Nuclear - future for Ireland?

Vicxas

They made some improvement in Nuclear Fusion back in December, we're still a good bit away from it being viable. But im wondering if thats what Ireland should focus on rather than Fission

timmyntc

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118616119#Comment_118616119

renewables backed by gas are not zero carbon, and will only increase in price from here on out.

So unless you want electricity prices so expensive that all irish industry is no longer viable, you cannot rely on renewables + gas reserve.

timmyntc

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118616138#Comment_118616138

Fission is viable now - fission reactors have been working for half a century.

Fusion reactors have never worked - to date they have been putting in more energy to the reaction than they get out. There wont be any fusion reactors in Ireland in this century

There is the option of keeping gas longer term where CCS is used for the emissions. Without CCS I can't see any gas power generation lasting past 2050

end of the road

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118616174#Comment_118616174

renewables are decreasing in price all of the time and will continue to decrease.

gas will get more expensive certainly but the decrease in cost of renewables will offset it.

not 0 carbon but low carbon, and cheap compared to nuclear, nuclear isn't 0 carbon either as it's waste is it's equivelant of carbon.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118616339#Comment_118616339

Are Ireland dependent on Putin? How much of our gas comes from Russia? Would love to see some numbers on that if you have as you've eluded to Ireland "funding authoritarian dictatorships" in another post. I didn't think any of our gas came from Russia but I might be wrong

end of the road

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118616339#Comment_118616339

and it's still cheaper then nuclear.

that's how poor value for money nuclear is, that the coal and gas generators can charge high prices for ramped up production and it's still a fraction of the cost of nuclear.

at least they can ramp up production, nuclear can't, at least not quickly.

bk

Yes, those Norwegian authoritarian dictatorships 🤣

Most of our gas comes from Corrib, the rest via the interconnectors to the UK. The UK supply is mostly from the North Sea (Norway and Scotland), followed by Denmark. A tiny percent, I remember it being 2% but would have to double check, comes from LNG import facilities. LNG could come from US, Middle East or yes Russia, though Russia is more focused on pipeline supply then LNG.

I'd be confident in saying that WAY less then 1% of our supply comes from Russia.

cnocbui

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118616119#Comment_118616119

Is gas zero CO2, all of a sudden? You seem to have forgetten the underlying aim of this farce. Your logic is up there with that of the lunacy of the governments, which is to keep buying and insalling ever increasing amounts of gas generating capacity, a waste of money considering the final 2050 aims. Sticking plasters and pain killers istead of an operation to permanently solve the underlying problem.

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118616207#Comment_118616207

They are much older than that. Multiple breeder reactors were in operation in 1944. Hundreds of small modular reactors have been used by western navies safely since the mid 1950's. Molten salt, pebble bed, thorium, they've all been researched to death by the best people during the cold war when money was no object and failure wasn't an option. ( Hint: they failed. )

Fission is simply not economically viable anymore in the face falling costs of renewables.

It's not even technologically viable because they seem to have forgotten how to build them. AFAIK every single nuclear project that doesn't involve the Russians or Chinese is both late and over budget, as are multiple projects involving them.

cnocbui

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118616313#Comment_118616313

Nuclear waste is not an equivalent of carbon, it has no bearing on the anthropogenic CO2 fraction in the atmosphere.

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118616233#Comment_118616233

Storage has a risk of it all coming bubbling back up again. Better to chemically bind it. Exposing powered bed rock in central Asia or using fertilizer or iron to cause algal blooms are other ways to capture carbon, if you could link them to carbon credits.

Biomethane, Hydrogen, Ammonia are all storable gases that could be used. Maersk are looking at renewable fuels that cost only twice the price of marine diesel by 2040. So liquids are an option too.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118616667#Comment_118616667

Yeah its wide open as to what will be used. Its great to see so many potential options though

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118616822#Comment_118616822

How do you propose to reduce CO2 levels over the next decade and beyond ?

Mr shmar

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118616517#Comment_118616517

Very short answer is some. Probably around 20%.

Not sure how much Brexit might have affected this matter! Note that we have to pay addition tariffs to cover costs for gas to be imported through the UK so that is just an extra cost unrelated to the country the gas is imported from.

Here are some numbers, hope it can be a little helpful.

For the UK gas market:

<https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1032260/UK_Energy_in_Brief_2021.pdf>

Looking at page 12 of above source, gives numbers on the UK gas market, which suggests that at most around ≈20% of the UK's gas supply is sourced in Russia. Same would apply for Ireland as we just feed from the same tube so to speak.

