Finland’s newest nuclear power plant seems an unlikely role model for any country curious about atomic energy.
Olkiluoto 3 opened 14 years late and €8 billion over budget when it began operating in 2023. But it also represents the most modern large-scale nuclear technology; the plant is very powerful, with a 1,600 megawatt capacity that would provide a third of Ireland’s electricity on an average day.
So it possibly represents the best kind of case study, illustrating all that can go right and wrong, neatly wrapped up on one small Achill-like island off the western Finnish coast.
Olkiluoto 3 is proposed for examination as part of a study by the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland on ways to decarbonise Ireland’s energy system.
The study will also examine the evolving alternative to large-scale nuclear power: the small modular reactor (SMR) which promises to be faster and easier to assemble and deploy.
Its findings will help inform a White Paper – or Government policy paper – that Minister for Energy Darragh O’Brien intends to write by the end of next year.
It is by no means certain nuclear power will be included in the White Paper as a potential energy source, but a bill due to be introduced in the autumn would rescind Ireland’s ban on nuclear power generation, allowing the question to be explored.
What if the answer is affirmative? How would Ireland develop nuclear power?
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), of which Ireland is a member, has set out 19 steps in a “Milestones Approach” for countries considering their first nuclear power plant.
Milestones reflects most of the points raised in a recent paper by UCD energy experts Professor Andrew Keane and Muhammad Bah, who were neutral on the question of whether Ireland should go nuclear, but examined instead if Ireland could go nuclear.
It also covers the same ground as a paper by the 18for0 group of pro-nuclear advocates who argue adding 18 per cent nuclear into Ireland’s electricity mix would achieve a zero-carbon electricity system more effectively than any other current proposal.
Presuming the bill to lift the nuclear ban passes late this year, the next step would be adoption of a national position on nuclear power.
The IAEA and the two Irish papers stress the need for strong public support so extensive consultation would be required. Allowing a two-year period, that would take the process to late 2028.
Next comes legislation to allow for the development of a nuclear power plant. This would be wide-ranging, needing to cover ownership, management and regulatory oversight of the plant.
As a guide, the Government’s planned liquefied natural gas (LNG) facility in Co Clare has required two bills and it is intended only as a temporary reserve for emergencies rather than a permanent structure for everyday use.
Legislating for nuclear is also likely to be contentious, so the process could take at least until late 2030.
After that, a regulator would have to be established. The former Radiological Protection Institute of Ireland was disbanded in 2014 and its staff subsumed into the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
The EPA’s main radiological concerns are around radon in Irish soils and radiation in medical and industrial settings. It is not equipped to take over as regulator for a whole new nuclear industry.
Emergency planning for a nuclear incident would also require radical revision. The National Plan on Nuclear and Radiological Emergency Exposures was updated last month and it downgraded the likely impact of any incident based on the nearest plants being in Britain and France.
All legislative and regulatory changes would have to be checked for compliance with the IAEA, Euratom, the OECD Nuclear Energy Agency and other international bodies to which Ireland belongs. Realistically, all of this pushes the process into 2032.
A decision would then have to be made about what kind of plant to develop – conventional or SMR. Expect at least another two to three years of analysis, public consultations and political wrangling.
Then comes the tricky part: selecting a site. It would need to be sparsely populated and coastal to allow for cooling with seawater, but not so coastal as to be exposed to storm surges, erosion, sea level rise and flooding.
In the 1970s, ESB drew up a shortlist of sites for a nuclear plant, choosing Carnsore Point in Wexford ahead of Salterstown, Co Louth; Whiting Bay, Co Waterford; Easky, Co Sligo and Kilrush, Co Clare.
Carnsore, which became the scene of huge anti-nuclear protests that halted the plan, now hosts a wind farm.
Denis Duff of 18for0 says Moneypoint, the former coal-burning electricity plant in Co Clare, would make a good location.
“It has the history of being a power plant, it’s beside the sea and it has the country’s only two 400kv lines [high voltage transmission lines] running from it,” he said.
Site selection, which would need environmental and other assessments conducted, would take the process to 2037/2038.
Moneypoint power station. Photograph: Liam Burke/Press 22
Securing planning permission comes next. Even with the Critical Infrastructure Act, or bespoke legislation like Darragh O’Brien introduced to enable the fast-tracking of the LNG terminal, the project would still have to go through planning.
The country’s first offshore wind farm application is largely uncontroversial but has been in the planning system for over two years. A nuclear power plant could take considerably longer.
But if it did manage to get planning permission in 2040 or 2041 and there were no legal challenges, tendering for companies to build, install, test and operate the plant could begin.
As a guide, when MetroLink put a collection of contracts out to tender earlier this year, prospective firms were told it would take 18 to 24 months to award individual contracts over a 30-month period. That takes the process to around 2043/2044.
Presumably finances for the project and nuclear fuel sourcing and waste disposal arrangements would be sorted by this point, so no further time needs adding for those.
All that would be left to do would be to construct or install the power plant, build the grid infrastructure to take and distribute the electricity it generates, stage test runs and begin operating.
How long that would take is hard to tell. Olkiluoto 3 was meant to take four years and took 18. The national children’s hospital was scheduled to take four and is now in year 10.
If SMR was chosen, the technology could be finessed to the extent that components could be bought almost off the shelf and installed by – or possibly a bit before – 2050.
Keane and Bah reached a somewhat similar conclusion. “Due to legislative, regulatory, infrastructure and construction timelines, it is difficult to foresee nuclear power deployment being possible in Ireland before 2050,” they wrote.
By IAEA assessment, that timeline is pessimistic. “Experience suggests that the time from the initial consideration of the nuclear power option by a country to the operation of its first nuclear power plant is about 10 to 15 years,” it says.
Duff agrees and says availing of the IAEA’s hand-holding service for nuclear newcomers could see Ireland in a position to put in an order for an SMR in the mid-2030s and have it operating by 2040.
“That’s a challenging timeline, but it’s possible,” he said.