnol wrote: »

After this topic came up, I did a bit of research and found a paper by Amory Lovins (Rocky Mountain Institute) debunking four nuclear myths:

But Amory was very careful in his use of language and did not hit hard ...anywhere . Otherwise you would have quoted him , surely .

1. variable renewable sources of electricity (windpower and photovoltaics) can provide little or no reliable electricity because they are not “baseload”—able to run all the time;

Did not debunk that , tried to say US is a big country and the wind is therefore blowing somewhere in a grid pool area . I shall not address solar

2. those renewable sources require such enormous amounts of land, hundreds of times more than nuclear power does, that they’re environmentally unacceptable;

Not really useful, he argues wind does not stop farmers farmin ( correct) but we would put them in different terrain here .

He emphasises putting generation near demand but the wind is useless in Kildare and solar ....get out of it .'Moores Law' will make solar better. Correct but useful AFTER the fact not now . Come back in 10 years and a few Moore cycles for a chat taconnel

Amory says

Photovoltaics are highly correlated with peak loads; they often exhibit 60% and sometimes 90% Effective Load Carrying Capacity (how much of their capacity can be counted on to help meet peak loads). PV capacity factors can also be considerably higher than Brand’s assumed 0.14, especially with mounts that track towards the sun: modern one-axis trackers get ~0.25 in New Jersey or ~0.33–0.35 in sunny parts of California.

'Brands assumed 0.14' whatever that is would be right in murky northerly Ireland ....evidently not in Death Valley of course.

3. all options, including nuclear power, are needed to combat climate change; and
4. nuclear power’s economics matter little because governments must use it anyway to
protect the climate.

Amory did say this

Even reliably-running nuclear plants must shut
down, on average, for ~39 days every ~17 months for refueling and maintenance. Unexpected
failures occur too, shutting down upwards of a billion watts in milliseconds, often for weeks to
months. Solar cells and windpower don’t fail so ungracefully.

That is irrelevant in our case. We would try a modern design which has a refuelling cycle of 20 days per UNIT and do that in summer which is not a peak in Ireland but is in the US as they need aircon ...and we would modularise into 2 or 3 units not one .

So while much of this is somehow correct in a narrow sense it is also very irrelevant to us and most especially as Amory is a solar ( PV) advocate which is fine in the feckin rockies at 2000m altitude and with rather less rain and cloud.

Next time do try to quote the bits you believe are justifiable and arguable willya

Macha

Sponge Bob wrote: »

But Amory was very careful in his use of language and did not hit hard ...anywhere . Otherwise you would have quoted him , surely .

No, I'm in work and didn't have time, so posted up the document. You don't always have to make such assumptions, Sponge Bob.

Sponge Bob wrote: »

Did not debunk that , tried to say US is a big country and the wind is therefore blowing somewhere in a grid pool area . I shall not address solar

No that's not what he said. He said that when you take all renewables into account in a large enough grid, much of the variances are evened out.

Sponge Bob wrote: »

Not really useful, he argues wind does not stop farmers farmin ( correct) but we would put them in different terrain here .

It's an argument put forward by many, including David MacKay so I don't see the problem in him addressing it.

Sponge Bob wrote: »

He emphasises putting generation near demand but the wind is useless in Kildare and solar ....get out of it .'Moores Law' will make solar better. Correct but useful AFTER the fact not now . Come back in 10 years and a few Moore cycles for a chat taconnel

'Brands assumed 0.14' whatever that is would be right in murky northerly Ireland ....evidently not in Death Valley of course.

Where did he say we have to have solar in Ireland? You put solar where it is most useful, ie in the Med.

Sponge Bob wrote: »

That is irrelevant in our case. We would try a modern design which has a refuelling cycle of 20 days per UNIT and do that in summer which is not a peak in Ireland but is in the US as they need aircon ...and we would modularise into 2 or 3 units not one .

Failures in nuclear reactors haven't just happened during or as a result of hot weather.

Sponge Bob wrote: »

Next time do try to quote the bits you believe are justifiable and arguable willya

:rolleyes: Why can't you just debate the facts without the smart remarks? It's so off-putting.

Sponge Bob

We don't have a large enough grid like the US ( it actually has about 10 of them onshore ) and we will not have one for 20 years , we need to make a decision NOW on a baseload solution to replace Moneypoint .

Coal or Nuclear , that is unavoidable and urgent ( unless SoI get us off the hook somehow) !

Macha

Sponge Bob wrote: »

We don't have a large enough grid like the US ( it actually has about 10 of them onshore ) and we will not have one for 20 years , we need to make a decision NOW on a baseload solution to replace Moneypoint .

When is the East-West interconnector due to be completed? (of course there's much more to be done than that..)

