Nuclear - future for Ireland?

The US has an abundance of cheap gas from fracking, and nuclear there has to compete with that, without the generous preferential treatment given to renewables. Western Europe doesn't exactly have a large surplus of gas ...

It was mainly cancelled because of cost overruns and uncompetitivness against renewables.

Did rolls royce get the Gov funding they were seeking to fully develop their smr ?

No the put it back to a competitive auction - which basically means they pulled the plug.

It will be interesting to see if the Chinese pebble beds ever make it out of development. I doubt it since the Chinese are so heavily invested in expanding renewables.

SMR is an attempt to engineer your way around basic physics... those never end well. Uranium reactors aren't that hot (less than 400°C), and so are inefficient at small size: low temperature limits the power that such a reactor can produce (see Carnot's Theorem). For comparison, Gas turbine generators operate at well over 1000°C.

Thorium reactors have the advantage of operating at much hotter temperatures, and so would be viable at small size, but against that is the major disadvantage that they do not really exist.

Exactly - the vast bulk of what you see in the stereotypical picture of a nuclear power plant basically comprise the parts of a very large steam engine. It uses a heat source to boil water and then drive the steam through turbines to extract mechanical energy. The nuclear fluffers on this thread struggle with the difference between energy and power so good luck appealing to fundamental physical laws around heat engines. SMRs - in their long history - have only every found a use for military purposes because they solve a very specific need which is to keep subs and carriers powered while thousands of km from a base or fuel depot - where conventional fuel supply would be a logistical nightmare and highly vulnerable to enemy attack. And as it's military, money is no object, of course.

This (specific and only) winning advantage of SMRs for the military is of no value in civilian use. And the entire civilian industry has been pushing in the other direction for decades with bigger and hotter reactors in order to improve efficiency to try to regain some competitiveness initially lost to coal back in the 1980s/90s - an obvious response knowing that nuclear power generation is subject to Carnot efficiency. But so far they have failed. If large reactors like the EPR have proven uncompetitive, then a less efficient version of the same technology has no chance.

Lads, ye could be here arguing this for the next 20 years and still no answer will prove one sides view over the other.

One thing is for sure though. Energy Policy will be driven by whatver makes big businesses the most money. That is the way of this world. There is no getting away from it. It is being wrapped up in climate change now, will be something else in 50 years time If they "solve" climate change.

You think the Governments, Companies, Lobbyists, investors, Capitalists give a **** about any of this. Think again.

Take a look at the Snowy 2.0 story above. Projected cost 2 billion to 12 billion. Where is all that money going. That's just one project. Energy is an industry. Industry exists to make money.

I know plenty about the RESS - its set up to keep energy prices artificially high for the benefit of profit gouging energy companies who like to Greenwash their operations. Waffle about gas prices doesn't wash cos they have come down substantially over the past year with same companies very slow to pass on any benefits to consumers

more sobering analysis for the nuclear fanboys. They were told that Nuscale would be a flop but they just wished it wasn't.

Some of that is because of the weird experimental designs that british nuclear fuels went with way back when - gas cooled i think ,

but its a huge cost ,

And thats not 10 billion per station ,thats per reactor .. + they havent completed a decommisioning yet - so the costs could be way way way higher ... Or not

EDF are the current operators of british nuclear power stations , but they didnt build them , and the remaining stations arent the magnox design ..

Are edf on the hook to decommision these stations - or is that back on the british government?