This memorandum was circulated to TDs in or about May of 1975; it arose out of some meetings called by the writer with engineers and concerned citizens, to examine the situation arising from the oil crisis, with the sudden increase in price, and to oppose the political lobbying for nuclear power as the alternative, which was being done by the ESB technocrats.

INTRODUCTION

It has been commissioned by a group of public-spirited citizens, who wish to be known as the 'Conserve' group, and whose main interest in the matter is the reduction by all possible means of their own personal energy bills, as well as that of the nation.

They are also concerned that the long-term implications of investment in nuclear power be given close attention, and that the state in all matters relating to energy should seek advice from appropriately qualified and experienced people who are not connected with an existing energy-supplying agency. In this memorandum we outline the nature of the hazards which underlie the development of nuclear power and examine some alternative sources of energy. We suggest means whereby more utility may be obtained from a given input of thermal energy than is currently the case. We point out that there are legislative obstacles to the achievement of a conservationist energy economy, and that exhortations to use less energy, even if accompanied by burning pound notes on the TV screen, are unlikely to be effective without concrete specific actions. Finally, we suggest some specific legislative measures.

NUCLEAR POWER

Arguments for a nuclear reactor tend to be based on measures of component performances linked together in a theoretical model. Such arguments tend to ignore (a) the possibility of human error (b) the catastrophic effects of failure (c) the possibility of sabotage, terrorism or war.

To illustrate the former, consider a report from the Irish Times on March 31 of this year. Under the headline 'Human Error and Nuclear Devastation', it was reported that ".......an engineer's error (had) started the fire at the Brown's Ferry power station, Alabama, which damaged the main control equipment and in the process cut out the emergency safety system designed to stop the nuclear core of a reactor from overheating....

"........The Power Station in Alabama has two nuclear reactors of the boiling water type - giving over 2,000 megawatts - both built by the General Electric Company of America. This is one of two designs used in the United States for atomic power stations. Both were criticised heavily on safety grounds when Britain's Central Electricity Generating Board proposed two years ago to switch from British to American designs but were stopped by the Government.

"The fire at Brown's Ferry started among electrical cables beneath the control room when an engineer used an unshielded candle to check for draughts in the cable ducts. A plastic covering caught light accidentally. ....The fire cut out the emergency systems despised to keep the reactor cool in the event of an accident.

".... Operators at the plant managed to arrange a temporary scheme using other pumps, not intended as safety equipment, to retain the water level in the reactor. In terms of safety design, nuclear engineers can only regard it as a highly unsatisfactory state of affairs."

The environmental hazard is not confined to the catastrophic effects of failure. Even under favourable working conditions, the spent fuel rods have to be transported under 'absolutely safe' conditions for re-processing. The need for 'absolute safety' arises because in the event of spillage or rupture of a container, toxic radioactive fission fragments could leak into the outside world, ending up with high probability in food for human consumption. Fission fragments have identical chemical properties with ordinary non-radioactive atoms and so can be absorbed into organisms as nutrients. One particular by-product, plutonium, is virtually unknown in nature;it has been called the most toxic substance known.

Among the effects o£ eating...radioactive food are (a) sterility (b) production of mutations (c) cancer.

Supporters of the nuclear power programme have attempted to measure these risks and have come up with 'acceptable' levels of risk. Such estimates, however, need to be weighted with the cumulative effect of genetic changes resulting from a nuclear catastrophe. We have no right to poison the environment irrevocably with plutonium and leave massive other unresolved radioactive waste problems to the detriment of our descendants.

Yet with the current nuclear power programme this is just what we are doing. Just because public opinion in Europe has not caught up with the nuclear hazard, we in Ireland need not be complacent. It will in the end catch up, as it has done in the United States. We can, for once, be in advance of European public opinion, and opt out of the race to install nuclear power before our own environment is threatened.at close quarters.

What then are the alternatives?

ALTERNATIVES TO NUCLEAR ENERGY

It is now the policy of the oil producing nations. to operate a 'tailing off' procedure whereby they only produce each year a % of the known reserves. This gives us time to adapt our energy consumption patterns over a period of time, setting ourselves a target of achieving (say) 1% greater utility from each unit of energy, using fossil fuels ever more astutely, while the alternative technologies are developed.