Here are some numbers for Russia to Ireland via EU. Again in that 0-25% bracket:

https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=File:Share_of_Russia_in_national_extra_EU_imports_of_each_Member_State,_first_semester_2021.png

Note that while ≈20% might not seem to be a whole lot, Russia is the largest supplier of LNG, the top quality gas. And the US and the EU intend to increase regulation around their own gas induustries. So there is a need to factor in quality and future availability as well.

Mr shmar

Single main exporter into the EU and the UK is still Norway I believe.

end of the road

correct horse battery staple5:14 pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118616891#Comment_118616891

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058232542/net-zero-electricity-generation

here is your chance

reactors are not going to be built for 10 billion in ireland or any other european country.

it will be 20 or more billion for a lot less capacity at an absolute best case.

it's just not viable, storage in the likes of the old kinsale gas field would go a long way to cover the gap left along with more renewables, all will be an extreme tiny fraction of the cost of the cheapest nuclear installation.

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118617025#Comment_118617025

Invite the South Koreans to build 2x APR-1400 reactors which takes them only 10 years to do (They built multiple in S. Korea and UAE) at a cost of

10.5 billion euro [4] and if they start next year we are net zero by 2033

Since we'd need to power the whole grid from nuclear on calm winter nights if there's no gas, you'd need 4 reactors (5.60GW) to meet today's peak demand 5.355GW. So your cost has just doubled to 21 billion euro which in construction terms is $32 Bn!

In December 2009, a KEPCO-led consortium was awarded the contract to build four APR-1400 reactors at Barakah, United Arab Emirates - Only one of the four reactors is fully operational, #2 is testing, #3 is to start testing next year, #4 will be later.

As it would take us a wee while longer to secure a site than an authoritarian regime in a desert. 2033 is a complete fantasy.

In fact you'd really need a fifth reactor to cater for peak demand of 6.878GW, and a sixth if you want to have backup for the largest unit on the grid - so that €10.5Bn is looking like $48B.

Birdnuts

Ireland will be importing plenty of nuclear power to keep the lights on now that France has strongly committed to it - meanwhile the greenwash brigade here will still be faffing around with the wind scam while issues like energy poverty, damage to natural heritage etc, continue to escalate

cnocbui

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118617215#Comment_118617215

Yeah, you won't find those eco norse shooting themselves in the financial foot and not exploiting their fossil fuel energy sources. That stuff is for this clever country.

bk

“Ireland will be importing plenty of nuclear power to keep the lights on now that France has strongly committed to it”

Err.. what Macron actually promised is:

• Build 50 offshore wind farms proving 40GW of power
• Double onshore wind from 18GW today to 36GW
• Increase solar to 100GW

By comparison they have announced up to just 14 reactors which would add 22GW, however France needs to decommission at least 14 older reactors by 2050, so this will just be about breaking even on Nuclear power.

Which btw I’m happy to hear France is keeping up Nuclear, I’m glad they aren’t following Germanys lead on this.

However you do have to be realistic about what is happening here, Frances Nuclear energy mix will drop from 70% today to 50% by 2050, with most of the rest being wind and solar.

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118617209#Comment_118617209

So on a scale of 0-25%, you plucked 20% out of thin air ? It's close to 0%

We import gas from Scotland who get gas from the north of the North Sea which and from Norway. Look at the pipelines that go from here to Scotland and the ones that land near Aberdeen.

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118619570#Comment_118619570

News just it. Solar doesn't work at night.

Such scaremnongering is needed because nuclear needs a guaranteed demand because nuclear is so inflexible. In the US there are times when the price of electriciity is negative and nuclear pays to put it's electricity on the grid rather than shutdown and restart the reactors later.

I've always said that both wind and nuclear absolutely depend on having dispatchable plant or storage to load balance. Neither are dispatchable. Wind needs it during calm weather. Nuclear needs it during working hours and evening mealtime every single day of the year. And all the day in winter, because it can only do baseload.

#Baseload doesn't exist on the Irish grid anymore. It's role has been taken by having at least one large generator on load at all times near each large city to provide dynamic stability, load flow control and voltage contro eg: "during an outage of EWIC there must be at least 3 large generators on-load at all times in the Dublin area."

How do you propose planning permission for 3 nuclear power stations near Dublin ?

