Should Ireland go Nuclear?

Currently Ireland generates about 4.829 GW of electricity. Recently there has been a lot of talk about bringing Nueclar Energy into Ireland. Considering that an European Pressurised Reactor (EPR) the ones the Fins are installing at the moment can produce 1.6 GW of energy it would seems like a good idea. Also as many Nuclear plants consist of more then one reactor. We could technically get all our power from Nuclear and reduce our emission drastically.

When ever you talk about Nuclear energy one word springs to mind. Chernobyl. Now I wouldn’t get into this as we all know the story with it. The reason for the disaster is three fold. One, the design of the reactor was terrible the RMBK design had many flaws the flaw with the control rods was one of the main causes of the accident. The people carrying out the test messed up. They reduced the power to fast. Thirdly the clean up operation was disastrous.

Even though time has moved on since then and reactor design and procedures have moved on from then. Designs of plants are vastly superior and pretty much impervious to terrorist attack. But another Chernobyl is a possibility if even a remote possibility the advantages of Nuclear energy have to far out way the negatives.

Firstly some stuff about radiation. Radiation is quiet a normal thing. Banana’s are in fact quiet radioactive with Potassium 40. A cargo container of banana’s could in fact look like someone trying to smuggle a nuclear weapon. Also where would medicine be without x-rays. By far and away the largest radioactive treat to us in Ireland is radon from the ground. I think Salthill in Galway is in fact on of the most radioactive places in Ireland which is on the other side of the country to Sellafield.

One of the main sources for energy loss in electricty generation is in transmission. When a current travels through a wire it heats up the wire proportional to the amount of current flowing in the wire. This effect is what is used in kettle’s. In transmission wires the voltage is very high. This is because the current is inversely related to the voltage. With Nuclear power because of its high output it will be one big power station. In Ireland we have the least dense population in Europe. This means that to serve the people of the country requires a lot of transmission lines per person then the rest of Europe. Therefore this means that the transmission system will bring in very high inefficiencies in the transmission of power. There is roughly a 20% loss in electrical lines on a 1000km journey with our most high voltage lines. Ireland has over 5000km of cables which would mean (terribly rough calculation on my part as it does not take in population density centres, line voltages and numerour other stuff so don’t quote me on this) roughly a 66% loss over the entire country. Now if we have a nuclear power station in lets say Wexford to power the country because of the length of the transmission network needed to distribute the power. The cost of delivering the electricity to the customer increases rapidly as you have to not only produce what the customer wants you also have to produce what is lost. This is taken into account by the ESB already and they produce more then is used. But because they have numerous power stations spread throughout the country the distance between user and power station is short. However a big power plant in Wexford could be powering places hundreds of miles away leading to massive losses and increasing the price per kwhr for the consumer. Because of our needs we only need 1 or 2 Nuclear power stations the transmission distance would be a lot longer then they are now adding to the cost per KWhr. This same reason also runs in the favour of wind. As a turbine could be near every village the loses would be small. Also there is probably issues with having to upgrade the national grid but I don’t know anything about the state of the grid so I will just say we can’t simply plug in the Power Station we would have to redo a lot of the countries national grid.

Also one of the roles of the government should be to encourage to promote competition in the electrical generation market as this has positives for the market and society. Nuclear power plants will lead to a centralised National grid which will make it difficult for competition to enter the market. Peter Nolan of the Freedom Inistitute talks about the need for Competition in the Business Post

A Nuclear plant would produce a high % of our power. That means that it would mean that we are putting our eggs in one basket. If for instance we took 1 generator off the market for maintance we would be taking out a large portion of our electricity generation capacity. This would mean that we would have to then import electricity from Europe as backup. This requires interconnectors. Currently there is 1 interconnector between us and Britian that comes via the north. It imports about 330MW into Ireland. This would have to be expanded about 500% to cover the fall in electricity if the generator(presumming we follow the Fins) had to be taken down for maintance. The interconnector being proposed between Ireland and Wales has a capacity of 500MW and is expected to cost €183 million. The interconnector beween Northern Ireland and Scotland cost about €220 million.

Nuclear will not make Ireland self-sufficient in energy. It requires Uranium to work. Currently the main sources of Uranium are in North America and Australia which is nice as they are stable unlike the sources of oil. It is predicted that there is about 50 years of supplies left. There is renewed interest in nuclear in the world. China is planning to build 32 plant in 15 years. The demand for Urainium will increase further decreasing the amount left. If new resources are found they are predicted to be most likely found in China, Africa and Russia which are also not that nice, stable and as the Ukrainian Gas controversy showed they would not be unwilling to use resources for political ends. While it is possible to recycle it that requires reprossing plants which are expensive and increase the cost of the fuel. The cost of reprocessing is expensive it is predicted that until the cost of Uranium is at $360 per Kg will reprocessing be economical. Thorp in Sellafield cost £2.1 billion to build.

