Nuclear Energy for Ireland?

More than likely nobody will achieve those emissions targets, but that does not mean that we would avoid paying billions on top of countless billions wasted trying to for electricity generation. The E.U. and especially greens are big on carbon taxes as we have seen to date.

I don`t see where you should have a difficulty seeing a role for nuclear here. Finland has the same population as Ireland and generates 42% of its electricity from nuclear and is now self sufficient since their latest reactor went on line.

Huntstown is a gas fired plant. That is not going to help with reducing emissions or attain net zero by 2050. In fact with the gaping hole in this offshore 2050 plan it would only be a drop in the ocean generation wise.

If it`s the cost of nuclear you are worried about, the latest Finnish plant even being late and over budget still cost €11 billion and would provide over 30% of our present requirements. The 2050 offshore proposal will cost in excess of €200 billion and the state, as in we the citizens are caught on the hook for that with guaranteed state contracts where not only will consummers pay for what they use, they will also pay for whatever these companies generate even if we do not use or need it. They will also effectively pay on the double for any hydrogen generated electricity.

We may indeed have gas off the west coast, and oil and gas off the south coast, but similar to uranium greens are determined to ensure we never find out, but at least for uranium we do have strong indications that we do have deposits and pretty wide ranging ones at that.

You can't see the wood for the trees. The Olkiluoto-3 nuclear reactor in Finland was expensive, at 3 times it's original cost estimate, coming in at €11 billion for 1.65 GW, but it's still about a quarter the cost of utility scale solar in Ireland on the basis of energy actually produced.

Solar panels made using Uighur slave labour may get cheaper, but it won't be by as much as the already large price differential, and Korean built reactors are only about 62% the cost of OL3.

So reliable

https://yle.fi/a/74-20094407

Nuclear power plants go down for unscheduled maintainance which can take years to resolve. If the bulk of your power comes from nuclear then this can be a very big deal as France found out a few years ago.

So depending on a power generator which can have systemic fault issues which takes out multiple plants and a large proportion of generating capacity for extended periods is a very big deal.

This would be the exact vulnerability that Ireland would face because it would be dependant of a few large nuclear power plants which would displace investment in just about everything else.

Its deeply unstable scenario which is very difficult to plan for.

the long term attitude should be to be open to it "if the price is right" Ireland doesnt need to be an early adopter , if something is obviously good some country/technology will make it a no brainer

If you were looking to have a house built, would you be going for a builder who took 30 years on their last project or someone who took an average of 14 months on their last six houses?

If you dislike nuclear - the Chernobyl reference was a bit of a give away - sure you can find the worst possible example of how not to do it and tell everyone that all houses take 30 years to build, so don't bother looking any further at the topic of getting a house built, rent instead, but that's not a valid or rational approach to a topic.

Yes, NPPs take longer to build than any other enrgy source, but they are currently being built to last 60 years, which is also longer than anything else other than hydro.

Last year, France generated enough zero-carbon energy to meet 100% of their consumption, even though several reactors were still offline for repairs. But Chernobyl…

"Yes, that's the whole point."

You don't even know what the point is. It has something to do with CO2 emissions.

Being able to accurately forecast the 72% of the time you need to fire up the gas-turbines doesn't help you reduce national CO2 emissions.

This weather forecasting thing is utterly bizzare. it is not a magic salve for inadequate capacity factor and plays no part whatsoever in ameliorating the capacity factor inadequacies of renewables.

Weather forecasts do not reduce CO2 emissions, nuclear power has a greater CO2 reduction effect than any other power source, and it's not even close.

Annual direct CO2 emissions avoided per 1 GW of installed capacity by technology and displaced fuel (Mt CO2 per GW)

Effectively all our wind is onshore, meaning nuclear would have double the CO2 reduction effect.

I stopped reading your spamming posts some time ago.

We had a dearth of Solar and Wind during peak hours yesterday so the ESB sent out it's "turn down" notification asking people to use less energy.

I've gotten a few of the "flex event - we're short on power " notifications over the last year, but never a "flex event, we have an abundance of power" notification :(

I'm following the progress of various Gen IV reactors with interest as they can provide lower capacities at more economical prices - especially when doing levelised full cost ( full report linked here https://advisoranalyst.com/2023/05/11/bofa-the-nuclear-necessity.html/ )

Wind hovered between 400MW and 500MW for most of the day yesterday. They're forecasting a peak of 3.4GW tonight where we benefit least from it due to the slump in demand. Ah well! https://www.smartgriddashboard.com/#all/wind

Personally I think the best approach for Ireland would be nuclear power as a base supplemented by wind, hydro and tidal sea etc. renewables.

That said advances in battery storage may eventually become viable for storing excess renewable power for release as and when needed, this could herald a completely green power grid.