LOL, only way that happens is if it get build in secret
You need to unlock the metro first before gaining access to the nuclear energy upgrade.
Ireland’s grid is too small for current nuclear reactors, which are generally in the 1GW to 1.4GW size.
Ireland’s power requirements most of the time are between 3GW and 5GW.
From a grid design point of view, you simply *cannot* have a single central source of power on your grid which is providing 30% of the entire country’s power. If it fails the country will go dark. And if you *don’t* run it at close to full capacity, then you’re making nuclear power even *more* expensive.
And then you have the issue of regular refuelling breaks, and a major maintenance refurb every few years, so you have to provision at least that much capacity on top to be able to take over.
In 2026 we will have access to a constant 700MW of nuclear power from France if we want it, and until SMRs become commercially viable, that’s the only nuclear power we’re going to be using.
I’d rather pay for a better connector to France and use theirs.
No
We need to be more like the French in this regard.
not really no , ireland dosent have the infrastructure for it
Yes we should.
Just get the interconnector complete and allow the French to produce the electricity.
Recent plants have taken 20 years to build and have been 2-3 times over budget. Better to spend the money on wind and use the upcoming interconnector with a France to import nuclear and export wind.
Return from wind would be far quicker than nuclear and would be far cheaper per GWh.
We can’t even build a 10-story apartment block due to NIMBYs and you want nuclear power?
Way too small a grid and market.
Australia with 25 million and much more heavy industry gets the same idea floated regularly by interest groups and it is always shown to not be viable.
Absolutely. Puts a massive dent in our fossil fuel usage. You could actually get people to stop burning turf as electricity would be potentially cheaper. With more and more reliance on electricity from houses, devices and cars we need it. Also any idea of the idea would be building for an Ireland 20 years from now, population and energy requirements will have increased massively.
Or we can say we will move away from fossil fuels and do fuck all tangible and increas tax on it to be seen to be at something.
Yes but it would be a 10 year government plan. Our plan should just be to leach off France or the UK. Waive our “concerns” for cheap power or something.
No.
We can’t build a €700 million (€2.5nillion) hospital, we will never be able to build a reactor and everything else needed for it. They’re amazingly expensive to build and usually its a fair whack to the budget too.
Although considered safe, theres to many risks. Nuclear energy is fairly volatile if the whole complex dance that produces electricity goes wrong once…
they apparently take about 10 years to build and i think if we actually do something we could sort it out in that time but we probably won’t cos y’know whatever gets done and even though if you do everything safe it should be fine but i’d be uncomfortable with the risk so i wouldn’t be a supporter
If we have clowns protesting wind and solar, imagine what would happen if we tried to build a nuclear power plant.
We should because it’s literally impossible to generate energy more efficiently, and it’s extremely safe.
Recently, there was controversy about radioactive water from Fukushima being released into the Pacific. From what I understand, they simply didn’t have the capacity to store it anymore.
Forgive my utter ignorance on the topic, but what happens when nuclear energy super producers like France reach storage capacity for waste products such as water, or anything else for that matter?
Does it get quietly released back into the sea? Can it be treated or de-radiated to a safe level? Or are we just leaving this problem for a future generation to think about?
I’m genuinely interested, I know next to nothing about nuclear waste treatment or storage, I just hope we’re not kicking a potential biohazard down the road on the chance that ‘they’ll have it figured out by then’.
Nuclear is a disaster for countries that committed to them in the last 20~ years. With renewables becoming so cheap and plants taking so long to build, nuclear plants take far longer to start paying for themselves than they used to. Countries are even shutting down plants before their lifespan finishes just to get a head-start on the decommissioning because of how they are underperforming.
I think nuclear energy is by far the best option for reducing the world’s CO2 output. Whatever minor risks it has are a far superior option to just pumping co2 into the air and shrugging your shoulders.
But – No, not for Ireland. it requires infrastructure like education of native nuclear engineers and benefits massively from economies of scale. Ireland could manage 1 plant, which doesn’t allow you to take advantage of scale. We would be better off looking into how to best pay france and improve infrastructure for importing from them, something like that. They already have a many decades old atomic energy agency that’s actually competent – Ireland would take as many decades just to get such a thing off the ground…
Yes.
It already has hasn’t it?
No. Wind power would be so easy for Ireland on the west coast.
It’s pronounced nu-cu-lar
Certainly doable, some of the new reactors are similiar to those on nuclear powered ships. Seen reactors in Germany and they are tiny.
Yes and put it in Offaly
But in all seriousness get the French to build it they have like 5 nuclear plants in France and we can be energy independent for once
Of all the recurring conversations that are happening here, the nuclear one ranks as one of the dumbest.
I don’t think we could even if we wanted to. My Science teacher told me years ago, I think maybe in the 90s that Ireland had passed a law that says we can’t use/ produce nuclear energy on Irish soil. I might be wrong but I thought that’s why we hadn’t. If that’s a lie, then why the hell aren’t we investing?
Just import from mainland Europe and/or build more offshore wind turbines.
I don’t think it would be economic, I genuinely think we’re better off importing from the French.
Besides which, sadly, I think the Children’s Hospital has done a terrible amount of damage to the public appetite for large scale projects of any kind.
36 comments
Not until we get our space programme sorted out
LOL, only way that happens is if it get build in secret
You need to unlock the metro first before gaining access to the nuclear energy upgrade.
