Nuclear - future for Ireland?

20-02-2023 8:55pm

I don't think you'll see a massive rollout of new nuclear sites in Europe or the US generally. You might get plants built on existing sites that were selected back in the 1950s and 60s when people saw nuclear power as being all about progress and jobs, but attitudes have changed a lot in the intervening decades.

Birdnuts · 21-02-2023 2:14am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120266359#Comment_120266359

How many Fukishima's have occured in the West?? Where as we are guaranteed countless tonnes of microplastics into the marine environment via wind turbine blades https://docs.wind-watch.org/Leading-Edge-erosion-and-pollution-from-wind-turbine-blades_5_july_English.pdf

josip · 21-02-2023 10:26am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120268281#Comment_120268281

According to those lads, after 11 years the entire leading edge of the blades has worn away.

But the lifespan of a turbine blade is 20-25 years. Do they operate for another 10 years without a leading edge?

21-02-2023 4:28pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120268281#Comment_120268281

I’d hardly consider Japanese standards to be anything other than part of the group of countries we tend to describe as “western.”

That plant was a very standard General Electric Boiling Water Reactor, broadly identical to similar installations in the U.S. (several still running) with a Mark I type containment.

It was close to full retirement when that happened and had operated for decades entirely uneventfully.

There are also a number of plants located on faults and seismic risk areas like California.

Fukushima was a major wake up call for a lot of those and similar installations that are in high risk areas.

I’d question the logic of building nuclear plants in highly seismic areas, particularly when it’s possible to place them elsewhere and link by HVDC and etc as it would be in the US. There’s literally no reason for nuclear plants in coastal California.

If anything, more Japanese plants are extremely well adapted to earthquakes, but the design of that 1960s era plant didn’t anticipate the scale of the tsunami and the plant being entirely cut off from both the national grid and backup generators being simultaneously and completely submerged under water, and the site becoming inaccessible.

Capt'n Midnight · 21-02-2023 7:59pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120270700#Comment_120270700

Onagawa which was closer to the epicentre than Fukushima would have failed if Yanosuke Hirai hadn't insisted it be build 14.8m above sea level, and a cooling water reserve. "Matsunaga-san hated bureaucrats," Oshima said. "He said they are like human trash.

Fukushima Daiichi failed because they cheaped out. The original sea wall was 35m above sea level they reduced it to 10m above sea level to reduce the costs of pumping cooling water from the sea. And because they didn't learn the lessons of the earlier French nuclear power plant flood.

Fukushima Daini nearly failed The Heroic Mission to Save Fukushima Daini - they lost multiple redundant systems at once.

Of the eight heat exchanger buildings, only the building on the south side of Unit 3 had miraculously escaped damage. That reactor was still being cooled, thankfully. The members of the reconnaissance teams believed that by using cables to share the reactor three power supply with reactors one, two, and four, which were arranged in a line, they would be able to restore cooling relatively quickly.

This proposal was rejected by Masuda, however: “We’ve got to protect the Unit 3 cooling system at all cost. Don’t overload it.”

Instead, Masuda directed his team to obtain power by running cables from a waste-processing building some 800 meters away. The cables were 5 centimeters thick and weighed about 5 kilograms per meter. The team laid a total of 9 kilometers of cables, which they snaked around buildings and other obstacles. While the task would normally take 20 people using construction equipment an entire month, a team of 200 TEPCO employees and contractors were able to complete the task in just 30 hours, finishing late on March 13.

Tōkai started construction in 1961. It finally got it's 4.9m seawall increased to 6.1 meters in 2011. Two days later the tsunami hit with a height of 5.4m. Two days. The Tokai plant suffered a loss of external power-supply. The levee was overrun, but only one of three seawater pumps failed,

Japan and the entire nuclear industry got lucky , it could have easily been a lot worse because the failure modes are systemic when try to do nuclear on the cheap.

21-02-2023 9:15pm

Take a look at where Diablo Canyon NPP was built in California .. it's not quite as prone to tsunami as Japan, but there's a distinct possibility of one given how seismic California is.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diablo_Canyon_Power_Plant

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diablo_Canyon_earthquake_vulnerability

My point though is that these things are 'beyond calculated risks' and if it could happen in Japan, it could happen in plenty of other places. I know the tsunami risk isn't an issue in most places, but there are likely other eventualities that are being short cut.

The biggest risk at this stage is the ageing of plants and the endless pushes for life extensions.

