And then we’ve to get one built in Ireland – which will probably take longer. I agree though that they suit our grid far more than a standard plant – which are too big for here.
The future may well be nuclear, but the future is not now.
Screw power, I want 20k nukes all pointed at the Isle of Man. I’m sick of them taking our jobs and our women.
Yes!!
It does, and any green party that says nuclear is bad isn’t really green.
So annoying seeing countries go backwards on nuclear power, best energy form we have really
I don’t know why we do not build one in Leitrim, it’s not like anyone really lives there.
Not sure if that is a picture of the world’s first small modular reactor, as it one of two Westinghouse AP1000 reactors…. definitely not an SMR….
I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again. This country went nuts when the broadband roll out was going to cost 3 billion euro, it’s still going nuts that a hospital for sick children could cost 2 billion. How do we think any government could get a project for a nuclear power station past the public if it was to cost 20 billion.
Let’s not forget that the build cost is only one issue, in x amount of years decommissioning due to where we are would probably be 100 billion.
Anyways all that aside. France is reopening 32 of its shut down nuclear power stations. Ireland has an agreement and and interconnect to France. It would be fiscally reckless for us to spend billions on a project that will take 20 years to complete when our French brothers have 56 of them built and are willing to share the electric pixies.
Good old [William Reville](https://i.imgur.com/55rm4JQ.png), science writer for the Irish Times and the, eh, Irish Catholic (the batshit David Quinn vehicle). One of my favourite things about him was the time he wrote a letter to the Irish Times in support of the Dáil prayer.
My least favourite thing about him is the [weird repeated articles linking demographic collapse and immigration.](https://i.imgur.com/PpzoOOo.png)
We have no business building a nuclear power plant. I think nuclear is great, I’m not against it in any fashion, I do consider it green energy, but it’s overkill for us.
We’ve committed to wind with a bit of solar, let’s just keep that going and link in with France for some nuclear if we need a boost.
Sellafield and Chernobyl scared the piss out of an entire generation about Nuclear.
I remember in the late 80’s and 90’s in school that there was this underlying fear about the possibility of a nuclear accident and how fucked Ireland would be.
Current nuclear technology is absolutely the way to go. It would be exactly what we need to bolster a wind & solar renewable system.
Isn’t nuclear currently literally illegal in Ireland though? Have to change that one.
Also the greens are on crack… weird anti-nuclear crack.
May I suggest an extremely large hamster wheel.
It sure does. Otherwise we’ll be talking about energy shortages in 2032 and 2042.
It’s like the proverb about planting trees you may never get to sit under.
Molten salt reactors could be smaller, safer and produce almost no waste to worry about.
The time to start building nuclear was 20-30 years ago but we decided to outlaw it instead. Today renewables are far cheaper and faster to install so we should be focusing on them as much as possible.
Maybe if we had a few billion lying around, it would be worth doing now but there are just so many things that are higher priority.
Its all fun and games until Offaly start breeding ploutonium.
The idea that there’s an off the shelf / ready to go smr design is a fiction.
Nuclear is currently not cost competitive and is undeliverable on any reasonable cost or timescale.
Despite the denials of nuclear fanboys actual security and environment risks exist which are unique to nuclear.
TL:DR nuclear for Ireland is a red herring – Ireland can invest and deliver right now in renewables, interconnectors, grid upgrades, and energy efficiency
We’re building the French interconnector though, to get nuclear from the mainland
The Irish government is too incompetent to roll out broadband or build a hospital. There is no way in Hell I would trust them building and maintaining a nuclear plant.
If you are interested in a reasonable argument for nuclear energy in Ireland check out these guys. [https://www.18for0.ie](https://www.18for0.ie/) I was pursuaded by their arguments. It does seem rational to lift the ban on nuclear power as a starting step. This alone may take a couple of years.
I think people underestimate how much of an industrial project building offshore wind farms will represent. Building a larger engineering sector, in general, will help to deliver all sorts of industrial climate-related projects in the future.
Ireland needs to bite the bullet on a lot of things but the electorate don’t want to hear it
It would be another children hospital by 10. Then the Nimbys will use it as an excuse to hold up wind and solar projects because the nuclear plant will solve all Ireland energy needs.
