Nuclear - future for Ireland?

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119388477#Comment_119388477

Now do the sums again and factor in projects that were abandoned. It changes the average cost and predictions of time to complete.

https://www.worldnuclearreport.org/reactors.html

Capt'n Midnight

Here's the wholesale prices https://www.rte-france.com/en/eco2mix/market-data

Everywhere else is cheaper than France and Northern Italy (who traditionally import hydro from Switzerland) while Spain and Portugal have sunshine.

https://www.rte-france.com/en/eco2mix/cross-border-electricity-trading at 23:30 France was importing from all the neighbours.

France is held up as the poster for nuclear power. This is the reality.

gjim

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119388510#Comment_119388510

I've no interest in providing you with some sort of detailed plan for some fantasy scenario you've dreamt up.

My interest is just in pointing out where you've made specific claims that are completely and factually wrong.

For example, my first response to you was just to your claim that nuclear power was doing great and was expanding rapidly around the world. This is demonstrably false and I (and others) provided data and graphs to demonstrate that the nuclear power industry is in the worst shape it's been in for 50 years.

Next you did some mickey-mouse sums to "prove" that offshore wind was impractically expensive. I provided numbers from the results of the most recent (4th round) of auctions in the UK and the numbers for Hinkley C which completely demolish this claim.

I don't see it as a waste of time, even if you refuse to change your worldview in response to inconvenient facts. I don't like nonsense claims being left unchallenged - it might give some innocent by-stander the mistaken impression that you had the slightest clue about what you're talking about.

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119390531#Comment_119390531

France is producing 24GW of nuclear power now but paying for up to 9GW of imports - compared to producing 40GW of nuclear this time last year and selling up to 15GW of exports then.

Nuclear isn't reliable or predictable.

Nuclear is expensive and also needs expensive spinning reserve and expensive backup and expensive peaking plant to prop it up.

Capt'n Midnight

Meanwhile the UK are reporting Number of reactors in service: 8 of 11

But only 6 are at nominal full load. 3 reactors at Heysham and Hartlepool are "At reduced power while investigations / modifications are made to the boiler feed pump water coolers" ( the 4th reactor is refuelling )

Torness = Expected return to service 26 July 2022 but I won't be holding my breath.

Birdnuts

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119387739#Comment_119387739

Can't see the French having much use for the occasional power surge on the odd windy day

Dogger Bank installation works have begun.

• 2020 contracts awarded
• 2022 Foundations start
• 2023 First turbines installed
• 2026 Fully operational

Not a bad timeline for a 3.6GW, 277 turbine, setup

https://www.offshorewind.biz/2022/07/26/first-foundation-stands-at-worlds-largest-offshore-wind-farm/

Nuke timelines, on the other hand, tend to be measured by the decade in the UK

cnocbui

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119392025#Comment_119392025

What are spinning reserves you keep mentioning endlessly for nuclear, but never for renewables? You act as if renewbles don't require the same levels of backup, when actually they require far more. Renewables require the emission of far higher amounts of CO2 than nuclear.

Nuclear energy is the most reliable energy generation method commonly in use, it's even more reliable than hydro or geothermal. France simply has a current problem, which historically is an abnormality. Does the US have problem with nuclear reliability - no - their nuclear capacity factor for the last few years has been over 92%.

The French dropped the ball and have failed to reinvest in the sector so the average age of their reactors has crept up to 37 years.

Renewables are always unreliable, all the time.

cnocbui

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119392355#Comment_119392355

What is the overall cost of Dogger Bank projected to be? And why are you just link dumping in a nuclear thread about Ireland, when it has nothing to do with the topic. If you want to talk about That project cost vs nuclear, then by all means present your research and arguments.

charlie14

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119391642#Comment_119391642

Apologies if you took me up incorrectly.

Anytime nuclear is mentioned greens pike on with claims of how long construction will take and it being prohibitive because of their assessment of the cost claim it to expensive to even consider. Something you have engaged in yourself believing that wind power would be more effective in fulfilling our needs and less expensive. Yet when asked on the cost of construction and delivery of wind power to the level required to fulfill our needs nothing from greens other than bluster.