There is another alternative: the fusion reaction. This is the power-source of the sun itself. It is currently being studied in the USA, the UK and the USSR, in large research establishments devoted to what is known as plasma physics. (There is a link into this work via Dr Michael Sexton, of University College, Cork; the Irish physicists in general are aware of what is going on but few topics in this highly sophisticated field lend themselves to research on a university laboratory scale. Dr Sexton's work is in one of these areas.)

It is predicted, on the basis of trends since fusion work started two decades ago, that electric power £mm nuclear fusion will be with us by about the year 2000; thus it is within reach.

Fusion power, relatively speaking, is cleaner. It is not associated with radioactive products constituting a long-term hazard to the genetic process, as is uranium fission, although there is a short-term radioactive hazard due to the neutron activation process. It is a valid alternative worth waiting for.

The long-term strategy, therefore, may be summarized as follows:

'Spin out the fossil fuels, using them ever more cleverly, getting more utility per unit energy, until fusion and solar energy constitute economic alternatives.'

Within the above long-term strategy, we can examine the short-term expedients available to us under the following headings:

(a) systems for getting more utility out at each unit of fossil fuel consumption. In this we cover heat pumps, district heating systems and transportation.

(b) alternative energy sources available with present technology: biological wastes, wind, tide, solar energy.

The above distinction is made in order to emphasise the fact that fossil fuels, once gone, are gone for good, so that the systems of type (a) are to be regarded as relatively short-term expedients to tide us over until non-wasting sources (type (b) plus nuclear fusion) are available in adequate quantity.

The earlier we can develop alternative systems, the longer it will be possible to extend the run-down period for fossil fuels.

In the following sections we expand on these expedients, giving where possible sources of further information. In a final section we suggest specific policies or legislative changes such as to foster and encourage the development of a conservationist approach to energy, and thereby avoiding the need for investing in nuclear technology with its accompanying dubious economics and undoubted genetic hazards.

MORE UTILITY PER UNIT ENERGY

Gas is a highly refined, high value fuel, unlike the residual heavy fuel oil used by the ESB for its large power-stations. Its use at Kinsale for direct conversion to electricity is anything but conservationist, for reasons which are developed below.

In a large-scale thermal power station, over 60% of the heat from the fuel is dissipated in warming the water of the sea. It is, however, possible by the use of back-pressure turbines to recover up to 80% of the heat from the fuel in a useful form, ie either as electricity or as useful heat (at some temperatures like 120 degrees C). Typically, a 10 MW(e) station could produce 20 MW(th) of useful heat as a by-product; if it were designed to maximise the electrical output it would produce perhaps 12 MW(e) of electricity and throw the residual heat away at (say) 25 degrees C.

District heating systems have been studied by the ESB engineers: a paper by Chapman and O'Reilly was read on April 10 1975 to the inaugural meeting of the District Heating Association of Ireland in UCD (Merrion Street). This embodied an ESB design study, based on heating Dublin from Ringsend. It described a long-term (20 years) project, of which the economics appeared to be close to break-even.

However, the ESB has not shown evidence of interest in small-scale district-heating or process-heating schemes, such as are feasible with modern diesel or gas engines. A series of such projects were described by A B Shearer in a paper presented to a joint meeting of mechanical and electrical engineers on November 15 1974. The bones of the Shearer position are as follows: it is possible for a system producing electricity and district (or process) heat to show good economic returns down to a scale as small as 1MW(e). Larger systems (10 MW) will run on residual oil; all systems will run well on gas. Below 1 MW(e) there are problems in managing the interconnections between the local system and the electricity grid.

The principal objection, on the part of the ESB, appears to be based on the fact that small-scale schemes use the more expensive refined fuel. Yet they themselves are proposing to burn the ultimate in refined fuels, gas, in a large thermal power-station at Kinsale.

Electricity transmitted from Kinsale to points of industrial use would be subject to transmission losses. Gas if piped from Kinsale would be available as local energy, loss-free.

The correct economic and conservationist use for the Kinsale gas is therefore to pipe it into a national gas grid, from which it would be available for local electricity production in small power-stations coupled with district (or industrial process) heating schemes. The capital cost per installed KW for a small scale gas-engine system is of the order of £100; with waste heat recovery the cost of production of a unit of electricity is of the order of 0.67p. In the dispersed, multi-centred small-scale system you get overall recovery of over 70% of the energy in the gas; in a central system producing electricity you only you.get 35% or.less.

With comparable capital costs in both cases, it is clear which system is preferable.