The reason Nuclear is coming back in vogue is due to the increase in oil prices. Oil in the last 4 years has increased by 300% and is considered high. Uranium on the other hand has increased by 400% and is considered low. While the cost of the fuel is a large proportion of the cost with fossel fuel burning (60% in a coal station for example) then with Nuclear it still about 10% of the cost and Uranium is set to rise as it is considered at a low price and demaned is increasing. In case you are wondering the current price is about $40 pre KG. Thus it would require a 900% increase to make reprocessing feasible.

The costs of building Nuclear plants are huge. The new plant in Finland was €3.2 billion. This figure is considered by some to be low balled by the companies and is an as built basis. This means that if the cost of the plant is over run then the company building it covers the rest of the cost. The company building it is Areva which is 84% owned by the French government. A new reactor has not been built in years. This reactor in Finland is an EPR reactor which the French company that is building the plant has been working on. It has yet to be fully tested and operated this will be the first plant it will be used in. This plant is needed by them as they need to test the reactor. They promised a load factor of 90 percent, a degree of efficiency of 36 percent, a technical operating life of 60 years, a 15-percent lower consumption of uranium than for earlier reactors, and considerably lower operating and maintenance costs than at existing reactors. This is considered optimistic. With so few nuclear reactors being built in the world and with varying designs giving various operating costs it is difficult to get what the generation costs of a plant are. While with other forms which are widespread like oil and gas the cost per kwHr (includes building and decommissioning cost) is well known. Thus figures on cost per KWhr are open to interpretation and vary hugely.Not only has there been many papers about the costs there is also papers about the papers.

The figure from the International Energy Agency is 1.2–2.7 p/kWh while the forecast for Sizewell B the latest British plant is 6p/kWh. The figure for the Canadian association is 3.3/kWh. While MIT have said 3.7-4.4p/kWh and the Royal Academy of Engineers say 2.3 Which of these figures is right I have no idea. All come from various good sources and all differ so take your pick. Many of the low estimates are based on plants that got state aid. So should that be included in the calculation. I would say yes and take a guesstamation figure close to 3.5p but as they say lies dahm lies and statistics.

So then what are the costs roughly of other plants from Royal Academy of Engineers.

Gas 2.2p

Coal 2.5p

Clean Coal 3.2p

On Shore Wind 3.7

Off Shore 5.5p

The Graph came from the Economist

Again wind is a controversial figure with other sources claiming lower figures for wind but I will deal with that in a post about what to do with the future energy needs.

Most of those figures did not to my knowledge deal with the waste issue so they do not included the cost of the managing the nuclear waste. Nuclear waste is radioactive and highly dangerous for thousands of years. Thus the waste has to monitored carefully. Conventional wisdom is that it has to watched for 100 years very closely and then can be buried in highly elaborated specially built geological caves about a km under the ground however none have been built yet in the world. The costs for the latest Finish plant are predicted .

“The total investment costs of the disposal facility are estimated to be 503 M€ (Million Euros), the total operating costs are 1,923 M€ and the decommissioning and the closure costs are 116 M€ totaling 2,542 M€. The investment costs of the above ground facility are 142 M€, the operating costs are 1,678 M€. The repository investment costs are 360 M€ and the operating costs are 245 M€. The decommissioning costs are 7 M€ and the closure costs are 109 M€.

The one thing that is probably saving Nuclear in a debate is Kyoto. Nuclear has less carbon emissions then fossil fuels. Even though the mining and the milling produce carbon dioxide is it not as much as fossil fuels. Thus it can reduce carbon emissions for a country and thus save it from being penalised by Kyto emissions trading. However I am not 100% convinced by the dangers of global warming. But I am convinced of the dangers of radioactive waste. If we want to reduce emission creating an environmental problem for 1000 years is not to way to go about it.

Nuclear is not the option for Ireland. The economics of it do not suggests that it has any great advantages to it. Coupled together with the peculiarities of the Irish Transmission network, the smallness of the country, the cost of dealing with waste, the running out of Uranium, the cost of reprocessing, the security of supply issues and the likely delays in construction due to protests the case for Nuclear in Ireland just doesn’t add up. Add to the mix what would happen in the remote likelihood of an explosion and Nuclear just doesn’t make sense.

For more read the recent British Sustainable Development Comissions report The Role of Nuclear Power in a Low Carbon Economy. Which argues against additional Nuclear capacity