The need for these generators to be on at all times allowed extra wind power to be put on the grid. That's how we got up to 86% of demand from wind last week. The surplus was exported and offset fossil fuel in the UK.

UAE 4 reactors in 10 years for €21B was the fantasy. The reality is so far it's 1 reactor in 13 years for $32Bn. Makes the people doing the Children's Hospital look competant. Even if there are no surprises they are still years away from that plant becoming fully operational. Luckily they have plenty of fossil fuel to keep the lights on.

Again 4 reactors barely covers our current usage. You'd need a fifth reactor to cover peak demand and a sixth to provide redudancy and price is $48Bn , not including overruns.

Yes in theory fewer reactors could supply the missing Energy TWh. But not the missing power GW. You would need massive storage such as 3TWh of hydrogen in the old Kinsale gas field. But if you have that much storage then renewables have won as they are ridiculously cheaper than nuclear.

Shoog

Why i wonder does advocacy of Nuclear walk hand in hand with climate denial ? Sort of destroys their credibility for impartial analysis.

Mr shmar

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118620514#Comment_118620514

I was using 20% as a likely upper limit based on the % coming from the UK being around 20%–so not based on much but not quite from thin air either. I didn't claim it to be 20%.

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118630174#Comment_118630174

Most of that ~20% would be via the connections from the continent to England where 90% of the population lives.

https://ec.europa.eu/energy/infrastructure/transparency_platform/map-viewer/main.html

Birdnuts

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118621203#Comment_118621203

What a brainless post - I suggest yo do some research on what grids in Europe have the lowest Carbon footprint before you go posting rubbish like that🙄

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118638559#Comment_118638559

https://app.electricitymap.org/map

Right now we are greener than than any European country, even those with nuclear, other than Iceland, France, Sweden and Norway and they all have lots of hydro.

We are beating most other countries world wide except those with lots of hydro. So it looks as if a lot of the other countries are using nuclear to offset emissions so they can burn more fossil fuels. Because they'd be lower than us wouldn't they ?

Birdnuts

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118638596#Comment_118638596

So if you ignore the long list of exceptions Ireland is great, your map is also flawed as it is a snapshot that just happens to concede with storm Dudley🙄 - must be why we've recently announced the building of half a dozen gas plants to keep the lights on.

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118644549#Comment_118644549

The exceptions are some of the countries that have a much greater % of hydro than us.

We will be doubling and tripling the amount of wind power over the next few years too. And we will be using more offshore wind with it's higher capacity factor. So what we get in windy weather now is what we'll get in calmer weather in future.

A little earlier the numbers were SYSTEM GENERATION 4,968 MW, THERMAL 31.2 %, RENEWABLES 87.47 %, EXPORT -18.67 %

At present thermal is needed for local grid stabiliy so we still need on-load generators near the big cities. Nuclear simply cannot do that.

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118630174#Comment_118630174

Better picture of the gas network https://transparency.entsog.eu/#/map - today those pipelines are hammering nuclear on price. With a hydrogen economy you'll probably only carry 1/3rd of energy in a similar volume of hydrogen, but with better insulation and heat pumps etc. it should still allow gas to undercut nucler in the future.

To see gas flows for the previous day , right click on node, choose a tab and click + (it's complicated as there's storage too and right now the UK is exporting gast to Belgiim / Zeebrugge)

Birdnuts

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118644593#Comment_118644593

Again you choose an exceptionally windy day to spin your windy nonsense. Some soft heads on here my buy it but the realities of a modern grid are very different, hence the current panic across the EU in terms of looking at more gas and nuclear capacity. As for installing yet more wind generation, the past year has highlighted the folly of continuing to go down the German route on this and its telling that that the current Greenwashed goverment continues to refuse to conduct any independent CBA or SEA on any aspect of this folly

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118650733#Comment_118650733

Who's looking at 'more' nuclear in Europe ? There's a lot of plants emarked for closure. New build isn't at replacement rate and it's years late and way overbudget. Russian and Chinese reactors aren't an option because you are reliant on them not playing political games for the next 70 years.

Nuclear won't arrive by 2030 so we would have to use wind until then. Refurbising existing wind farms is way cheaper than building nuclear.

