Nuclear - future for Ireland?

Not this rubbish again. H2 as storage is having a lot of money thrown at it currently, and it needs that because it's completely unproven technically and uncosted at whole grid scale - no one has done it.. So it's not valid to go invoking a non existent technology as a solution, which in the absence of environmentally damaging pumped storage, leaves you with batteries. Using batteries to back up intermittent renewables is far more costly than nuclear. You have to compare system cost and like for like.

Gas turbines, do not, and never can, get you to net zero, which is the ultimate goal. It's a false economy to go throwing hundreds of millions at more gas turbines when you know before spending one cent, that they won't do anything to solve the core issue you are ultimately trying to solve.

You might as well put that money into nuclear now and that will get you to net zero a decade or two before the current goal of 2050

Germany ducked up, no argument there, not just a small bit either.

It is a significant economic hit to all of Europe.

I think nuclear power should be kept where it is, extended life for plants but starting a plant now, it is outcompeted already, in a decade+ when it comes online, the economics will even be worse.

There is certainly a good and compelling argument to back the French nuclear industry as back up and base load for the continent or to build new ones there for wider base load, forget the crazy economics but view it as a strategic energy source, a security issue not a business decision.

Regardless of that, nuclear power is not an option here, we can import via interconnector if needed from elsewhere at a fraction of the cost.

nuclear is not green, it just pollutes in a different way by requireing large expensive storage of waste for generations.

gas is generally natural so it's pollution is natural therefore it is still some bit green and is better then coal and certainly better and reliable unlike nuclear.

france's inflation rate had nothing to do with nuclear but it's general economy.

These are all very important points.

Germany should never have closed it's nuclear plants, at least not till capacity is on the ground and ready to go.

Personally I think things like energy etc are all strategic national issues and should be organized and run as such. That can still be private ownership but it should be subject to oversight with long term state energy requirements.

If Europe has a cold snap in January or February then it will cause a severe economic crisis, and things weren't that good prior to Covid, nevermind the last 2 years damage on top.

Nuclear has a place but it has lost out to technological advances.

Germany made 25% of its electricity from nuclear power a decade ago. 40% from coal then to 20% now.

It was an incredible arrogance that led them to decide to phase that out by 2022 and coal as well by 2030. Going fast on phasing out but slow on replacement.

Add on top the exit from coal. Both are fine but too fast and without any real plan in place has left Europe with eye watering energy costs and questions over the grids ability to meet demand if there is a cold snap.

They should have been called out on it, a desperate jaw dropping arrogance and narcissism.

If there are black outs this winter across Europe, the backlash will be against renewable energy and those advocating for it.

I'm all for it and it is not just for cost reasons, it returns power supply to local markets, a more secure supply, better environmentally.

However closing existing capacity before there is excess capacity was always asking for trouble.

Plants closed here in the last few years should have been extended.

Never mind the insanity in Germany regarding closing plants before replacements were in place.

If cost is not a concern but net Zero is then nuclear probably has a place in that mix. It isn't problem free, it's not cheap by any means but it creates incredible amounts of near zero carbon electricity.

If there is a cold winter in Europe energy prices will be beyond the ability of many to pay and power supply will be unstable. Electricity futures for December 2022 are at 6 times last year in France.

There could be an almighty working class backlash against Green movements.

That would be purely down to lack of planning and eager to close for headlines.

A lot of the vast costs associated with renewables are also associated with nuclear - it'd need major grid alteration , it'd need vast gas back up , it'd need interconnectors to Britain and Europe , it'd need huge amounts of storage to handle the peaks and troughs of consumer demand .. and it'd need huge amounts of capital , but it's going to be orders of magnitude more expensive to produce electricity from nuclear than wind in the first place ..

storing waste is pollution and a burden on the tax payer.

people in ireland aren't afraid of nuclear any longer and haven't been for a couple of decades, they simply do not want to spend multiple irish childrens hospitals worth of money on a reactor when there are cheaper, actual ifficient options out there.

forget it, nuclear in ireland isn't going to happen, it's over.

And ran 3 times over budget.

