Nuclear Energy for Ireland?

So your answer to us not having to use fossil fuel to generate electricity is a gas fired peaking plant. That plant will generate less than 300 MW,

You could run it for 24 hours every day rather than 46 hours a year and it would be as much use as a hamster on a wheel in pluging the gap in generation of the 2050 offshore/hydrogen plan.

I thought the aim for 2050 was at least carbon nutural electricity generation by then. Biogas emits over 50% the CO2 of gas. And that is before you consider the carbon release from the land to grow what would be required to produce it. That is not going to get you to carbon neutral by 2050 or ever. Biogas is in the same realm as biomass when it comes to emissions.

How stupid do greens think people are. They have a proposed plan for 2050 that not only can they not put a price on, but is now shown as not going to come even close to meeting demand, and their solution is pile more uncosted plans into biogas hoping against hope, while ignoring that it will not carbon neutral, that this will work. They don`t just change the goal posts, they carry them off the pitch and come back with a basketball ring.

Last nuclear plant built in Europe started construction in 2008 and wasn't "fully" completed until 2019. The Russian government began planning for it in 2006.

2330 MW plant with 2 units

Building any type power plant it difficult, I work with guys that were in the energy industry. What a lot of people don't know is that no one will commit to building anything unless they have a guaranteed buyer for the electricity the plant produces.

So if you're throwing up a 5MW Wind turbine at a cost of €10m, before you even put a shovel in the ground you need to have someone(s) lined up to by that electricity over the next X years to cover the €10m.

Irelands current generation capacity is approx 7500 MW at the moment. So if you built a 2300MW plant you've increased supply so much (33%) that the price of electricity starts to fall. You cannot just turn off the the old plants as they are locked into those agreements mentioned above.

So maybe if you just built a 500MW plant? Unfortunately the economics of scale dictate that small Nuclear plants are not profitable enough to be worth investing in. So it's a catch 22. And all this before we've even gotten into the technical design.

Just to add, we're waiting over 20 years for a metro (something that most people actually want) we'll never get nuclear through given recent(ish) events in Japan as there is a lot of skepticism.

The only way it might go through is if it was part of an even bigger project, with huge power requirements, say for example and massive hydrogen production via electrolysis plant.

Irelands current generation capacity is approx 7500 MW at the moment. So if you built a 2300MW plant you've increased supply so much (33%) that the price of electricity starts to fall. You cannot just turn off the the old plants as they are locked into those agreements mentioned above.

Yeah, unfortunately I also believe this is the biggest issue facing Nuclear in Ireland in the short term.

While growth in demand over the next decade is predicted to be about 33%, it's still unlikely that we'll build a GW scale plant, even if it were paired with a hydrogen production/generation plant.

My personal hope is that one of the competing SMR designs will prove safe and cost effective and we'll be able to incorporate them into the grid at that point. (Of course, we'll have to repeal the legislative ban too, and get more than 25% of the population in favour, but that's surmountable)

@Capt'n Midnight

As you can see at the lowest points in August 2022 and July 2024 nuclear produced slightly more than 20GW when it used to produce 60GW+ in Dec-Jan. Even with the lower demand in summer that's still 30GW less than it used average.

Isn't that because Solar is producing more in the summer and there is less demand so they throttle back on the reactors?

Nuclear power is quite reliable, they normally build the plants with 2, 3 or 4 units for resilience. The cost of building them is going crazy though with all the additional safety requirements. They are also subject to mid life refits which are very expensive. decommissioning them too it very expensive. You need to build a massive plant to make it worth while. I think they need to have a triple exchangers (three sets of water) now. If that gets damaged or has a problem it's probably just cheaper to shut that unit down and depends on the other units for the foreseeable 🤣

You're probably correct but that doesn't mean they'll build a plant, will take at least 15 years to build one here without all the messing around. You're going off the deep end there with GW :)

A standard Gas fired plant would take about 3 or 4 years to build. In the right conditions the Gas fired plant will have itself paid off before the Nuclear plant is even built. With that in mind, trying to get people to invest in Nuclear is hard.

SMR's work but their history/purpose is very different from those of Civilian reactors. Civilian reactors were designed as part of a system to provide cheap electricity to homes, business and industry. SMR's were designed as part of a system to destroy homes, business and industry at any cost.

Ah cool - so you are making the misunderstanding I thought, and also a mistake comparing time periods, and the drawing a very inaccurate conclusion!

Firstly, the dip in nuclear generation was primarily a planned event, as previously described. No point in going into it again.

The second new issue is that you're not comparing like for like either! You're comparing a period of peak demand and peak generation, with a period of substantially lower demand and lower generation. Nuclear stations in France are typically configured for load-following. During summers where there's more solar, nuclear plants are planned to have lower output.