Sponge Bob wrote: »

Coal or Nuclear , that is unavoidable and urgent ( unless SoI get us off the hook somehow) !

It did look promising but the presentation was vague on hard facts. They said pumping efficiency would be ~80%.

Sponge Bob

taconnol wrote: »

When is the East-West interconnector due to be completed?

You see a new plant at Wylfa is very much an each way bet, we can build it but if SoI delivers we can then offload it back to the UK for its own grid which is in place at that location . A big smelter there uses a lot of power locally not forgetting the mini Moneypoint they run

Furthermore Wylfa is the best place to land E-W interconnectors given its UK grid placing and the UK leg can be converted to 2GW overhead HVDC if both Wylfa and E-W are producing eastbound.

Macha

Sponge Bob wrote: »

You see a new plant at Wylfa is very much an each way bet, we can build it but if SoI delivers we can then offload it back to the UK for its own grid which is in place at that location . A big smelter there uses a lot of power locally not forgetting the mini Moneypoint they run

Furthermore Wylfa is the best place to land E-W interconnectors given its UK grid placing and the UK leg can be converted to 2GW overhead HVDC if both Wylfa and E-W are producing eastbound.

Isn't Wylfa being shut down next year?

Alun

Sponge Bob wrote: »

A big smelter there uses a lot of power locally not forgetting the mini Moneypoint they run

That would be one hell of an interconnector.

The station of which you speak is in Anglesea, in the state of Victoria in Australia. We're talking about the island of Anglesey in Wales here

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglesea_Power_Station,_Victoria_%28Australia%29

Plus it's a totally different company, nothing to do with the operation on Anglesey.

http://www.angleseyaluminium.co.uk/Default.htm

Plus there's lots of talk about that closing down too.

Sponge Bob

LOL , wrong Angle .

Anyway that smelter needs 255Mw of power ..more than a Galway City . If the power station goes then likely so does the smelter and they are the main employers in Anglesea apart from an RAF base.

ryanch09

if you want future generations to be living in a toxic environment then yeah why not >:(>:(>:(

Sponge Bob

Wylfa gets the nod from London

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/8349715.stm

As well as that the British government has committed to deciding the planning application within one year of receipt, no pansying about over there

Alun

Sponge Bob wrote: »

Wylfa gets the nod from London

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/8349715.stm

As well as that the British government has committed to deciding the planning application within one year of receipt, no pansying about over there

I wonder if that will earn a reprieve for the smelting plant?

Judgement Day

Sponge Bob wrote: »

Wylfa gets the nod from London

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/8349715.stm

As well as that the British government has committed to deciding the planning application within one year of receipt, no pansying about over there

Whoopee for them, why bother have a planning enquiry at all? Why not just go ahead and get on with it - as they will anyway after going through the motions of democracy. The British Government are even more moribund than our own shower - the whole UK is coming apart at the seams between the SNP and the BNP and Brown and his cronies remain oblivious, and if they don't wake up they will soon have more than power plants to worry them. Incidentally, what will happen if a future Welsh Government decides to close the plants or cut the power to England like the Russians and their gas pipelines?

up them Schteps

There is some serious lack of knowledge of the workings of the irish national grid here!

Firstly i'd like to raise some of the issues raised by 'bluntguy'. The grid will have reached it's peak wind power capacity in a few years. As you obviously don't know, wind power is extremly difficult to control on the grid and increases the risk of a voltage collapse, which causes blackouts! In an ideal world, we would have the exact same wind speed every day, every year for use to keep adding wind turbines to the grid.
Wave energy is still decaded away from being connected in anger to the grid. Too many issues with mechanical wear and tear!
Tidal power isn't efficient enough for the cost of the build and again wear and tear!

I'm personally a fence sitter in relation to Nuclear. Not because it's 'unsafe', which in reality, it's not, but because we cannot afford to have a power plant on the grid generating over a quarter of the base load. When the plant needs to be disconnected for maintanance, which every plant undertakes, we loose 25% of our power.... it's too much for one plant. If there was a storm for example and a fault occured, the nuclear plant was to trip out, we would most certinly end up in a national black out! THAT is why Ireland isn't nuclear yet!
If Ireland were to build a connector to France, than a Nuclear plant would look feasable as we could export alot of the power generated by the plant. Then I would be pro Nuclear.

Sponge Bob

The French Connector idea would be my 'Nuclear Plan B' where we drop it Straight into Flamanville where 3 reactors that are built or under construction generate 3Gw between them ( most of our demand ) .

murphaph

Judgement Day wrote: »

what will happen if a future Welsh Government decides to close the plants or cut the power to England like the Russians and their gas pipelines?