To fix ideas, the degree of dispersion envisaged is such that a municipal housing scheme, a complex of schools, with swimming pool etc, or a factory employing some hundreds of workers, might have its own small power station, fed by gas from the gas grid, and supplying all power and heat for its captive market. The electricity grid it would regard as stand-by, paying a high price on the few occasions it used it.

Further data on dispersed total-energy schemes was given by Professor W Murgatroyd, of Imperial College, London, at the IIRS conference on National Energy Utilisation (March 4 - 5, 1975); this basically reinforced the Shearer thesis referred to above, from the standpoint of British industrial experience.

Indeed, British industrial experience since the period of power-cuts has been that once a stand-by generator is installed, it pays to run it and to use the grid as stand-by, especially if process heat can be utilised as a by-product which would otherwise have had to be produced in a traditional oil-fired boiler system.

A small number of large factories in Ireland (including Guinness's) generate their own electric power along with process heat. The rise in fuel costs has brought down substantially the threshold of size of firms above which this becomes economic. This trend has been reinforced by improvements in the reliability and maintenance requirements of diesel engines.

There appear to be institutional arrangements between the IDA and the ESB whereby the negotiations between the ESB and a new firm setting up are complete before the IDA makes the announcement. This makes it virtually impossible for a supplier of 'total energy' (ie locally-produced electricity-plus process heat) packages to bid for the energy system contract. Such systems, if initiated at the 'greenfield' state of a venture, can-have a payback of 2 years.

One such system has been installed for a small firm in a western Dublin suburb by a Dublin firm of consulting engineers. Overall thermal efficiency of 80% is claimed for a 3.6 MW generating set running on residual oil (3500 sec). Steam is raised in an exhaust-gas boiler, while the engine jacket provides environmental hot water.

Other opportunities exist for integrating electricity production with useful waste heat:

(a) in the neighbourhood of existing glass-house schemes (eg Rush) to build a diesel-powered generating station on a scale necessary to replace the oil-fired glass-house boilers, at a rate of roughly 1MW (th) per acre of glass. The electricity could be under ESB control and fed to the grid. The ESB could afford to do this and sell the heat to the growers at a price comparable to or better than the present subsidised oil price, at no cost to the community.

(b) in the neighbourhood of existing peat-fired generators, to develop glass-house schemes. This is now practicable, because peat is a 'preferred' fuel; it was not practicable when the peat generators were not used for carrying the base-load, and the supply of waste beat was intermittent.

(c) to mine the Arigna 'crow-coal': the feasibility of this was outlined by Vincent Layden, Arigna Collieries, at the IIRS conference referred to above. At current oil prices this began to look economic but where is the market for low-grade heat near an Arigna power-station? There are two solutions:

(1) site a heat-using process near it (eg a chip-board factory);

(2) move the power-stations to accessible population centres (Carrick, Athlone), develop district heating schemes and ship the coal by water in the European manner, using the Shannon navigation (now re-opening up to Lough Allen). The ash from the crow-coal would need to be processed into building blocks (rather than dumped) for shipping by rail throughout the country.

These are cited as examples of the type of project that needs to be studied, rather than as actual propositions.

- The general underlying principle is not to consider any investment in electricity generation without exploring the potential captive market for low-grade heat. Any project throwing away waste heat (as does the Kinsale ESB project or indeed Carnsore Point) is a candidate for re-thinking.

Thus the proposed nuclear station should perhaps be re-sited hear a city, so as to be able to take up the low-grade heat potential, if politically acceptable. If there is any unease about such a location, on safety grounds, so grave are the consequences, even for the 'virtual uninhabitants' of a remote region, that the project should be dropped.

In the field of transportation, there are fuel economies to be made by increasing the market share of the public sector relative to the private. This could be done by a combination of price changes, system changes and publicity:

(a) PRICE: at present the cost of motoring has a high fixed element (tax, insurance, depreciation) and relatively low variable element (fuel, wear and tear). The average car-owner, having paid his fixed costs, feels he has to use his car as much as he can, so as to blend off the fixed costs and achieve an acceptable unit-cost per mile. This discourages him from taking the public transport, which he relates to his marginal costs.

If tax and insurance costs were loaded on to the fuel, and the insurance function taken over by the State as regards third party, the marginal cost would go up.

The residual fixed cost would come down if people maintained their cars and wrote them off over a longer period; this would be helped by a system of state-controlled inspection for older vehicles such as are at present withdrawn from the market by the loading policy of the insurance companies. Vehicle maintenance is an import-saving and labour-intensive industry, worthy of encouragement. It is also conservationist, in that it keeps resources in use rather than wastefully scrapping them.