Capt'n Midnight · 21-02-2023 9:57pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120272049#Comment_120272049

That's the NPP where they build the earthquake shields for one of the reactors backwards.

Here's the risk map from https://ncdp.columbia.edu/library/mapsmapping-projects/nuclear-power-plants-earthquake-risk/

The bit in the centre is where the New Madrid earthquakes of 1811-1812 happened. The area wasn't heavily populated or built up then.

Birdnuts · 22-02-2023 2:04am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120270700#Comment_120270700

How many Tsunamis and major earthquakes do you expect to occur in Ireland over the coming decades or in the UK, France etc.??

22-02-2023 2:21am

None, but the risk is always some random event that’s outside the scope of what was assumed to be possible - with most other technologies the consequences of that are problematic but short lived. With a nuclear contamination issue, it’s rather more drastic.

You can see why a lot of people aren’t as enthusiastic about the technology as they might behave been back in the 60s when it was promising all sorts with zero risk or zero public understanding of any potential risks anyway.

It’s a technology that’s absolutely great and usually works very well, but the consequences of the rare occasions when it does go wrong are a tad worrying.

Chernobyl is the only one that’s a total outlier. I think using that as a benchmark is rather pointless. The design was fundamentally awful - it literally had no containment, just a simple biological shield, and the Soviet culture it ran in was hugely problematic for the kind do safety culture you need around something like nuclear power. They even tried to cover up the accident until it was impossible to deny!

Chernobyl shouldn’t have happened because RMBK type power plants should never have been approved or built. They quite literally “fail dangerous” rather than “fail safe.”

The actual incident was pretty much a run away reaction that led to simple steam explosion, exposing the hot, flammable graphite core which readily burned when exposed to air spewing chunks and particles of radioactive material everywhere as debris and plumes of smoke.

Chernobyl isn’t relevant to anything, other than the RMBK plants still running in Russia.

A ‘black swan event’ - something that’s totally unexpected, despite what is assumed to be best efforts, good regs and good design is always a possibility. No system is perfect or can foresee every permutation and combination of circumstances. That’s where all nuclear power has an issue.

Economically, none of these systems seem to stack up unless you’re deliberately ignoring the time scale to build, the spent fuel storage / reprocessing / disposal costs and the utterly ginormous lifetime costs involved in decommissioning, which in most countries seem to be dumped on the state in the end (in many to be fair though state entities built them in the first place.)

Capt'n Midnight · 22-02-2023 2:26am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120273438#Comment_120273438

30th January 1607 was the last major flood in Wales. It would have taken out Hinkley, Oldbury and Berkeley. They had to increase the sea walls on UK nuclear power plants when finally understood that yes, it could happen again.

I've already mentioned the French plant that was flooded, that was just bad weather, but they were relying on the other reactor on site for backup power. Which went as well as expected. Cue major rollout of backup systems at a cost of billions. Bad weather also caused the droughts that reduced cooling water and the heatwaves that restricted how much heat they could dump into rivers.

Unlikely to be a repeat of the Storegga Slides or a collapse of the volcano on the Canary Islands soon. BUT nuclear power plants supposedly last a long time which shortens the odds.

And these are all events that have happened and will happen again in time.

Birdnuts · 23-02-2023 2:12am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120273456#Comment_120273456

On that basis are u advocating the evacuation of all coastal cities in Western Europe?? Have you contacted the French Government about your concerns??

Capt'n Midnight · 26-02-2023 10:55am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120277749#Comment_120277749

Since the French government has spend billions upgrading their plants since the 1999 Blayais flood I'm assuming they already know.

Furthermore, since poor maintenance resulted in French nuclear having a massive loss of capacity last year I'd be wasting my breath trying to convince them. Besides they are still busy fixing them

Reactors undergoing corrosion inspections or repairs (as of 9 February 2023) - restart dates should be taken with a pinch of salt as EDF downplay everything that might affect share price.

Cattenom 1 P'4/1300 MWe Investigation ongoing. Feb 2023
Cattenom 3 P'4/1300 MWe Evidence of possible corrosion. Further tests ongoing. Mar 2023
Chooz B1 N4/1500 MWe Confirmed stress corrosion near welds of the RIS (safety injection circuit) and RRA (shutdown reactor cooling circuit) circuits. Feb 2023
Civaux 2 N4/1500 MWe Investigation ongoing. Feb 2023
Flamanville 1 P4/1330 MWe Investigation ongoing. Feb 2023
Golfech 1 P'4/1300 MWe Evidence of possible corrosion. Further tests ongoing. Mar 2023
Penly 1 P'4/1300 MWe Confirmed stress corrosion near welds of the RIS and RRA circuits. Mar 2023
Penly 2 P'4/1300 MWe Investigation ongoing. Mar 2023

Output is still 12.5% down on this time last year when they were already stopping plants.