Funny seeing all the excuses. Supposedly one of the richest countries in the world can’t afford it…doesn’t need it…will just throw up thousands more wind turbines and solar panels everywhere…will rely on other countries and imports (Germans tried that if you hadn’t noticed)
Such short term thinking and small mindedness.
We have loads of uranium in Doengal.
Let us build a plant and then take the country hostage with complete control of the energy market.
I agree, let’s start by buying into British SMR technology. 1 billion per reactor to power a city the size of Southampton.
I’m of the mind we need more renewable like tidal and wind, even solar, and supplement the off hours with hydrogen generators. This would also make it easier to roll out a hydrogen infrastructure for road vehicles like trucks and cars.
There is already a consensus that interconnectors and renewables are the way to go.
Nuclear sounds great but we can’t even connect the airport with the train station
How could Ireland even get it? Would they need to buy from the UK lr France? The plants are fairly difficult to start building
Nuclear is not a silver bullet. For a start, uranium mining emits a lot of CO2 in addition to the toxic chemicals that are used to leach uranium out of ore polluting the groundwater, and the tailings continue to contaminate the environment long after the mines are exhausted. Milling the uranium involves further CO2 emissions and toxic waste.
I’ve been saying this for decades. The fossil fuel industry is rotten to the core and we have been sitting on plans for offshore wind for a long time as well as buying nuclear energy from abroad. The greens being against nuclear as an option really makes no sense. It’s such an outdated ideal now
Small Modular Reactors……Yo, Science Bitch.
If you thought the opposition to wind farms was something wait til they attempt to find locations for these nuclear plants. Haven’t read the article but it might be a better idea to be linked to another EU country’s nuclear grid?
Reddit had obsessive nuclear people. The fuck Like
Full agree. Ireland has its own uranium supply. Nuclear produces no CO2 and we would gain energy independence. Any excess power could be exported to the UK or EU Via France.
This is stupid as fuck. Why? We have fuck all things to power with that much energy. It’ll all be owned by other countries too ffs.
The capital cost of these ideas is completely overshadowed by the complexity of the maintenance and expertise needed to keep these functioning.
All of which would need to be imported and cultivated in universities.
By which time this is built, small fusion reactors are likely to be a thing and it’s all a huge waste of time.
Interconnectors to Europe is the way.
Takes 20 years to build. Would be too late and what do we do with the nuclear waste created?
There is no way that an island with 5 or 6 million ppl needs a nuclear power plant. The economics don’t add up. We need to go renewable and to have the ancient inefficient sub-stations replaced.
Let’s make sure we utilise the wind and hydro energy efficiently and exhaust our options there, before we go down the billion euro spending rabbit hole to get a nuclear power plant going. Just imagine the flood of objections during planning permission.
Ireland has enough wind to get wind power… And maybe the problem would be that sometimes the wind is stronger than wanted.
No need for nuclear..
I do not know about solar power in all Ireland but in my personal experience I would not label Ireland as a sunny country except for 3 weeks a year.
Completely mental! solar, onshore and off shore wind, tidal, geothermal, biogas and battery power all the way. Battery’s don’t need to be lead acid or lithium either.
I’ve a big south facing roof that I can’t afford to put panels on that could feed into the grid and there’s hundreds of thousands like me, sort that shite out.
All along the banks of our motorways would be ideal for solar panels also.
I keep hearing the same false narrative that it isn’t possible to use renewable sources by shills of vested interests.
Nuclear isn’t renewable, also we need to get real about what building a nuclear power plant would mean in terms of how the state monitors it’s citizens. Ireland doesn’t have a big enough foreign intelligence agency to monitor for external threats of sabotage never mind the fact that it would need to spy on its own citizens to ensure the plant and waste fuel was kept safe from terrorists and nutters.
It’s the concord. An amazing technology fails 5% of the time so we’re gonna scrap the whole thing forever…instead of solving the small problem with the amazing technology.
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A commercial, certified, mass produced SMR is probably a decade away though. The approved design mentioned doesn’t expect to complete their initial plant (the first version) until at least 2029. [And that’s only if they’re lucky and keep getting millions in funding](https://www.utilitydive.com/news/nuscale-makes-public-debut-but-requires-a-lot-of-financing-to-launch-smal/624568)
And then we’ve to get one built in Ireland – which will probably take longer. I agree though that they suit our grid far more than a standard plant – which are too big for here.