(b) SYSTEM CHANGES: the public transport system requires integration, nodalisation and generally upgrading as regards service levels. A high-frequency, small vehicle, single manned system giving high mobility around nodal areas (of which one would be the central area of Dublin) would substitute for the private car. The present type of large buses should connect-the nodes on an express, non-stop basis.

(C) PUBLICITY: the change in car tax and insurance, with the upgraded public transport system, should be introduced with maximum use of TV publicity, together with rapid and publicised clear-up of transitional problems.

The nodalisation principle is already being introduced on a national basis in that there is a trend for main-line stations to be developed as bus-nodes. However there is scope for development of a higher-frequency rural system based on-the use of an appropriately designed mini-bus.

Finally, it is necessary to mention the heat pump.

This device is essentially a refrigerator which cools the outside air in order to warm the interior of a house. The performance of a typical heat pump has been evaluated under typical Irish conditions (-2'C -15'C) by the Environmental Energy Group in UCG. They find a coefficient of performance of 2.4 - 2.6; ie for a kilowatt of electricity in you get about 2.5 kilowatts of heat out. This, in a sense, compensates for heat loss at the power station; alternatively it can be regarded as a bonus if the power-station is already selling it surplus heat as a utility.

A heat pump can be adapted easily to a ducted air system; the capital cost is comparable to that of a conventional boiler system.

ADDITIONAL ENERGY INPUTS

In the long term, direct electricity production by photoelectric conversion of solar energy may become feasible. There is a storage problem; some people think that electrolytic hydrogen is the solution.

In the short term, the main use of solar energy is a background heating of the feed-water for domestic hot water systems. Devices are already on the market which do this; the principal cost is in the extra plumbing. About half of the domestic heating load could be taken up by appropriate solar panels designed in to a house. There is a strong case for revising the codes of building practice, making use of well-tried traditional lore as well as the products of modern technology.

In the medium term, if the high price of oil remains, there may be opportunities for 'energy crops'; typically the Bord na Mona bogs might when exhausted support a continuously renewable crop which would be harvested for combustion in existing power stations. The economics and logistics of this process do not look good at this time but there is scope for research.

Two forms of indirect solar energy which are available are (a) wind (b) biological waste.

In the case of wind power, there is scope for applications of small-scale units in the Western region. (1 to 5 kW) for domestic use to supplement the ESB by removing from the latter most of its thermal load. A wind-generator feeding a storage heater or a hot-water system need not be synchronised with, or in con- tact with, the grid. There is scope for local schemes in the region 30 - 100 KW under ESB control, in situations (such as islands) where connection with the grid is impracticable. The technology for making such schemes produce synchronised AC is available, either on a sophisticated basis (using an electrical control system) or crudely (wind-pumped water to high-level storage to hydro-electricity)

In the case of biological waste, there is a case for producing methane where animals are concentrated. The energy produced by digesting the slurry from 1000 pigs is of an order such as to drive a 10 HP gas engine continuously, and to supply hot water to a convent school.

Digestion o£ municipal sewage to produce gas for power stations is already the practice in London, Birmingham and elsewhere.

Digested animal slurry and municipal sewage has a positive value as a fertiliser, replacing artificially produced nitrogen, the production of which involves considerable expedition of energy.

The above points were developed in a paper by Dr Nicholl, Deputy Director of the IIRS, at the conference on National Energy Utilisation (March 4 - 5) referred to above.

Also covered was the use of fluidised-bed reactors for low-grade fuels, such as the crow-coal of Arigna, and municipal garbage (H Harboe, Stal-Laval (GB) Ltd); it is apparently quite feasible to generate worth-while quantities of electrical power from the most unpromising-looking rubbish.

Wave-energy from the sea has so far not been seriously exploited; there is a £60,000 pilot project in progress in Britain (Edinburgh University) under the NRDC. Most of the energy is in the small waves. Most feasible schemes involve an energy-absorbing breakwater (this is needed in many locations anyway, for nautical purposes) which transforms the wave motion into pumped hydraulic power. Mass-produced modules are envisaged.

Tidal schemes are also feasible; in connection with the Rance scheme in Normandy turbines have been developed which work at a head of only 10 feet. The economics of Rance are unfavourable, despite a 30ft tidal swing. However it is a single-reservoir scheme and therefore suffers from periodic shut-downs each day. A two-reservoir scheme could work continuously, one pool being held near high tide and the other near low tide levels.