Or if you order a nuclear power plant today then in 2030 when they announce it's been delayed yet again, you could order floating offshore floating wind turbines for half the price they'd cost today and be producing power before the nuclear plant does.

bob mcbob

Ok for the nuclear fanboy's, let's suspend reality for a moment and imagine that there was political will to go nuclear right now. Obviously there isn't but let's play hypotheticals.

How long would it take from here before the first watt of electrical power was produced?

For me a minimum of 27 years - breakdown

• 4 years convincing the people of the benefits
• 4 years to find a site & put in place a new planning system
• 5 years to complete planning process
• 4 years for final political approval & commercials to be agreed
• 10 years construction

So the best case scenario is the site is generating power by 2049.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118653486#Comment_118653486

You left out the judicial reviews, appeals and appeals of the appeals. Add in another 8-10 years and even then I think its still an overly optimistic timeline

end of the road

so that is 35 to 37 years for 1 nuclear power plant at the cost of hundreds of billions.

vs a few billion or less for renewables and if needs be gas which can all be got up and running in reasonable time.

there is just no competition, nuclear loses hands down on all metrics.

Shoog

Lets just repeat this, since it got such a good reaction last time - the majority of Nuclear Advocates are climate change skeptics.

If you want to object state your position on climate change in your reply.

But lets just state my position, in the time and with the money available, multiple times the generating capacity we need could be brought online before a single watt of nuclear was released to the grid. The advantage is that over that time our carbon footprint would be gradually reducing making our position better year on year. If we went Nuclear all that capitol would be tied up in the nuclear project and we wouldn't be accruing a single benefit until the first nuclear plant came online - 10-20 years down the line.

Nuclear answers no questions that are relevant to the Irish situation.

Sam Russell

The argument that we will be importing nuclear electricity from France once the interconnector goes on stream is based on a simple fallacy.

Once the electricity is generated, it is electricity - it cannot be distinguished whether it came from a windmill, a nuclear reactor, or a bicycle dynamo ridden by Eddie Merckx. However, nuclear generally provides base load which is at the bottom of the pyramid - unlikely to be generated to supply us. We will only get the surplus - or it will be very expensive. We, of course, will return the favour.

Capt'n Midnight

Nuclear's uptime is generally good, but it's downtime is awful.

It's winter and France has 25% of it's nuclear capacity offline. One unplanned plant outage has been extended to the end of the year.

With fewer plants we'd be far more exposed because nuclear isn't as reliable as adverstised.

At present, about 75.8% of installed capacity is available, with about 15.1 gigawatts (GW) now offline because of corrosion assessment, maintenance or other issues.

The 1.5 GW Chooz 1 reactor outage date was also extended to the end of this year from the expected restart date of Feb. 11. Chooz 1 was taken offline in December after corrosion was detected in some pipes at the plant.

Heraclius

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118621203#Comment_118621203

I think it is partly a way of derailing talk about workable solutions to climate change and partly that nuclear appeals to a particular set of bitter cranks who also happen to be climate change deniers.

Before someone gets upset I'm not saying all or even a majority of people who support nuclear are cranks. I'm in favour of maintaining nuclear power in larger countries myself and I think it's an amazing technology.

Birdnuts

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118655352#Comment_118655352

Pity none of that corresponds to reality anywhere in the EU - I suggest you read up at what Germany alone has spent on wind/solar in the last 10 years, yet is still heavily dependent on fossil and outside grids to keep the lights on. 24 billion Euros in RESS money was paid out in 2020 alone there!! and thats before you go counting all the other hidden costs wind power adds to a grid due to its dispersed and sprawling nature

Birdnuts

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118656323#Comment_118656323

Actually that argument simply serves to highlight how useless wind power is alot of the time cos there is no export market for it anywhere in Europe due to its non-dispatchable nature eg. Germany has to dump any excess wind generation on surrounding grids during the rare occasion it occurs and gets no payment in return, whereas they have to pay top dollar for importing power when wind/solar output is low.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118657138#Comment_118657138

gets no payment in return

You claimed this previously and were shown to be incorrect so I'm curious why you are maintaining this fallacy.

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118657821#Comment_118657821

If you install offshore wind equal to three times peak demand (3x33.8% =100%) then you will be able to meet peak demand 53% of the time with wind alone. Minimum demand is roughly half peak demand and would be met 74% of the time.

The rest of the time demand could be supplied by a mix of wind and other sources. Which up to 2030 could be gas alone, which gives us to 2050 to rollout storage.

end of the road

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118657130#Comment_118657130

there are no hidden costs with wind, the costs are the costs.

anyway, 24 billion to pay for excess electricity from other grids is still a fraction of the cost of nuclear.