And they must be feeling a little bit nervous about having gone for the relatively novel EPR design. The only others world are the two Chinese reactors in Taishan. Both reactors have had multiple admittedly mostly low-level incidents already in just a few years service. But not all minor issues - the first reactor has been shutdown since the Summer to investigate damage to fuel rods and no commitment has been made in terms of time to get it back online.

And all EPR construction projects have been disasters in terms of cost and schedule - even the Chinese ones - and they were unlikely to have been hampered by regulatory obstacles or legal concerns.

Whatever about the pros and cons of nuclear, the Finns have exposed themselves to a lot of risk by making such a huge commitment to EPR.

Still , it's good news that the reactor in Finland is up and running - bodes well for hinkley point - and even better for sizewell . The aim is for the plants to be largely a standard design and build - so sizewell should be considerably cheaper than hinkley - cheaper in this case meaning 18 to 20 billion sterling to build it ... But it looks like the uk gov are going to have to put some of their own money in to this ..

Of course if hinkley point goes badly - then it's likely that the entire of edf will go bust - the bulilt facilities will keep producing,obviously , but I assume the french government would have to bail them out ... and projects still under construction ?

What requirements were changed exactly?

From what I've read, it was always planned to be an EPR and once the government gave the go-ahead to TVO in 2005, that was the extent of their involvement in the spec. The 13 year delay and 3-times overshoot of budget was all down to the usual pattern of reactor construction. Is the same excuse being used to explain the 6 times budget overshoot for the construction of the same reactor design in Flammanville, France?

There always seems to be someone else to blame for nuclear project failures, yet anyone interested can just look at the history of reactor construction - for example at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_commercial_nuclear_reactors - especially note the start and end construction dates. The statistics are stark and clear - and paint a clear pattern of failure and blowing through budgets and schedules. Yes occasionally, a reactor is built on time and budget but it's the exception.

Closing so many nuclear and coal plants in such a short time across Europe has left Western Europe in a very precarious position.

Another 9% jump in electricity coming in the Spring.

Nothing wrong with closing plants but there should have been a capacity put in place to cover it.

Europe needs a very mild January and February to guarantee that it will have enough gas till March.

The entire economy of Western Europe is being left to chance.

No county has a say in the matter as it's only the irish government that has legal authority. It's not a federation.

It's the financing that's the killer (currently ) from an Irish Government point of view ..

If the government fund a reactor or 2 directly - then they're on the hook for the whole cost ,straight on to the national debt - cost overruns - time overruns and all , ( terrible if the thing doesn't work reliably) ,but the cost of finance should be lower because the state can borrow more cheaply than a corporation or semi-state...

Going the uk model - getting someone like edf to build - finance and operate for 40 odd years , ( and then pretend to think about decommissioning) is off balance sheet entirely.. but very expensive power For 40 odd years -

Plus hinkley is probably a loss leader , get the industry started in the uk .. and then build another few stations (with a comparatively low strike price ) that they actually make money on ..

Not really going to happen in Ireland though ...

That was kinda my point - it's an expensive solution that'd be 20 years too late ....

I thought the population was terrified of global warming due to CO2? No one has yet put to the populace a 'Sorry guys, we can't get to zero CO2 emissions without nuclear'.

If you are a person who truly believes the planet is in peril from CO2 emissions, i don't see why you wouldn't choose the lesser of two evils.

Net zero has, as I see it, two likely paths based on renewables: massive grid scale Li-ion batteries or hydrogen. Batteries + renewables delivering fossil fuel levels of stability and overall performance have been costed in an MIT study as being more expensive than nuclear, by a wide margin, with basically no prospect of battery cost reduction to match. Even by 2050, their cost is predicted to have only fallen to being 3-4 times too expensive to compete. There are unlikely to be any further cost reductions as that is probably close to the base costs of mining, processing, transport and manufacture, which are never going to zero.

large scale production and storage of hydrogen and the eventual costing is a comple unknown, with a lot of research effort on cost reduction currently underway. As with batteries, it might never be competeitive on cost with nuclear.

So does the population have a greater fear of nuclear energy, than the supposed consequences of CO2 causing AGW? Start building nuclear now and you can get to net zero 15 years ahead of the current target of 2050, which likely wont be met.