The graph you're waving as a big "look how unreliable nuclear is" is simply a reflection of the seasonal generation curve for French nuclear. It doesn't show what you're claiming. Eyeballing it, it looks like it shows a 33% drop in nuclear generation as compared to historic levels. For this year in particular we can be fairly sure the available stations were running at peak output though as France was a net importer that year. For all prior years we can't make that assumption.

I could've made that clearer. There are two relevant adjustments:

1. Power demand is lower in the summer, therefore power plants configured as "load follower" produce less energy.
2. Things such as solar are known to produce more energy in summer as compared to winter, so as solar generation grows the expectation (all other things being equal) is that generators configured as "load follower" will generate less energy.

Edit: specifically - this is why comparisons between a December period and a June period make no sense and can't produce a meaningful inference.

For your claim about unreliability - again - the planned maintenance from earlier years was deferred to Summer 2022, making this an outlier year and not the big gotcha you continually claim. I believe 4 reactors had *unplanned* maintenance in 2022 which happens. Such is life.

However, if this year is the example you keep referencing, then the unplanned failure of Hydro in Summer 2022 (the actual reason France were a net importer or energy for 2022) should really be top of mind for you.

We're expecting hotter and drier summers over the next decade, which really means France should be shutting down Hydro stations and replacing them with literally anything else.

We should also exclude Wind power due to it's failure across Europe in 2021 :)

Perhaps that's why they're redoubling on good ole reliable Nuclear :)

I can understand fears about leaks, and waste disposal, but attacking Frances nuclear stations on capacity factor, fighting against the data, is a losing battle. The capacity factor is still far better than renewables.

I won't rehash it again - but please please just read a couple pf articles about the planned and unplanned maintenance. It's been outlined several times now and you're factually incorrect.

In addition to that, I'd really recommend reading up on maintenance cycles for all generator types as it's quite informative.

it seems to be as simple as there is a difference between Male and Female sensibilities on Nuclear, were fked so

https://www.vox.com/2015/5/27/8665401/nuclear-power-gender

I'd agree with you on a lot of those points but the red tape and semantics of power plant construction remain.

You need to get someone to agree to buy the power before you commit to building a plant, that's just the way it works in the western work where we have privatized power generation.

It's easier to sell 1 apple to a lad that wants 5 apples than it is to sell 100 apples to a lad that wants 5 apples.

a completely renewable grid

Not possible unless you're Iceland.

In principle I agree with you, we should have Nuclear plants instead of LNG, Oil and Coal plants, to supplement as big a renewable grid as we can.

But in practice it's a near impossible task, trying to build a new power plant somewhere will take decades. Look what happened for Apple/Athenry, planning took so long the pulled out. And that was for something the locals kind of wanted for jobs. You look at something they don't want (Corrib), and see how far ya go.

It's Far easier to get a farmer to lease a field to you for X years and you place Solar down on it. That's what's happening all around Dublin Airport at the moment.

I agree with you, that its cheaper short term but more expensive long term… Welcome to Ireland.

Selling energy from a nuclear plant would be fairly straightforward if the goal were to decommission coal and gas generators. You'd have a date where the polluting generators would be offline and away you go!

Separately - electricity prices could certainly afford to drop from their current rate, so a moderate abundance of energy would be good, and may also support further growth in the IT sector

The world and it`s mother knows we are not going to come even close to the target of 80% of emissions reductions by 2030.and you do not appear to understand that for 2050 emissions are supposed to be net zero. You are not going to achieve that using peaking/backup gas plants.

Do you really not get the irony of " trust their legacy to having a nuclear plant built on time and on budget" where you are promoting a proposed 2050 plan that nobody can give a budget for, where 25% of it cannot even be constructed, and even if it could would not provide enough to fulfill our 2050 projected requirements ?

Yeah but neither is anyone else.

And that's not just electrical power generation that causes carbon emissions, it's cars, trucks, heating systems, industrial applications and agriculture.

I've been trying to think of a situation where Nuclear might work in Ireland but it's just a non-runner

For country like Ireland, with the population we have and where that population is based, you're gonna be looking at something like Krško (State owned plant thats shared between Slovenia and Croatia. Built when they were both part of Yugoslavia.) It's a 700MW plant

To build something like that now in Ireland you'd be talking 15 years minimum plus billions in investments by private firms. For a Nuclear plant that small the economics of scale work very much against it.

Compare it to Huntstown GT1 which is scheduled to start work this year and be operational in 2027. (I'm fairly sure it took 5 years to build Unit 2 out there)

Huntstown footprint is smaller that Krško, It generates more power (albeit a bit more expensive) than Krško, and likely cost a fraction of what Krško cost to build. Note: we have our own gas off the west coast, we don't have our own Uranium.

There is absolutely no comparison between the two. Unless the ESB is going to build the plant there is no way a company like Energia is going to invest billions in a Nuclear plant.

Note: the ESB hasn't built a power plant in nearly 40 years. (Moneypoint 1985)