It is true to say that if Ireland were to decide, tomorrow, to build a nuclear power plant, there would be next to no impact on the present energy and electricity price crisis. That is because, conservatively, the planning, development, construction, and testing process would take at least a decade, if not longer. Nuclear power is not a short-term answer to Ireland’s energy problems. It is, however, the most obvious and compelling long-term answer.
If we listen to economists and environmentalists, we hear broadly the same thing: That the long-term trend is towards higher oil and gas prices, and an eventual exhaustion of those resources in the first instance, or catastrophic climate failure in the second. There is both an economic and an environmental reason to shift away from fossil fuels, in the longer term.
The obvious answer to this problem is nuclear power. It is the obvious answer for three reasons: First, it generates masses of electricity. One or two nuclear plants in Ireland would, almost at a stroke, eliminate any concerns about the reliability of electricity supply. They would enable mass electrification of public transport, make electric cars a much more viable proposition, enable the country’s tech strategy by powering data centres, and a whole range of other possibilities.
Second, the supply of energy is secure: As Ross McCarthy, former Chairman of ISME, notes here:
https://twitter.com/rosspmccarthy/status/1505896913643659270
Uranium and Thorium can be reliably and safely imported from friendly countries, with very little risk of supply disruptions of the kind that are currently plaguing a Europe dependent on Russian Gas.
Third: It’s safe. Chernobyl was in 1986, and happened in an under-manned, under-funded, and under-maintained Soviet power plant. Nuclear plants operate across the globe with, in general, a pristine safety record. Any such plant built in Ireland would be constructed to the highest modern standards.
The arguments for Nuclear then, are strong. The arguments against it are not.
The first one generally made is cost. And it is true: Building a nuclear plant would cost billions. The most recent Nuclear Power plant built in Finland, for example, ran to over double its initial projected costs, coming in several years late, and for a total cost of €8.5billion. That is a very large sum of money.
But: Consider what Ireland is spending every year subsidising much less reliable forms of energy. Here’s the budget for the Renewable Energy Support Scheme (RESS):
A scheme to support electricity production from renewable energy sources in Ireland has been approved by the European Commission.
The Irish Government intends to introduce the Renewable Electricity Support Scheme (RESS), with an estimated budget of between €7.2 billion (£6.5bn) and €12.5 billion (£11.3bn), for green power production from sources including solar and wind farms.
Considering that Nuclear Power is vastly more reliable than wind energy, which relies on the weather behaving just right, does, say, €10bn for a nuclear plant really seem so expensive by contrast, considering the vastly greater and more secure and reliable energy one would produce?
For some reason, cost is on the tip of everybody’s lips when Nuclear is discussed, but barely warrants a mention in the case of wind subsidies.
We also don’t mention the associated costs of renewable energy: All the billions being poured in to making us use less energy, in the form of smart meters, and insulation, and so on, and so forth. All of that spending is only happening because policymakers know that renewable energy means, in general, less energy. That is not the case with Nuclear. Cost, in other words, is not an argument against Nuclear power, but an argument for it.
The real challenge in Ireland is not cost, but politics: Decades of anti-Nuclear activism have ensured that the biggest fight over Nuclear in Ireland would not be whether to build it, but where to build it. The logical answer to that is somewhere near the capital, which has the highest number of skilled workers, and the most advanced grid infrastructucture.
Finally, let’s talk safety, and nuclear waste: Since the 1950s, with Nuclear Power plants in operation, the United States has produced just over 83,000 tonnes of Nuclear Waste. That sounds like a lot, but it’s actually a tiny amount: All of it put together would fit in one football field, stacked to a depth of ten metres. Ireland could expect to produce maybe 1000 tonnes of Nuclear waste in the first 50 years of a plant’s lifespan. Much of that can be recycled, and the rest safely stored.
Energy policy is perhaps the single biggest strategic question facing western countries in the longer term. Ireland’s persistent refusal to consider the cleanest, most efficient, alternative to fossil fuels is completely baffling.