There are locations in the West where the geography would favour two-pool schemes with minimal civil engineerings costs. Such schemes could be reinforced by the use of.the upper pool for pumped storage of wind and wave energy. Thus combined wind-wave-tide systems, in the energy-range say 30 to 100 MW, appear to be worthy of feasibility study.

The Rance scheme may be uneconomic but it is available for detailed comparative study. There is a trade-off between area of basin and height of tide with some room for manoeuvre.

There is also scope for re-examination of the various small-scale hydro-electric schemes which exist scattered throughout the country, and various potential hydro-power sites which were worked as water-mills in the 18th and 19th centuries. Some such schemes still running generate of the order of 50 to 100 HP; investment at the rate of £150 per installed kW in this situation implies expenditure of £5000 to £10,000 in a local based scheme to render a small village less dependent on the ESB. This may look a very marginal operation until it is realised that (a) it would merit grant-aid on grounds of fuel import-replacement (b) a small system could now be engineered to produce acceptable synchronised alternating current (unlike the old DC schemes) thanks to the rapidly reduced costs of electronic control systems. This constitutes an important research and development area, with export potential.

As there are commercial firms specialising in the provision of total-energy systems (see above), consideration should be given to establishing the ESB generation division as an autonomous unit, in a position to tender realistically in the open market for this type of commodity and service. Such an ESB subsidiary would be in a position to tender for export contracts. As regards the IDA, it is necessary for an appropriate policy-change to be brought about, such that firms investing under IDA schemes would be actively encouraged to plan at the earliest stage for total energy systems, putting their specifications out to tender to the ESB and such other firms as are in this market in Ireland.

SUGGESTED LEGISLATIVE AND ADMINISTRATIVE CHANGES

There is scope, therefore for extending the protection to include thermal energy in designated areas near power stations, giving district heating systems based on power stations priority over all other forms of space-heating. The ESB could also be empowered to provide a total energy package adapted to the local market, even it this meant installing and maintaining a 10 MW diesel unit with exhaust-gas boiler in a factory. In other words, it should be encouraged to decentralise its operations wherever there is a captive market available for low-grade heat.

Objections to these arguments come from those engineers within the ESB whose way of thinking has been formed by tradition and who have not yet adapted to the new rules of the game which arise from the high cost of primary energy.

It is therefore necessary to establish some technologically competent centre for evaluating energy options which is independent of the ESB.

As regards the use of natural gas, it is necessary that the state body which controls it lay down conditions for its use, and adjust the bulk contract price, in such a way that it is used with maximum recovery of total energy. In other words, bulk supply of gas to the ESB at a price such as to compete with residual oil should not be allowed to happen. The price to the ESB must be such as to force them into decentralised usage with total energy recovery.

This involves reversing, as a matter of priority, the decision to use Kinsale gas for central electricity generation, and instead to pipe it to a number of 'total energy' systems as well as to consumers of industrial and domestic gas. A 'gas grid' using the railways as route, would enable 'total energy' systems to be installed such as to recover up to 80% of the primary energy, thus saving oil in addition to an extent equivalent to the amount of electricity that would be produced by an oil-fired power station on the scale of that proposed at Kinsale.

As regards alternative energy sources (wind, tide, solar panels, biological waste etc) it is necessary to budget generously for some effective adaptive research and development and to aid with grant schemes the home market for energy-producing systems. These schemes may require a long series of adaptive modifications before they become fully self-supporting against a background of scepticism, reinforced by the negative experience of the 1940s. Note that support for such schemes is basically energy import substitution and so should have high priority.

Consideration should be given to taxing industrial fuel, with progressive tax remissions for savings in energy inputs. Industry is the main user of energy and is able by management and technology to bring about savings. Private energy users are not so easily adaptable.

In order to bias the transport user towards public systems, any further rises in the price of petrol should be linked to (a) the reduction and eventual elimination of vehicle tax in the present 'flat rate' form (b) the replacement of the present third party insurance system by a system of compensations and penalties administered by the courts financed by the petrol tax plus fines where guilt was established.

Finally, the Nuclear Energy Board, which bears responsibility for the control of radioactivity in the environment, should be rendered independent of the nuclear energy promoting body (in this case the Minister for Transport and Power under the advice of the ESB).

signed: RHWJ May 1975

Some navigational notes:

Copyright Dr Roy Johnston 2003