Wind Power vs. Nuclear Power: How they compare

[Cut Once]

3 questions and answers, and a comparison:

1. We have no nuclear fuel? Not so, according to the geologists! One of Minister Ryan's first acts was to refuse an application to explore for uranium in Donegal, on the basis that it might be used for nuclear generation if (when?) it was found.

2. We have no solution to waste storage? We wouldn't need our own solution, any more than we would need to develop fuel fabrication facilities! What we would do is join the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership which would guarantee supply of fuel elements and would require that we return the same quantity of used fuel elements at end of life (to ensure no risk of proliferation).

3. Wind is cheaper? Not accoprding to the CER (Commission for Energy Regulation)! They have just announced that next year's subsidy for wind generation will be €40 million. If this is the stuff that is going to make us all rich ("we'll be the wind barons of Europe" and other guff), then why does it need to be subsidised? Why is the wind industry not paying money back to the customer rather than the other way around?

Comparison: France is the most nuclear country in Europe and has the cheapest electricity. Denmark has the most wind generation in Europe and has the dearest electricity.

[wombat]

Comparison: France is the most nuclear country in Europe and has the cheapest electricity. Denmark has the most wind generation in Europe and has the dearest electricity.

Is that correct? where do we rank?

[Pabilito]

Is this a divorce case?.. “Wind Power V Nuclear Power”.. If only Wind and Nuclear got back together we could have a fuching great storm!

[Cut Once]

Is that correct? where do we rank?

The easy bits to verify are:
France has the most nuclear
Denmark has the most wind
Ireland is 6th most expensive for industrial and domestic electricity.

The hard bit, and I admit I may be only approximately correct in saying that France is the cheapest and Denmark is the dearest (but it is close enough to be broadly correct) may be discerned from the latest EU data. http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/cac...-10-022-EN.PDF

Denmark has the dearest domestic electricity charges although it has recently decreased prices dramatically (as has Ireland due to fossil fuel price drops) while France's prices have increased, so the price differences have narrowed a little bit.

But it is clear that if we are aiming to be the "world leader" in wind energy and are discounting all possibility of nuclear energy, then there is only one direction in which our already-high electricity prices are going to go relative to the rest of Europe, which is the important parameter for our economic well-being.

[brine]

2. We have no solution to waste storage? We wouldn't need our own solution, any more than we would need to develop fuel fabrication facilities! What we would do is join the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership which would guarantee supply of fuel elements and would require that we return the same quantity of used fuel elements at end of life (to ensure no risk of proliferation).

GNEP is an invention of the nuclear industry and the Bush administration. It amounts to some glossy handouts and powerpoint presentations and depends heavily on funding from the US congress, which is continually being cut in recent years. It would be very silly to start a nuclear programme reliant on others for both fuel and disposal, this is not energy independence.

No, if Ireland wants a nuclear programme then the waste should be disposed of in Ireland.

3. Wind is cheaper? Not accoprding to the CER (Commission for Energy Regulation)! They have just announced that next year's subsidy for wind generation will be €40 million. If this is the stuff that is going to make us all rich ("we'll be the wind barons of Europe" and other guff), then why does it need to be subsidised? Why is the wind industry not paying money back to the customer rather than the other way around?

Comparison: France is the most nuclear country in Europe and has the cheapest electricity. Denmark has the most wind generation in Europe and has the dearest electricity.

Absolutely everything in Denmark is expensive. VAT is 25% there too.

The wind industry in Denmark is a boon to the economy there. Half of the world's wind turbines are built there and the wind industry employs 20,000 people in Denmark.

Wind power is completely transparent too. You have looked up subsidy that it receives and the figures are in the public domain.

Nuclear power is not succesful commercialy at all, but the figures on subsidy are kept quiet as it is often a matter of national security. Saying France has cheap electricity is like saying France has cheap TGV train tickets. Sure, the end product appears cheap, but nuclear power in France, just like its railways, is a state run enterprise that is heavily subsidised by tax euros. I'm not saying subsidy is bad (French railways are great), but don't make the argument that Nuclear power doesn't receive subsidy and wind does, because that's just not true. Nuclear power receives massive government funding.

Also, nuclear power stations need to be insured, but there isn't a single insurance company willing to cover a Nuclear plant, anywhere. So who picks up the tab? The taxpayer.

[FrankSpeaks]

Dumbass eh?

Nuclear power is the safest, cheapest, most environmental friendly system of electrical generation that exists in the world today!
The only reason that waste is a problem is because the anti nuke people want to make it into a problem.
Dozens of good engineering solutions have been proposed but all have been rejected by the greenios because they worship at the high alter of Ludditism
and spend their lives shooting down perfectly good scientific solutions because it would be against their religion to accept for one minute that nuclear power had a roll to play.
They luxuriate in this position without once coming up with one solution that might help to solve the present crisis.
Irresponsible, juvenile and downrightly disingenuous, I call it!