Ireland’s grid is too small for current nuclear reactors, which are generally in the 1GW to 1.4GW size.
Ireland’s power requirements most of the time are between 3GW and 5GW.
From a grid design point of view, you simply *cannot* have a single central source of power on your grid which is providing 30% of the entire country’s power. If it fails the country will go dark. And if you *don’t* run it at close to full capacity, then you’re making nuclear power even *more* expensive.
And then you have the issue of regular refuelling breaks, and a major maintenance refurb every few years, so you have to provision at least that much capacity on top to be able to take over.
In 2026 we will have access to a constant 700MW of nuclear power from France if we want it, and until SMRs become commercially viable, that’s the only nuclear power we’re going to be using.
I’d rather pay for a better connector to France and use theirs.
No
We need to be more like the French in this regard.
not really no , ireland dosent have the infrastructure for it
Yes we should.
Just get the interconnector complete and allow the French to produce the electricity.
Recent plants have taken 20 years to build and have been 2-3 times over budget. Better to spend the money on wind and use the upcoming interconnector with a France to import nuclear and export wind.
Return from wind would be far quicker than nuclear and would be far cheaper per GWh.
We can’t even build a 10-story apartment block due to NIMBYs and you want nuclear power?
Way too small a grid and market.
Australia with 25 million and much more heavy industry gets the same idea floated regularly by interest groups and it is always shown to not be viable.
Absolutely. Puts a massive dent in our fossil fuel usage. You could actually get people to stop burning turf as electricity would be potentially cheaper. With more and more reliance on electricity from houses, devices and cars we need it. Also any idea of the idea would be building for an Ireland 20 years from now, population and energy requirements will have increased massively.
Or we can say we will move away from fossil fuels and do fuck all tangible and increas tax on it to be seen to be at something.
Yes but it would be a 10 year government plan. Our plan should just be to leach off France or the UK. Waive our “concerns” for cheap power or something.
No.
We can’t build a €700 million (€2.5nillion) hospital, we will never be able to build a reactor and everything else needed for it. They’re amazingly expensive to build and usually its a fair whack to the budget too.
Although considered safe, theres to many risks. Nuclear energy is fairly volatile if the whole complex dance that produces electricity goes wrong once…
they apparently take about 10 years to build and i think if we actually do something we could sort it out in that time but we probably won’t cos y’know whatever gets done and even though if you do everything safe it should be fine but i’d be uncomfortable with the risk so i wouldn’t be a supporter
If we have clowns protesting wind and solar, imagine what would happen if we tried to build a nuclear power plant.
We should because it’s literally impossible to generate energy more efficiently, and it’s extremely safe.
Recently, there was controversy about radioactive water from Fukushima being released into the Pacific. From what I understand, they simply didn’t have the capacity to store it anymore.
Forgive my utter ignorance on the topic, but what happens when nuclear energy super producers like France reach storage capacity for waste products such as water, or anything else for that matter?
Does it get quietly released back into the sea? Can it be treated or de-radiated to a safe level? Or are we just leaving this problem for a future generation to think about?
I’m genuinely interested, I know next to nothing about nuclear waste treatment or storage, I just hope we’re not kicking a potential biohazard down the road on the chance that ‘they’ll have it figured out by then’.
Nuclear is a disaster for countries that committed to them in the last 20~ years. With renewables becoming so cheap and plants taking so long to build, nuclear plants take far longer to start paying for themselves than they used to. Countries are even shutting down plants before their lifespan finishes just to get a head-start on the decommissioning because of how they are underperforming.
[Very good podcast on exactly this.](https://podcasts.apple.com/ie/podcast/the-red-line/id1482715810?i=1000625050405)
Yes, next question
I think nuclear energy is by far the best option for reducing the world’s CO2 output. Whatever minor risks it has are a far superior option to just pumping co2 into the air and shrugging your shoulders.
But – No, not for Ireland. it requires infrastructure like education of native nuclear engineers and benefits massively from economies of scale. Ireland could manage 1 plant, which doesn’t allow you to take advantage of scale. We would be better off looking into how to best pay france and improve infrastructure for importing from them, something like that. They already have a many decades old atomic energy agency that’s actually competent – Ireland would take as many decades just to get such a thing off the ground…
Yes.
It already has hasn’t it?
No. Wind power would be so easy for Ireland on the west coast.
It’s pronounced nu-cu-lar
Certainly doable, some of the new reactors are similiar to those on nuclear powered ships. Seen reactors in Germany and they are tiny.
Technically, we are.
[Juice from that French nuclear teat](https://commission.europa.eu/news/celtic-interconnector-between-ireland-and-france-next-milestone-reached-2022-11-25-0_en)
Yes and put it in Offaly
But in all seriousness get the French to build it they have like 5 nuclear plants in France and we can be energy independent for once
Of all the recurring conversations that are happening here, the nuclear one ranks as one of the dumbest.
I don’t think we could even if we wanted to. My Science teacher told me years ago, I think maybe in the 90s that Ireland had passed a law that says we can’t use/ produce nuclear energy on Irish soil. I might be wrong but I thought that’s why we hadn’t. If that’s a lie, then why the hell aren’t we investing?
Just import from mainland Europe and/or build more offshore wind turbines.
I don’t think it would be economic, I genuinely think we’re better off importing from the French.
Besides which, sadly, I think the Children’s Hospital has done a terrible amount of damage to the public appetite for large scale projects of any kind.
Yes.
Build two nuclear power stations.