You may call my figures on that mickey mouse if you wish, but as far as I am concerned they were being over generous to wind power based on the figure to date spent on renewables by Germany according to Forbes. On the other hand neither you or any other greens here have come up with any figure whatsoever, basically because none of you have the foggiest idea how much it will cost but as it`s part of the Irish Green Party ideology it must be defended at all costs. Or in this case, no costings.

So perhaps it would be an idea for you to pull your neck in on you being here as some kind of guardian of truth. You are here as a defender of green ideological policy on which when asked the cost off you have no idea.

cnocbui

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119392068#Comment_119392068

"On 1 August 2016, Heysham 2's Unit 8 broke the world record for longest continuous operation of a nuclear generator without a shutdown. This record-breaking run exceeds the previous record of 894 days set by Pickering Nuclear Generating Station's Unit 7 (Lake Ontario, Canada) in 1994.[2] The reactor has generated 13.5 TWh of electricity so far[when?] during this continuous operation, taking its lifetime generation to 115.46 TWh.[clarification needed]"

You really are something else. Heysham was commissioned in 1989 - it's been churning out vast quantities of zero CO2 for over 3 decades, but you want to paint it as unreliable because the poor old thing needs a bit of maintainance after 32 years. Your cherry picked example just highlights how reliable nuclear is - duh!

Wind turbines don't last nearly as long. The capacity factor of renewables is terrible, they are completely unreliable by nature,.

charlie14

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119390907#Comment_119390907

From what you posted does it not look from the top diagram that during the last 30 years that reactor startups, and even projected startups, greatly outweigh abandoned constructions ?

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119393695#Comment_119393695

Heysham was commissioned in 1989 - it's been churning out vast quantities of zero CO2 for over 3 decades

How much nuke waste has it produced in that time frame?

charlie14

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119390452#Comment_119390452

Interesting and informative.

Just on the mention of East Anglia One and an average capacity factor of 47% Isn`t the average capacity factor for wind energy, or indeed solar not really pointless when it comes to assessing the level of both when it comes to fulfilling the level of needs required.

For nuclear, or indeed for fossil fuel plants, either a shortage of the fuel required or shut down for maintenance are the only two factors I can see that would in any way lower the capacity factor, whereas for wind or solar it is weather. For wind we saw last Winter and this Spring wind energy for periods dropping to 6% and lower. Even for the past month levels have been low. If we are going to depend on wind energy to provide us with 100% reliable energy then the level of turbines required would have to be high enough to ensure that when we have low wind they would still be enough of them to produce the energy required.

Does that not make the average capacity factor for wind or solar completely irrelevant as any kind of guide in planning to reach the levels of energy required. It`s the lowest level of output rather than the average that would need to be considered would it not ?

cnocbui

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119393714#Comment_119393714

No idea and I don't care. Nuclear waste disposal is a political problem, not a technical one. Nuclear waste is very small in volume. Deep salt deposits - the same one's that are so impermeable they can hold hydrogen and other gases without leaking - have been stable for hundreds of millions of years, at least 300m in some cases.

The Australian CSIRO developed the Synroc process that can take all levels of nuclear waste - even plutonium - and incorporate it into a ceramic like material that is basically a synthetic analogue of naturally occurring rock that mimics existing rocks that have been stable for 2 billion years in some cases. Water and such can't leach the nuclear material from the matrix. The waste 'problem' was solved in 1978 - no one has managed to solve the problem of people lying about it.

The Synroc process is currently being used in Australia for handling medical nuclear waste and has been used at the US DOE Argonne National Laboratory since the 90's. It's also been used in the UK:

"Synroc was chosen in April 2005 for a multimillion-dollar "demonstration" contract to eliminate 5 t (5.5 short tons) of plutonium-contaminated waste at British Nuclear Fuel's Sellafield plant, on the northwest coast of England."

You turn your waste into synroc then deposit it into impermeable ancient salt deposits, several km underground, by methods you can either make complicated and costly, or simple. The Scandinavians have a bonkers and costly facility they are constructing which basically amounts to digging an expensive mine so they can drive trucks down to caverns to store the waste as is in drums.