England would take wales back most probably

up them Schteps

Sponge Bob wrote: »

The French Connector idea would be my 'Nuclear Plan B' where we drop it Straight into Flamanville where 3 reactors that are built or under construction generate 3Gw between them ( most of our demand ) .

Thats not how the grid works. You cannot supply 3/5ths of the national demand from 3 generators. There is a bas load, where stations run 24/7 at the same output (Nuclear plants), mid merit, raise up base load to daily minimum, peak reaching daily maximum.

If you had 3 stations supplying 3000MW out of a peak of 5000MW, if there was a trip it would cause a black out! You need lots of base and mid merit plants to ensure that if a trip occurs, a blackout wont happen

Measure Twice

Why would you not go for a smaller nuclear reactor than the ones they are building in France and Finland (1600 MWe each)? Another small European country, Estonia, is planning to buy the first few Westinghouse IRIS reactors at 335 MWe. Neighbours Lithuania are considering using the IRIS for cogeneration (electricity and district heating) for extra efficiency, and they would be located actually in cities as they are so safe.

These are expected to be cheaper per MW installed than the larger EPRs, and are exactly the kind of reactors we should install.

With a few of these, we would have cheap, reliable, low-carbon power that we controlled ourselves, high-level jobs for 60 years, potential to export the expertise to other small nations - and they load-follow, so they can reduce load at night and weekends!

Sponge Bob

up them Schteps wrote: »

Thats not how the grid works. You cannot supply 3/5ths of the national demand from 3 generators. There is a bas load, where stations run 24/7 at the same output (Nuclear plants), mid merit, raise up base load to daily minimum, peak reaching daily maximum.

Somebody has not read the thread

My main concern is to get around the screechy anti nuclear lobby in Ireland by saying that we need not have our 'own nuke' located IN IRELAND but on a brownfield nuclear site at the end of a HVDC link that we do own.

Wylfa is much nearer Dublin than Moneypoint is or can nobody read a map any more .

I had differentiated earlier in the thread between stations and units . Even Moneypoint , our biggest station at 900Mw has 3 units of 300mw to allow for maintenance and repairs .

The attraction of Flamanville is that there is a lot of grid capacity at that point ( photo earlier in this thread ) as much as anything, same with Wylfa and that they are existing nuclear generation sites that have expertise in situ and in countries with experience of nuclear fuel cycles.

We then need reversible a HVDC from Wylfa or Flamanville ( or both ) into the pigeon house in Dublin where( historically) we can handle around 1000mw into our own grid, a connector such as the Norned link.

Measure Twice

As Plan B's go, Sponge Bob, this one is not bad - at least it is feasible even if it is more expensive than the alternative of operating our own nuclear plants in Ireland.

The extra expense, as you probably know, comes not only from having to build and pay for the interconnectors ourselves, but there is an efficiency loss in the conversion and transmission process of around 8%. This makes our power more expensive than the French competition, and this is a pretty high price to pay for irrational fear!

There is also the hypocracy of relying on nuclear for around 30% of our electricity (assuming 1000 MW of i/c to France) while nuclear fission remain against the law in Ireland. If this is the Irish solution, it makes a mockery of our claims to be developing a smart economy!

Looking at the Poll results for this thread, as I write there is over 84% in favour of us considering NP and less than 16% against. This gives me great encouragement that Ireland can live up to its reputation as an educated nation and take care of our energy needs in a way that is low-cost, low-carbon and secure.

There will never be 100% approval of anything, but with education and rational debate it should be possible to sufficiently allay the fears of many who currently oppose nuclear.

Judgement Day

Measure Twice wrote: »

As Plan B's go, Sponge Bob, this one is not bad - at least it is feasible even if it is more expensive than the alternative of operating our own nuclear plants in Ireland.

The extra expense, as you probably know, comes not only from having to build and pay for the interconnectors ourselves, but there is an efficiency loss in the conversion and transmission process of around 8%. This makes our power more expensive than the French competition, and this is a pretty high price to pay for irrational fear!

There is also the hypocracy of relying on nuclear for around 30% of our electricity (assuming 1000 MW of i/c to France) while nuclear fission remain against the law in Ireland. If this is the Irish solution, it makes a mockery of our claims to be developing a smart economy!

Looking at the Poll results for this thread, as I write there is over 84% in favour of us considering NP and less than 16% against. This gives me great encouragement that Ireland can live up to its reputation as an educated nation and take care of our energy needs in a way that is low-cost, low-carbon and secure.

There will never be 100% approval of anything, but with eduaction and rational debate it should be possible to sufficiently allay the fears of many who currently oppose nuclear.

Or bamboozle them with info from wikipedia and other sources until they are docile - a bit like the Lisbon treaty. Of course many of the contributors to this thread were probably not on solid food at the time of Chernobyl, Three Mile Island etc and others have short memories.