Nuclear - future for Ireland?

nobody does and no planking will ever be approved

It’s the same 1-2 posters across boards going on about nuclear and the main one hasn’t a clue

Was saying they would vote SF to stop the wind madness of Green Party till I pointed out SF plan was to increase spend on wind generation and not stop it

As you have posted this reply in reference to a post of mine I can only assume the poster you are referring to is me.

When it comes to posters not having a clue your good self has been ran out of numerous threads here when caught spoofing and I have never said I would "vote SF to stop the wind madness of Green Party" In fact I challenged you months ago to go through any of my posts and show where I ever supported SF and I`m still waiting for you to get back to me.

It was pointed out to you by me and others from SF material you posted that the only vague references to wind generation by SF were for community or state owned wind farms with no figures as to what this would generate, how it would get us to net zero carbon emissions ( something as far as I recall that had to be repeatedly shown to you that was not the same as carbon neutral emissions, which you still appeared to not understand), and SF had nothing to say on offshore wind.

An energy to fuel system using hydrogen would have consummers paying not only for the electricity they use, but the same again for the electricity used to produce hydrogen and then pay again for that hydrogen when burned to generate electricity. On top of the €200 biliion capital cost of turbines, they would also be paying the cost of the infrastructure required to generate green hydrogen, the cost of desalination plants that would be required , the costs of hydrogen storage and distribution, and nobody can give a figure for all that or even know if it would work to the scale required. It`s a load of hopium, and very expensive hopium. If producing hydrogen is your thing then doing so using nuclear is a much more effecient means than using intermitten sources like wind and especially solar.

You keep bringing up Hikley " the most expensive energy plant ever built" but keep ignoring that NPPs built in South Korea have been on average one quarter the cost of Hinckley and that the strike price for Empire 1 wind generation to supply New York is the same as Hinckley, and for anyone who still doubts the increase in offshore wind costs, Northland, the largest member of the consortium, have estimated that the cost of building the 1 GW they have contracted with Taiwan to build will cost €6.5 Billion. That would leave our proposed 37 GW of offshore costing €240 Billion just for the capital cost of turbines alone.

Batteries to keep the grid operational during the kind of extended periods we have seen to date when wind has dropped to 6% and less is a nonsense.

I do not know if you have every been to California but when it comes to sunshine we ain`t no California. Our hours of sunshine annually are around one quarter of those of California. Incidentally If you are going to plug a 6 GW gap with solar, then in theory with an annual capacity factor of 11% you would need to install 55 GW of nameplate capacity. In reality, with solar having a capacity factor in Winter of probably not much more than 7% it would require installing 85 GW of nameplate solar capacity. To put that in perspective, we currently have 1 GW of installed solar nameplate capacity.

Battery tech is the fastest growing area of the energy sector, lithium will be consigned to specialist high energy density batteries. For utility scale batteries sodium will take over and there is literally no ceiling on sodium supplies.

Unlike nuclear renewables are still evolving exponentially and since they are already cost competitive with all other forms of generation - they will sweep the board as costs continue to plunge.

We can believe it if it ever happens.

And many of those advocating more reliance on weather based renewables are clear that massive grid expansion plus a wide variety of other projects are necessary. I've been getting YouTube ads from an activist group called "Build Our Grid" which demands a variety of investments to support weather-based renewables.

https://buildourgrid.ie/about-the-grid/#whatdemands

That, in addition to a laundry list of projects promulgated by the ESB and Eirgrid (list elsewhere presumably) they also want battery storage (presumably in large quantities) AND foreign interconnectors.

Needless to say, what projects they have in mind are not listed, nor is anything costed.

California also has large economies (states) surrounding it on land. They also don't have to worry about dunkelflaute as much as we do.

I think to be accurate, that ground has been broken on Bill Gates' molten sodium cooling plant. The natrium reactor design isn't expected to be approved by the US dept of whatever until 2026 at the earliest, so they're going ahead with whatever they can. Presumably while Bill is still with us and able to wield a shovel for the photo op.

There are four completed offshore wind projects? Most recent one being completed in August 2023. Meanwhile you touted earlier Natrium reactors, where only the US is seriously investing in the technology, a country with already relatively easy access to uranium and has a nuclear energy industry, two things which Ireland lacks.

What we don't lack is experience in building out wind turbines, which we can utilise to drive costs down.

The USA isn't building offshore wind because its climate doesn't provide the country with much in the way of wind resources. You may as well argue that Norway is mad to spend money drilling for gas because Ireland doesn't…

As for "Natrium" (a brand name for a design of Sodium Cooled Fast Neutron Reactor), the idea has promise, but Sodium-Cooled reactors have a poor operational record that has dragged down their availabilty factor (fortunately they are among the safest type of nuclear, so those l faults haven't involved injury or damage). I also worry about any "startup" being responsible for this kind of engineering, where safety is paramount - spending lots extra to avoid something that "might" happen is just not in the American start-up mindset.

The reason this technology is attractive to the US is that it can be run on decommissioned weapons-grade plutonium, which the US was obliged by treaty to dispose of. It did dispose of that material, by storage, but burning it for power was the original plan. Guess what happened to the first reactor in that proposed family..? Cancelled after massive cost and schedule overruns.

I'm not against this if it can be made to work... but it's still too expensive for Ireland to take a punt on; the alternative current options are just too expensive full stop...

Costs for who?? No evidence of that for consumers for sure….

They would definitely lose support. They would lose it locally from the people who would have to live next to it. Since it's just about impossible to get an Aerobic Digester through planning how easy do you think it will be to get a nuclear power plant through.

It's very much a marginal obsession with nuclear in Ireland so it would undoubtedly lose more voter support than it gained.

They would also lose support in the Dail when they had to try to change the law.

It would be the kiss of death for any party who backed it - which is why it has not and will not ever happen.

So we would have an example of this impediment to selling agricultural produce in the form France being unable to find buyers for French food products, by what you consider to be logic? No one outside France consumes French wines, cheeses, butter or anything else.

In 2021 France exported around €70 billion from it's agri/food sector while Ireland exported €15 billion worth.

As an argument it comprehensively falls flat on it's Brie.