Gas explosions kill hundreds of people, every single year. Nuclear waste hasn't killed a single person, ever, that I am aware of. It's really effed up what some people consider a problem.

bob mcbob

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119388439#Comment_119388439

Another article about Sizewell C today in the Guardian. I never realised, but I suppose I should have, that nuclear power stations use vast quantities of fresh water. The estimate is 2M litres per day for the new Sizewell C. This also happens to be the most water stressed area in the UK but it was given the go ahead despite the fact that it is not currently known where this fresh water is gigot come from. I wonder if due to climate change, the fresh water needs will impact reactors that are already built.

What might not have been immediately obvious in the coverage of the government’s decision was that the Planning Inspectorate, tasked with assessing such projects, had recommended that permission be refused. The problem, the examiners explained, was fairly simple: EDF couldn’t say exactly where it would obtain one of the main substances needed to make a nuclear power station work, that substance being water.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jul/27/nuclear-power-station-sizewell-c-water-suffolk

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119393613#Comment_119393613

Spinning reserve is for when the largest single unit on the grid drops off without warning. Biggest hydro is a Turlough Hill turbine at 73MW which would also cover most of the wind farms. Nuclear would need 20 times as much so should pay 20 times as much for the capital and running costs. But it doesn't so is subsidised by renewables.

"Nuclear energy is the most reliable energy generation method commonly in use, it's even more reliable than hydro or geothermal." Citation needed , and you had better include delays in construction and early shutdowns or you are cherry picking because nuclear isn't on time, on budget. I recently posted a 4 year refurb of a Canadian plant , stuff like that needs to be included.

"France simply has a current problem, which historically is an abnormality." The duration of the outages is new, but having 50% of French nuclear power stations offline at the same time is nothing new. Regardless this just isn't supposed to happen. Ever.

Japan had tsunami. Korea had fake parts. Italy and Germany had referendums. The US had cheap gas from fracking. Nuclear is not a sacred cow, whole fleets can and have been decimated without prior warning rendering investments in them worthless. Though Enron kept an Indian reactor on the books for years after it had been effectively abandoned so they could borrow against a fake asset value.

"Does the US have problem with nuclear reliability - no - their nuclear capacity factor for the last few years has been over 92%." - Capacity has stayed at about 100GW since 1990 during which time a lot of poorly performing plants have closed in the face of fracking. Survivor bias. Also the companies that made them don't exist anymore.

The French didn't drop the ball, they've been trying to roll out new nuclear plants since the start of the Millennium with no success.

gjim

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119393676#Comment_119393676

I think you might be better of in the politics forum or after hours? Politics have nothing to do with it despite your attempt to turn this into some sort of culture-war sh*t fight - it's simple economics and technology.

I've given you the exact numbers. Since Ireland has neither offshore wind nor nuclear energy, I provided you with the most recent market cost per MWh for nuclear and offshore wind from the nearest neighbour - the UK. The UK consumer will be paying £37.35 per MWh for electricity coming from the next batch of off-shore wind turbines, and £106 per MWh (2020 prices - to adjusted every year for inflation) coming from the next nuclear plant under construction. This is the reality of the cost of delivering electrical energy from the two sources to consumers connected to the grid.

The logical conclusion is that: either your calculations - showing offshore wind to be infeasibly expensive - are simply boll*x or the UK energy industry - renewables and nuclear - and entire government have gotten it massively wrong. There are no odds you could offer me that would have me back your "calculations" in this regard.

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119394009#Comment_119394009

No idea and I don't care. Nuclear waste disposal is a political problem, not a technical one. Nuclear waste is very small in volume.

The political is that you can't do nuclear on the cheap. Which means the technology isn't being used.

Only the high level waste is looked after properly, and that's because it's nasty and needs cooling because it's hot in the literal sense and glows at the bottom of the cooling pond. Places like that have constant alarms in the background, when the alarm goes silent people scatter.

The larger volumes of intermediate waster are not always encapsulated properly or stored well, and salt is corrosive.

The treatment of Very Low Level Waste varies by country. It can be discharged into the sea or mixed with normal refuse or may be processed separately like the French are looking into.