The future may well be nuclear, but the future is not now.
Screw power, I want 20k nukes all pointed at the Isle of Man. I’m sick of them taking our jobs and our women.
Yes!!
It does, and any green party that says nuclear is bad isn’t really green.
So annoying seeing countries go backwards on nuclear power, best energy form we have really
I don’t know why we do not build one in Leitrim, it’s not like anyone really lives there.
Not sure if that is a picture of the world’s first small modular reactor, as it one of two Westinghouse AP1000 reactors…. definitely not an SMR….
https://www.westinghousenuclear.com/energy-systems/ap1000-pwr
I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again. This country went nuts when the broadband roll out was going to cost 3 billion euro, it’s still going nuts that a hospital for sick children could cost 2 billion. How do we think any government could get a project for a nuclear power station past the public if it was to cost 20 billion.
Let’s not forget that the build cost is only one issue, in x amount of years decommissioning due to where we are would probably be 100 billion.
Anyways all that aside. France is reopening 32 of its shut down nuclear power stations. Ireland has an agreement and and interconnect to France. It would be fiscally reckless for us to spend billions on a project that will take 20 years to complete when our French brothers have 56 of them built and are willing to share the electric pixies.
Good old [William Reville](https://i.imgur.com/55rm4JQ.png), science writer for the Irish Times and the, eh, Irish Catholic (the batshit David Quinn vehicle). One of my favourite things about him was the time he wrote a letter to the Irish Times in support of the Dáil prayer.
My least favourite thing about him is the [weird repeated articles linking demographic collapse and immigration.](https://i.imgur.com/PpzoOOo.png)
This article is really shallow, there are literally better Reddit comments about this issue, like this one: https://www.reddit.com/r/ireland/comments/t81gsd/ireland_and_nuclear_power/
We have no business building a nuclear power plant. I think nuclear is great, I’m not against it in any fashion, I do consider it green energy, but it’s overkill for us.
We’ve committed to wind with a bit of solar, let’s just keep that going and link in with France for some nuclear if we need a boost.
Sellafield and Chernobyl scared the piss out of an entire generation about Nuclear.
I remember in the late 80’s and 90’s in school that there was this underlying fear about the possibility of a nuclear accident and how fucked Ireland would be.
Current nuclear technology is absolutely the way to go. It would be exactly what we need to bolster a wind & solar renewable system.
Isn’t nuclear currently literally illegal in Ireland though? Have to change that one.
Also the greens are on crack… weird anti-nuclear crack.
May I suggest an extremely large hamster wheel.
It sure does. Otherwise we’ll be talking about energy shortages in 2032 and 2042.
It’s like the proverb about planting trees you may never get to sit under.
Molten salt reactors could be smaller, safer and produce almost no waste to worry about.
[https://www.theregister.com/2022/10/05/micro_molten_salt_reactor/](https://www.theregister.com/2022/10/05/micro_molten_salt_reactor/)
The time to start building nuclear was 20-30 years ago but we decided to outlaw it instead. Today renewables are far cheaper and faster to install so we should be focusing on them as much as possible.
Maybe if we had a few billion lying around, it would be worth doing now but there are just so many things that are higher priority.
Its all fun and games until Offaly start breeding ploutonium.
The idea that there’s an off the shelf / ready to go smr design is a fiction.
Nuclear is currently not cost competitive and is undeliverable on any reasonable cost or timescale.
Despite the denials of nuclear fanboys actual security and environment risks exist which are unique to nuclear.
TL:DR nuclear for Ireland is a red herring – Ireland can invest and deliver right now in renewables, interconnectors, grid upgrades, and energy efficiency
We’re building the French interconnector though, to get nuclear from the mainland
The Irish government is too incompetent to roll out broadband or build a hospital. There is no way in Hell I would trust them building and maintaining a nuclear plant.
If you are interested in a reasonable argument for nuclear energy in Ireland check out these guys. [https://www.18for0.ie](https://www.18for0.ie/) I was pursuaded by their arguments. It does seem rational to lift the ban on nuclear power as a starting step. This alone may take a couple of years.
I think people underestimate how much of an industrial project building offshore wind farms will represent. Building a larger engineering sector, in general, will help to deliver all sorts of industrial climate-related projects in the future.