Capt'n Midnight · 26-02-2023 11:05am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120286439#Comment_120286439

You are allowed to talk about it. But not so to derail that thread.

It's not viable without massive subsidies and political support. And an alternative source of power during it's rollout so you have to pay twice.

The first hurdle is getting planning permission.

The next is a 20-25% abandonment rate once construction starts.

Then you need to provide alternative power during the timescale of planning to commercial operation, which is longer than the payback time of solar or wind.

You have to rely on imported fuel and current economic reserves are sufficient for 3 years of global energy demand.* And politics in Russia is being used as an excuse to pause SMR's by two years.

To make it economic you have to provide guaranteed demand ahead of cheaper sources AND cut corners during construction like the Asians are doing.

And you have to provide massive backup and redundancy on the grid as they are delicate and prone to fall off the grid without warning. I don't know of any other power source where even having dozens of units of different types geographically dispersed still means can permanently lose 80% of capacity in a single day.

Decommissioning and waste storage costs are extortionate.

* 90 years production of 10% of global electricity which is 1/3rd of energy use.

cnocbui · 26-02-2023 2:02pm

When was the mod ban lifted, link to it please.

Sam Russell · 26-02-2023 8:51pm

Mod: The ban is not lifted, except for incidental mention, in context with the post.

The ban was put in to stop the ding dong certain posters were carrying on with - gaining nothing but a pointless point scoring borefest in a most repetitive way, thus derailing that thread.

millb · 07-03-2023 1:06pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120289663#Comment_120289663

The French Nuclear fleet will "continue to suffer" as it's all quite old - for sure maintenance will be tricky and v expensive. The new French & UK NP's are well delayed and not extensive. Both UK and France will have to rely on small modular reactors from 2032 if NP is to survive in W Europe. Modular would then work nicely for other countries (eg at a 20-30% baseload) such as Italy and maybe Ireland - unless the super-nodes / high capacity inter-connectors get up and running.

07-03-2023 1:14pm

The main issue in France not that surprising - a single common issue, emerging simultaneously in a group of extremely complex pieces of equipment that all shared the same design, are expected to last for decades, aren’t constructed very frequently and share the same components and were built in the same era.

A single issue can end up shutting them all simultaneously. It’s a reason why multiple manufacturers and a diversity of designs is important.

Capt'n Midnight · 07-03-2023 9:36pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120324653#Comment_120324653

The UK's ARG's use a substantially different technology to anyone else and most of their reactors are on their last legs with frequent downtime. A completely different single issue even though it's also EDF calling the shots.

Korea had a safety scandal with fake parts and certs (BNFL weren't shy about faking reports either) and dropped safety features on their new designs to save costs.

In the US of A over the last 30 years of 50% new reactor constructions were abandoned.

Japan had multiple types of reactors build by different companies. Four lost to tsunami, forty lost because they haven't been able to bring them up to code. So lots of issues.

Out of the two EPRs plants that have been completed three will have significant down time in the first year after grid connection. (One of the plants that hasn't been completed yet already needs critical repairs)

In Italy and Germany politics closed reactors.

There's no single fix for the disparate ways nuclear plants have failed. In nuclear black swan events aren't rare. Mucky ducks everywhere.

BTW Rainfall is low in France so far this year so expect reduced nuclear and hydro output.

07-03-2023 10:00pm

Yeah in France the lack of water levels in rivers is a major issue now. They’ll probably need to install cooling towers at some of those sites if the low water levels are an increasingly common issue that isn’t going to resolve.

Capt'n Midnight · 08-03-2023 9:23pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120324622#Comment_120324622

Small Modular Reactors don't exist.

(Technically military reactors do exist but they are highly enriched, too expensive and have a very low capacity factor. The Chinese built an SMR using technology they bought from the Germans, took 15 years and it's not remotely economic for grid use.)

The rest are mostly snake oil, only existing in CGI. Several companies have used the Russian embargo to announce multi year delays in sourcing fuel. Designs that rely on enriched fuel are scary, ones that don't threaten to produce up to 35 times as much radioactive waste as larger reactors.

