Nuclear - future for Ireland?

cnocbui

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122272452#Comment_122272452

You would likely need three NPPs in Ireland, best located on existing thermal power plant sites which already have heavy grid connections. So that's just 3 local communities to convince with an offer of free power for the life of the power station. I think you would get communities actually lobbying to get them. France overcame local objections with free power and it worked a charm.

Every country that has nuclear power has overcome this supposed problem. Significant boosts to local economies through permanent stable jobs and the excellent safety records actually see local communities where NPPs are sited being very positive towards them.

Local communities in Ireland are not favourable towards either solar or wind either, With any attempts to establish them being generally objected to strongly, yet this impediment has managed to be overcome, almost 400 times. With nuclear you just have 3 communities to sway.

Nuclear is so much cheaper than renewables that it should be an easy sell with an honest public debate because it could actually reduce domestic electricity costs which renwables do not do, as is clearly seen here and in other countries that are attempting the renewables route to net zero.

KrisW1001

"nuclear is so much cheaper". No. It might be "almost as cheap" if a lot of infrastructure has already been put in place, but that's as far as I would go. But really, how many nuclear plants have been built solely from the capital and resources raised at start of project and have completed on schedule? The taxpayers subsidise NPP construction to an extent that doesn't exist with any other type of generation.

Those credit guarantees, preferential loans and direct funding never show up in the price for electricity (agreed at the outset, based on the initial cost estimates of the plant), but you see them in the project costs.

Based on experience this century, NPP projects look a lot like a scam. The providers always lowball the estimate, then rely on politicians embracing the sunk cost fallacy to recoup the actual construction cost. And the electricity is "cheap" because the generator passed a huge chunk of the construction costs onto the host government. Also, the decommissioning cost at end of life is basically a finger in the air estimate, to keep the price per megawatt low, and made in the knowledge that the host government will have to pay whatever it really costs when the time comes anyway.

Even the champions of Nuclear power say that the very worst economic case applies to the first unit on a site, so the idea of having three separate NPP sites with a reactor on each is a non runner. Your only hope to get costs down is by sharing the underlying infrastructue (especially around fuel), and that means building multi-unit sites. If you think Ireland needs 3 NPPs, the only plausible plan is to have them in one place. So where will you build?

I have nothing against the principle of Nuclear power, and I consider it to be the safest thermal generation type, but the current state of the technology is colossally bad value when you count the real costs. The decision in the 1950s to pursue the Uranium cycle rather than Thorium was great for making bombs, but horrible for making reactors.

Historically the industry was kept afloat by soft subsidies from defence budgets on both sides of the Iron Curtain (Korea and Japan had their civil nuclear programmes heavily supported financially by the USA in exchange for those nations not developing their own nuclear weapons). Those days are gone, and now the only builds that make any sense are expansion of existing facilities. Gulf states with effectively infinite budgets buying NPPs doesn't make any kind of case that it would be good for Ireland to do so (the Gulf states also have a level of political corruption that makes every major purchasing decision suspicious)

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122272599#Comment_122272599

When was the last time a nuclear plant in western Europe was built anywhere other than on the site of an existing nuclear power plant ? It just doesn't happen anymore.

It's very difficult to make claims for the price of nuclear when the costs keep going up and construction times are so long.

An example of what happens when laws and standards change during construction delays.

there were 7,000 substantial design changes required by British
regulations that needed to be made to the site, with 35% more steel and
25% more concrete needed than originally planned.

Nuclear got MORE expensive as production increased. The learning curve is Negative.

Shoog

https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/frances-edf-drops-plans-develop-its-own-small-nuclear-reactor-technology-2024-07-01/

Another big player shelves it's plans to design a SMR. It's looking bleak for the fantasy of SMR reactors.

josip

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122327326#Comment_122327326

So who's left in the SMR game? Lockheed Martin's SMR fusion reactor is due sometime in 2024. Cough. Cough. Is there anyone else?

Shoog

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122327472#Comment_122327472

I am not sure Rolls Royce still have a viable project after the UK government dumped them.

Capt'n Midnight

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122327476#Comment_122327476

In fairness RR have actually been building SMR's for the Royal Navy's submarines since the 1960's. They aren't another startup with hand waving and CGI (with photoshop you don't even need to dip crap in glitter anymore).

The UK government didn't bite when they offered power SMR's, and lots of UK jobs, for half the cost an equivalent Hinkley-C. And that was before the most recent cost overruns.

RR didn't invest much of their own money in power SMR's, even though the 20 year+ contracts on commercial airliner engines mean RR is a cash cow. Instead they were waiting on £32Bn worth of order commitments before they'd commit to getting the ball rolling.

https://www.powermag.com/a-closer-look-at-two-operational-small-modular-reactor-designs/

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) publishes booklets
biennially on the status of SMR technology. In the IAEA’s most recent
booklet, it notes 25 land-based water-cooled SMRs and another eight
marine-based water-cooled designs are under development globally. It
also lists 17 high-temperature gas-cooled SMRs, eight
liquid-metal-cooled fast-neutron-spectrum SMRs, 13 molten-salt SMRs, and
12 microreactors. If you do the math, that’s 83 SMR designs under
development, but only the KLT-40S and HTR-PM are actually operational.

The two are from Russia and China. The Chinese one is based on old German tech. Using German fuel pellets. Getting Russian fuel is a issue at present and a lot of SMR plans were abandoned when that realisation sunk in.