Ireland needs to bite the bullet on a lot of things but the electorate don’t want to hear it
It would be another children hospital by 10. Then the Nimbys will use it as an excuse to hold up wind and solar projects because the nuclear plant will solve all Ireland energy needs.
Funny seeing all the excuses. Supposedly one of the richest countries in the world can’t afford it…doesn’t need it…will just throw up thousands more wind turbines and solar panels everywhere…will rely on other countries and imports (Germans tried that if you hadn’t noticed)
Such short term thinking and small mindedness.
We have loads of uranium in Doengal.
Let us build a plant and then take the country hostage with complete control of the energy market.
I agree, let’s start by buying into British SMR technology. 1 billion per reactor to power a city the size of Southampton.
I’m of the mind we need more renewable like tidal and wind, even solar, and supplement the off hours with hydrogen generators. This would also make it easier to roll out a hydrogen infrastructure for road vehicles like trucks and cars.
There is already a consensus that interconnectors and renewables are the way to go.
Nuclear sounds great but we can’t even connect the airport with the train station
How could Ireland even get it? Would they need to buy from the UK lr France? The plants are fairly difficult to start building
Nuclear is not a silver bullet. For a start, uranium mining emits a lot of CO2 in addition to the toxic chemicals that are used to leach uranium out of ore polluting the groundwater, and the tailings continue to contaminate the environment long after the mines are exhausted. Milling the uranium involves further CO2 emissions and toxic waste.
I’ve been saying this for decades. The fossil fuel industry is rotten to the core and we have been sitting on plans for offshore wind for a long time as well as buying nuclear energy from abroad. The greens being against nuclear as an option really makes no sense. It’s such an outdated ideal now
Small Modular Reactors……Yo, Science Bitch.
If you thought the opposition to wind farms was something wait til they attempt to find locations for these nuclear plants. Haven’t read the article but it might be a better idea to be linked to another EU country’s nuclear grid?
Reddit had obsessive nuclear people. The fuck Like
Full agree. Ireland has its own uranium supply. Nuclear produces no CO2 and we would gain energy independence. Any excess power could be exported to the UK or EU Via France.
This is stupid as fuck. Why? We have fuck all things to power with that much energy. It’ll all be owned by other countries too ffs.
The capital cost of these ideas is completely overshadowed by the complexity of the maintenance and expertise needed to keep these functioning.
All of which would need to be imported and cultivated in universities.
By which time this is built, small fusion reactors are likely to be a thing and it’s all a huge waste of time.
Interconnectors to Europe is the way.
Takes 20 years to build. Would be too late and what do we do with the nuclear waste created?
There is no way that an island with 5 or 6 million ppl needs a nuclear power plant. The economics don’t add up. We need to go renewable and to have the ancient inefficient sub-stations replaced.
Let’s make sure we utilise the wind and hydro energy efficiently and exhaust our options there, before we go down the billion euro spending rabbit hole to get a nuclear power plant going. Just imagine the flood of objections during planning permission.
Ireland has enough wind to get wind power… And maybe the problem would be that sometimes the wind is stronger than wanted.
No need for nuclear..
I do not know about solar power in all Ireland but in my personal experience I would not label Ireland as a sunny country except for 3 weeks a year.
Completely mental! solar, onshore and off shore wind, tidal, geothermal, biogas and battery power all the way. Battery’s don’t need to be lead acid or lithium either.
I’ve a big south facing roof that I can’t afford to put panels on that could feed into the grid and there’s hundreds of thousands like me, sort that shite out.
All along the banks of our motorways would be ideal for solar panels also.
I keep hearing the same false narrative that it isn’t possible to use renewable sources by shills of vested interests.
Nuclear isn’t renewable, also we need to get real about what building a nuclear power plant would mean in terms of how the state monitors it’s citizens. Ireland doesn’t have a big enough foreign intelligence agency to monitor for external threats of sabotage never mind the fact that it would need to spy on its own citizens to ensure the plant and waste fuel was kept safe from terrorists and nutters.
It’s the concord. An amazing technology fails 5% of the time so we’re gonna scrap the whole thing forever…instead of solving the small problem with the amazing technology.
Ah fuck it. We deserve to be wiped out