Rolls Royce who actually build reactors will need a £32Bn order book before they start production of just 7.04GW of them and the roll out would roll into the 2040's. And at 470MW they aren't small compared to early reactors. They also have a history of being bailed out by the government.

Markcheese · 10-03-2023 6:56pm

https://youtu.be/2a4CeJ6XjUE

Its a year out but it's discussing smr s ,

I thought the interesting thing was their estimated cost of production , from the guy whos cheerleading them ...

bk · 11-03-2023 8:46pm

Very interesting video, thanks.

It is interesting that the NuScale exec in the video isn't claiming that there tech is a replacement for renewables at all and instead he seems to be pushing the idea of it assisting renewables rather then replacing them. That seems to go against what some posters on this thread have been claiming, that we could go Nuclear rather then renewables.

They seem to be positioning these more as a replacement for CCGT gas power plants. Claiming a 90+ minute spin up time, you could see how they could work with wind + 4 hour batteries. Also they seem to be pushing the idea of hydrogen genration from these plants, which obviously could be used too when the wind isn't blowing.

I think this is all a very smart and realistic approach to the market. Trying to work with the very real reality of renewables, rather then against them.

Unfortunately this video doesn't mention it, but things aren't going well for NuScale at all. Their first project has already gone over schedule and WAY over cost, 50% increase from what he mentions in the above video. But worse, towns have been pulling out of the project and it is looking like they might not even reach the required amount of cities signing up for the project for it to even begin construction.

All before they have even started building a single reactor!

https://www.wired.com/story/the-dream-of-mini-nuclear-plants-hangs-in-the-balance/

I honestly hope they can fix their problems and actually deliver on their promises, but I wouldn't hold my breath either.

I certainly don't think Ireland, who has zero experience with Nuclear power should be rushing to be an early adopter of such an immature technology. We need to wait and see if countries with actual experience in it like the US, UK and France can actually deliver on the promise.

This definitely isn't a 2030 technology for us. But maybe 2050 would be possible if it works out.

13-03-2023 2:13pm

The current situation in France is the double edged sword of standardisation. The reason France was able to rollout nuclear in the 1970s and 80s so quickly and so cost effectively was because they developed a completely standardised model of pressurised water reactor, and all the ancillary services, which could be built rapidly once they got the initial few plants built and the bugs ironed out.

That high degree of standardisation is now causing problems because a system showing its age in one plant or having a fault is likely to be duplicated in all of the others.

Now, that being said it also means you can rollout a standard fix.

Markcheese · 13-03-2023 6:29pm

I would have thought if the cost were right that nu-scale would be a fit for steel and some chemical plants in Europe , now that cheap gas is a memory ..

So direct to hydrogen , giving the benefit of the oxegen on site too, potential for using electricity and possibly waste heat ,

Of course that's a no-no n Germany , they're still in the process of getting away from nuclear ..

Cost counts for a lot too ..

Which could be partly what's killing them in the US . Gas and electricity from renewables are expected to be really low price for the foreseeable future, ( with possible exception of California )

bk · 14-03-2023 10:58am

“I would have thought if the cost were right that nu-scale would be a fit for steel and some chemical plants in Europe , now that cheap gas is a memory ..

So direct to hydrogen , giving the benefit of the oxegen on site too, potential for using electricity and possibly waste heat “

Yep that is exactly what they are aiming for and it is a very good idea, but they really need to keep their costs in check.

Thing is, in the US, natural gas prices are at almost an all time low! In Europe gas prices have moderated way back down. They hit just €42 a few days ago, not quite as cheap as the past, but not really too expensive either. The panic about high gas prices, at least at the industrial level is largely over.

And as you say the prices of renewables continues to drop quickly.

In the end it will all come down to simple economics, a chemical plant, etc. will simply go with the cheapest option.

Markcheese · 14-03-2023 3:28pm

Yup ,German chemical plants are relocating to the US gulf coast ..

purifol0 · 14-03-2023 5:36pm

The WEF dont want countries building nuclear power plants & Leo is one of their "young leaders".

Ditto for Blackrock the 7 Trillion Dollar investment firm. Larry F, says nuclear is not to be invested in, and he can strongarm the entire market. Not so fun fact: In 2020 he wrote a letter pushing ESG investment even harder (or else). So if you were hoping for new nuclear and less workery...