Birdnuts

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119396474#Comment_119396474

What will the consumer be paying during poor wind conditions?? Alot going by Germany's experience compared to non-wind dependent grids

Markcheese

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119397242#Comment_119397242

We're not germany - which is why our grid is currently around 40% wind ... It's going to vary year to year .... as more wind is rolled out , offshore wind comes on stream ,and (hopefully ) the grid is improved that number is going to increase a lot ...

Because we've a very different energy system to germany .. whose investment strategy has been nuts ,( the whole range of nuts , nuclear,gas ,coal and renewables)

Wind has also proven quite predictable - not dispatchable but predicable , and as each wind turbine ( or even wind farm ) is relatively small it's not a big deal if one goes off line suddenly ..

And yes it only really works with gas in the mix

Sam Russell

Not just gas but also interconnectors.

Gas can be supplemented by biogas, if ever that gets to the point of viability, and by hydrogen from excess renewables, again if ever that gets to the level of viability.

Solar will have a small part to play because we are far north, but domestic solar might become important with domestic batteries to extend it.

I just do not see nuclear being of use in Ireland unless small reactors become commercial - or if fusion gets there first. Both are decades away.

charlie14

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119397554#Comment_119397554

Wind has proven anything but predictable, and while we may not be Germany our energy from renewables pretty much mirrors theirs. Germany`s share of renewables in 2020 was 46%. Last year that dropped to 40.9% For Ireland it dropped from 42% to 35%.

I agree Germany`s investment strategy has been nuts, but I do not see it as being any different from ours. It is no big deal if one turbine goes off line, but when all you are getting from all turbines is 6%, as happened last Winter and this Spring for extended periods then it does become a big deal if you do not have the adequate backups.

Markcheese

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119398923#Comment_119398923

Isn't that true of all power sources ? They all need plenty of back up ..

charlie14

That is true, but I would not say plenty, or at least not anywhere within miles of that required for renewables that for extended periods last year and this were providing just 6% and lower of our requirements for peak demand of 6,000MW from an installed wind capacity of 4,300MW.

gjim

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119397242#Comment_119397242

Have German consumers seen wholesale electricity price spikes to anything like 2,987.89 euros for 1MWh of electricity? That happened last April in France.

charlie14

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119399810#Comment_119399810

Germany was the most expensive country in the E.U. last year for electricity. Over 60% more expensive than France.

gjim

German prices to household consumers are high as part of deliberate policy - household consumption of electricity is heavily taxed (38% and VAT on top of that again) to "encourage" efficiency. French policy is the opposite.

If you want an indication of cost of production, you look at wholesale electricity prices.

French wholesale prices have been all over the shop this year - including nearly hitting the market limit of 3,000 euro a MWh - an insane price - for an hour in early April. Germany has also seen spikes in wholesale prices this year but with much lower peaks. The idea that a high penetration of nuclear provides more stable (or lower) wholesale prices is not borne out by data.

All European grid wholesale prices are here - although it's fiddly, you can compare french and german wholesale prices.

The crisis in France in April was caused by the fact that so much of their nuclear capacity was off-line - only 30GW of 64GW of nuclear capacity was operating at the time due to planned and unplanned outages. This combined with a cold snap in the weather - lots of French homes are heated using inefficient electric resistive heating (why worry about efficiency after our big investment in nuclear?) - threw the system into chaos. So much for the reliability of nuclear.

Capt'n Midnight

This is a curve for the sum of UK offshore wind farm output for farms with 5 years or more half hourly data.

From - https://energynumbers.info/uk-offshore-wind-capacity-factors enable scripts to see interactive curves.

As a though experiment if you install 2.5x demand of wind you get this curve.

Green is wind power. Yellow is surplus wind power that could be stored or exported.

Red and purple are backup power. Purple (4%) could be imported or stored power or hydro. Red (22.5%) could be thermal with 20% gas and 2.5% biomass and we'd still stay within our 2030 targets.

Capt'n Midnight

Germany's nuclear output for the last year. One dip can be explained as politics but there's lots of other drops. Nuclear is not dispatchable, it's not even dependable.