+1

[GreenIsGood]

No, if Ireland wants a nuclear programme then the waste should be disposed of in Ireland.

Agreed. Hypocritical though.

How about the waste co2 from fossil fuel plant needed to back up wind turbines? Or the waste co2 from peat bogs the wind developers like to destroy?

That CO2 will hang around in the atmosphere for much longer than the lifetime of safely vitrified and buried nuclear waste.

Hey, but that's OK. Better kill people in semi-arid regions like the Sahel than have to worry about a one-in-a-trillion chance you might get cancer from scary-sounding nuclear waste.

The wind industry in Denmark is a boon to the economy there. Half of the world's wind turbines are built there and the wind industry employs 20,000 people in Denmark.

Economically illiterate. Subsidies to danish wind industry destroyed net jobs by diverting resources from other, more productive, parts of the danish economy.

But keep your head in the sand if you prefer.

Also, nuclear power stations need to be insured, but there isn't a single insurance company willing to cover a Nuclear plant, anywhere. So who picks up the tab? The taxpayer.

Nuclear has the best safety record. By FAR the worst safety record is hydro. One damburst in china killed over 200,000 people. Don't hear greenie whinging about that.

[orbit]

Nuclear power is not succesful commercialy at all, but the figures on subsidy are kept quiet as it is often a matter of national security. Saying France has cheap electricity is like saying France has cheap TGV train tickets. Sure, the end product appears cheap, but nuclear power in France, just like its railways, is a state run enterprise that is heavily subsidised by tax euros. I'm not saying subsidy is bad (French railways are great), but don't make the argument that Nuclear power doesn't receive subsidy and wind does, because that's just not true. Nuclear power receives massive government funding.

It's certainly true that the economics of nuclear power are much more complicated and harder to compare with other generation types. Also, (ironically) it's much more suited to the old style of monolithic state-owned, generating systems we had in the past.

Some of the costs are also unknown and deferred to the future. But, it's not credible to claim it's not successful commercially, or that French electricity is really being subsidised. Why would the French tax payer subsidise the cheapest electricity in Europe (end export it)? It would be more believable if it was closer to being the most expensive.

It stands to reason that nuclear becomes very competitive when the price of fossil fuels rise, regardless of what happens to the cost of Uranium. That's why there is so much interest in it throughout the world today, and there wasn't during the latter part of the last century.

We can continue to bury our heads in the sand though, and take the easy option, which is more and more wind, and more and more cheap gas plants, which will be subject to ever higher fossil fuel costs, and high CO2 production.

[Tombo]

No, if Ireland wants a nuclear programme then the waste should be disposed of in Ireland.

That makes no sense.

[Cut Once]

No, if Ireland wants a nuclear programme then the waste should be disposed of in Ireland.

We should be prepared to dispose of it in Ireland, but we should also be open to commercial offers from international partners to store the spent fuel.

Absolutely everything in Denmark is expensive. VAT is 25% there too.

The wind industry in Denmark is a boon to the economy there. Half of the world's wind turbines are built there and the wind industry employs 20,000 people in Denmark.

There is a difference between electricity generated by wind and the wind industry which manufactures and exports wind turbine machinery. There is evidence, as GiG has said, that the wind industry focus in Denmark has actually cost the economy a considerable number number of other jobs.

Neighbouring Sweden has the same energy tax regime as Denmark, but is much cheaper than either Denmark or Ireland (source: EU Energy handbook, prices for Q1 2009 in €cents / kWh).

.....................Household...............Indus trial
Denmark ..........26.98 ....................8.59
Sweden ...........16.02 ...................6.67
Ireland ............20.37 ..................13.14

Nuclear power is not succesful commercialy at all, but the figures on subsidy are kept quiet as it is often a matter of national security. Saying France has cheap electricity is like saying France has cheap TGV train tickets. Sure, the end product appears cheap, but nuclear power in France, just like its railways, is a state run enterprise that is heavily subsidised by tax euros. I'm not saying subsidy is bad (French railways are great), but don't make the argument that Nuclear power doesn't receive subsidy and wind does, because that's just not true. Nuclear power receives massive government funding.

If nuclear is not commercial, why do so many countries want it? Why is the UK allowing foreign private companies to rebuild its nuclear portfolio, and why are they willing to do so knowing that no subsidy will be granted? Because it makes perfect commercial sense for both parties to do so.

Also, nuclear power stations need to be insured, but there isn't a single insurance company willing to cover a Nuclear plant, anywhere. So who picks up the tab? The taxpayer.

This hasn't stopped any of the 30+ countries that have already gone nuclear, and this number is growing. Why should we be any different? We insure our banks for a whole lot more than that, and we have actually paid out on that one.