Workers’ Party: Nuclear power is sustainable, and must be included in green taxonomy

42 comments

  3. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yucca_Mountain_nuclear_waste_repository](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yucca_Mountain_nuclear_waste_repository)

    Wonder where Ireland will store the waste………..When they can’t even build a hospital right, mica in yer blocks, roads, the gardi, do I have to go on with the mismanagement stuff ?

    Ireland likes money, it will cut corners to make money……you can’t cut corners, with nuclear, if you do you look for other nations to take your waste. Or worse destroy eco systems.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runit_Island

  4. While I think nuclear is the way to go for the world as a whole, it doesn’t make sense in Ireland’s case. Too hard to handle the waste, and secure the supply, to make it worth it – particularly considering the potential here for wind and hydroelectric power.

  6. Could open a fusion reactor in Connemara.
    Con-fusion…..

    On a less hilarious note though, who would you trust to run a nuclear power plant in Ireland?

  8. A welcome contribution by the Worker’s Party. If the left are serious about getting back into power then they need to start making hard choices rather than being all things to all people.

    Whatever about Nuclear’s green credentials, it’s an absurd situation if we continue to burn fossil fuels because German Greens refuse nuclear.

    Note, this is about policies at a European level, so it’s not just about Ireland’s nuclear use.

    Also, fuck Clare Daly and Mick Wallace. Worst MEPs since Farage. Of course they’re on the list of 5 opposing Nuclear.

  12. Why bother? We’ll have access to the European nuclear network through the interconnector… Why do we need to build our own?

  14. The problem with nuclear power in Ireland isn’t the science part. It’s the inability to manage any major public bodies efficiently, least of all one that could destroy the continent if not worked properly. We can’t even run a health service or provide houses, how are we supposed to manage nuclear power?

  15. How many planning objections would a nuclear power plant generate? We’re taking about a country where city dwellers can’t even handle a new housing estate nearby!

  16. I can see it now…originally set to cost €8 billion over 5 years over construction, contracted out to the Chinese or the French because no one here knows how to fucking build one, several delays, dozens of protests and petitions against it, even more delays, costs rises to €18 billion. Eventually takes 15 years to build only for the power to be sent to a different country because of greedy politicians.

    Would be cheaper, and far less hassle, to buy the power off someone else.

  19. When you are talking about the loss of the largest generator on the system, it needs to be covered within minutes or the drop in system frequency will result in cascading trips and load shedding. As I said, this would be a big problem for 1.2GW reactor in a grid the size of Ireland’s. Covering wind capacity is a separate topic.

    I’m not aware of any of these smaller reactors that can be ordered today in Europe? Rolls Royce are designing some prototypes

  22. Lads we spent billions on a children’s hospital that isn’t even finished. Nuclear power is a long way away

  23. Lots of countries are pushing nuclear now. As nice as renewable energy is when you really delve into it you see it ain’t gonna be close to what we need.

  25. I know this is tinfoil hat stuff, but I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of the anti-nuclear campaigns and organisations were being funded, at least in part by the oil industry.

  26. Dealing with nuclear waste isn’t a solved problem. It’s typically left out of the calculation of the cost of nuclear power. We will probably bury it, we think, it should work. The cost could end up being 10x what we think. The cost of decommissioning nuclear power is much higher than estimated too. There’s a lot of unknowns that we will manage to fuck up.

    Then one plant is probably overkill for us. But a minimum of two is recommended so that the country still has power if one needs to be shut down for a bit. It would be the most expensive project the country has ever seen.

    Our grid couldn’t handle nuclear power. Currently power is generated somewhat locally, transmission between say cork and Dublin isn’t very high but in this case the whole countries power would be coming from one location. So it would all need to be redone.

  27. If/when the Indians figure out Thorium reactors, I’ll be all for it.

    Having a small reactor in every town makes a lot more sense than having one big, perpetually approaching critical, nuclear reaction simmering away somewhere in the country. If anything did go wrong, it’d be much easier to contain.

    They don’t use or produce any weaponisable material, so they don’t need big security complexes around them. You could stick one in an ESB substation.

    Anyway, isn’t there a plan to build a massive interconnector to France where we’d buy nuclear electricity from them and then in the future (when we’ve got our collective shit together) they’d shut down their reactors and buy wind electricity from us.

  28. The best route would be to really explore Solar. I know i know, clouds and rain har har. You don’t need bright skies for solar to be worth it. It’s so cheap right now and the only downside is that the lithium batteries are shit for the environment and the other power storage alternatives are either expensive or not well developed (like liquid metal batteries)

  33. It’s ireland, we can’t even get waste water correct but there is boil water notices and my tap smells like a swimming pool I wouldnt trust the incompetent councils or government with nuclear power

  34. Good luck finding a place in Ireland to build a plant considering how hard it is to planning for wind turbines because every tom, dick and Harry put in an appeal. Also, nuclear power isn’t complete green it’s still producing waste and we need a way of disposing this waste.

  37. The legacy of the ‘Worker’s Party’ is that of collaboration with the British in the north. The assassination of Republicans. And self serving criminality. This pro-British outfit is nuclear.

  38. Bruh dubliners, they already got the downsides with how toxic the Irish sea is, so why not build a nuclear powerplant and get some upsides

  39. I’ve seen this argument a lot and there’s a sliver of credibility in that nuclear may be a necessary evil to bridge the gap between fossil fuels and renewables. But I think it’s unscientific to suggest that nuclear is sustainable.

    The renewable technology we have today is sufficient to meet our energy needs, using a combination of retrofitted and builds for energy efficient homes, solar, wind, water and geothermal. We could shift the vast majority of our energy production and consumption to renewably generated electricity, making oil and gas redundant.
    The issues raised by the WP in terms of storage aren’t entirely without basis, however there are a range of storage technologies both currently available and in development which could be prioritized and implemented; batteries, gravity storage, compressed air storage, thermal storage and hydrogen hydrolysis – hydrogen fuel cell.
    The difficulty in all of this is that it would take massive investment to roll out, over decades. It’s simply not possible under capitalism, which is systemically incapable of long term planning and investment.

    I think the WP position here is uninspired and unambitious. All that said, it is a useful contribution to any debate on the future of the energy economy.

    In case anyone wants to respond to this with an allegation of naysaying I’d propose the following (half baked) step 1 of a plan. Take the budget used to prop up the economy and invest it in putting solar panels on every home in the country. Connect every panel you can to an immersion water heater so that excess load creates hot water, reducing the need for oil/gas boilers to do so.

  41. You know what they say about the members of the socialist Workers’ Party.

    They’re not socialists, they don’t work, and they certainly don’t know how to party.

    Turns out they have no understanding of energy policy either.

  42. If I remember correctly, a comment on this sub before said a law was brought in banning any proposal for a nuclear power plant in the country. Comparable to how it’s illegal to legalize the death penalty in the country.

Leave a Reply