Sam Russell

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118657821#Comment_118657821

Uptime is just a number. Is it measured for each turbine, or are you referring to the variability of wind?

If you have 500 turbines and 50% are out of action for one reason or an other, you still have 250 functioning. If on the other hand you have one reactor, if any % of it is out of action, then it is 100% out of action. Now if it is there to look after your base load - 25% to 40%, then the grid is in trouble, unless you have a spare one or two. Also, reactors tend to go out of action for protracted periods measured in years, while wind turbines can be repaired or replaced quite easily using spares that could be kept in a warehouse (if that is the policy).

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118658044#Comment_118658044

€0, Zero. Nothing.

The infrastructure we'd need to deploy to keep the lights on until nuclear power arrives would meet our 2030 80% emissions reduction target. So there'd be nothing left for nuclear to do when it predictably arrived years late and way over budget.

Nuclear will need 100% backup 100% of the time until at least 2035 if you look optimistically at real world construction times. The cheapest way to get that backup is to add twice the amount of wind power we already have and use gas to top it up. That alone gets us to an 80% reduction in emissions by 2030.

You need 3GW of wind backed by up to 20% gas to replace each 1GW of nuclear to meet our 2030 obligations. (That's without storage or hydrogen or interconnectors or solar or other renewables any or all of which could be deployed by 2050 to meet zero emissions.)

OR

If you decide to roll out nuclear you'd need 3GW of wind backed by gas and or storage for up to 20% of the time to keep the lights on until the nuclear plant supplies full power to the grid.

Note: It takes about six months for a new nuclear power plant to bed in / ramp up to full production after the initial grid connection. It's one of many things not mentioned in the brochure.

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118658308#Comment_118658308

A rough rule of thumb is that Nuclear is about ten billion eurodollars per GW* not counting costs of fossil fuel used during the delays.

75.8% after a buggy Bugey power station went off line because overheating. (Tricastin was down earlier because of an oil leak of all things)

Onshore wind 25-30%? So add twice that amount of onshore and you have 75-90% average capacity. Add offshore and you are hitting 100% average. And that's without storage or offsetting exports of the massive surplus.

(*) Under construction, costs are still rising

Vogtle 2,2GW $29.5Bn , Hinkley C 3.2GW €27Bn , Barakah 5.6GW $40Bn (authoritarian desert regime with low cost labour)

end of the road

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118658308#Comment_118658308

you are twisting what he said.

he didn't say nuclear was unreliable because 25% of it is down in france, he said it is unreliable because large percentages of it can go down at any time and for anything from months to years at a time, and that percentage could increase at any second for any reason.

the fact 75% of it is just about working currently in france can change rather quick, that is not something you get with other, cheaper more efficient options.

the claim that nucler is the most expensive option has been shown time and time again and plenty of figures to back it up have been provided.

wind requires subsidy because harvesting it at scale is a new technology and it needed to be tried and tested, we already knew small scale harvesting of it which had been a norm a couple of centuries ago worked but at scale was an unknown at first and now it has proven itself cheap and efficient.

it may not require subsidy as time goes on but then again i would be surprised if other sources like gas don't require some either currently.

but either way, subsidies for most power sources are a fraction of that which nuclear requires and that is, along with the other issues mentioned, why it can't compete especially for a small country like ireland.

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118658308#Comment_118658308

Please explain how, while waiting for nuclear, we'd meet our 2030 target of 80% reduction in emissions without using renewables ?

Here's a clue. Norway are spending $2.6Bn to capture 1.5m tonnes of CO2 a year for 10 years. That would cost us $14Bn a year for our annual emissions of 8.3mt CO2 (2020 down from 15m tonnes in 2005) so forget CCS.

Nuclear can't arrive by 2030. Even if was the cheap it's an additional cost on top of what we need to do anyway to meet our 2030-2050 needs. So the onus is on you to prove that if nuclear arrives after 2030 it's capital costs are cheaper than the ongoing operation and maintenance costs of pre-existing wind.

Or prove that nuclear can be guaranteed to be fully operational before 2030 at a capital cost less than three times that of offshore wind per GW in 2030, and even then there are issues regarding load balancing, reliability and providing backup and spinning reserve. Real world examples only. And not forcing reliance on Russia or China for the lifetime of the plant.