"Green" policies are destroying this country

Renewables plus energy storage of hydrogen, is uncosted and unproven. Batteries have been costed and are 8 times too expensive to allow renewables plus batteries to deliver 24/7/365 zero CO2 output at a cost equal to nuclear generation. If you started now, and took a decade to build a nuclear power station, it would have been operating for nearly two decades before Li-ion batteries have declined in price so they are only 3 times too expensive.

There are two ways to get to zero emissions. One is via nuclear energy and the other is via magic wands and if wishful thinking.

It doesn't matter how much you increase renewable capacity if you can't solve the storage problem. Of course Irelands response to inconvenient truths is the same as always: pretend they don't exist, hope no one notices, and hope they go away and that no one who matters, like the UNHC, calls you out. They have announced lots of offshore wind before the storage question has been answered. They are hoping it will be, but there is no guarantee any solution/s will be economic. Perty much the same as past generations attitudes to nuclear waste storage - long finger it.

Your costings are not credible. Green hydrogen technology is perfectly established. We just need a surplus of renewable energy which suits the intermittent nature of wind very well. Generate extra energy when we have it and use the surplus to generate hydrogen using electrolysis when prices are low,the hydrogen can then be sold back to the grid to balance the load when when electricity prices are high

Also, nuclear does not generate 24/7/365. They need maintenance and to be refuelled do there is down time, and batteries would not need 24/7 coverage it only needs to balance the load.

A proper grid has multiple different solutions that work together to provide a reliable grid. You're acting like nuclear is the answer to all of our problems it absolutely is not for a variety of reasons that have been explained by multiple posters on here already. We should have nuclear in the mix, but it's hard to argue for building it on the island of Ireland

You should fire off a missive to Eamon Ryan on this. He has no problem using nuclear attempting to plug holes when the wind drops. Seems he either doesn`t know or doesn`t give a fcuk.

Admittedly par for the course when it comes to ignoring reality in favour of fantasy where Ryan and crew are concerned

Environmentalists didn't 'mothball nuclear'

That was an public backlash as a result of a major nuclear disaster that you might remember from not so long ago

And the wind didn't 'stop blowing for weeks' The wind practically never stops blowing offshore. even on the calmest day, go to earth.nullschool.net and you'll see calm conditions over land, with plenty of wind over the water.

We haven't installed enough wind capacity yet. The problem is that we're half way through a transition and at the mercy of dictators who are playing hardball with supply lines.

All the headtheballs on here saying it's too technologically impossible to install offshore wind while we've been relying on offshore oil and gas drilling for the guts of a century that has worked fine (apart from the odd ecological disaster here and the small matter of abrupt global climate change)

Yes, there are solutions, that are economical at a scale way beyond what the Irish market can support.

You mention Australia, has a population 5 times bigger than Ireland, and a whole lot of uninhabited land, and a third of the worlds uranium, and even they haven't build a single nuclear power station because it takes huge populations to justify the capital and operational costs

Its very common to see in Australian neighborhoods to see "nuclear Free Zone" signs, there was a federal act back in 1999 banning nuclear development as it wasn't very popular. I actually work in Nuclear Medicine in Australia and about 15 years ago when I first arrived in order to get a job I needed to do a radiation safety course to get my EPA License. They man running the course was a Scottish guy, he previously worked at UKAEA before emigrating to work at Lucas Heights and he give me a good insight into Nuclear. I think Australian attitudes have changed somewhat recently, but probably not enough to reverse that law as there is to many other alternatives. I live in north west Sydney and my main solar system (10kw) on average annual production is about 21Mwh I consume about 6Mwh plus I import 4Mwh at $0.25kwh, I also export 15Mwh at $0.12Kwh my electricity supplier sell my export to my neighbors or more importantly businesses for $0.21 -$0.25. After supply charges etc my annual combined AGL electricity and gas bill is about $120 which is about €80.

Australia also has a sh!t load of ruthenium, rhodium, palladium, osmium, iridium and platinum. Platinum, iridium and ruthenium are used in PEM electrolysis to produce Green Hydrogen made from Solar and wind power. Germany has moved away from Nuclear but is also the world leader in Hydrogen technology, they signed an accord with Australia to buy Green Hydrogen for next 30 years for their Power stations shipped in a liquefied ammonia carrier. Next you will probably see Fuel cell BMWs, VW and Mercs.

Hydrogen is far more unstable than natural gas, and nowhere near as easy to transport or store.

Its incredibly volatile and the existing gas infrastructure would not be suitable to transport or store it.

I remember in science at school" Burns with a loud pop"

No it isn't. Hydrogen is not more explosive or volatile than natural gas and well maintained infrastructure can transport hydrogen just as well as methane

In fact, in many circumstances a hydrogen leak is less dangerous than a methane leak as it disperses rapidly (upwards and outwards) while methane is heavier than air so sticks around and waiting to ignite, and unpressurised hydrogen contains a third of the energy of natural gas, so if it does burn, it doesn't burn as hot, and is less likely to cause harmful burns or toxic fumes

Transporting Hydrogen can be done via the same mechanisms as natural gas with some modifications, many of the same infrastructure can be used

I'm an Australian and I think I have a pretty good idea why Australia doesn't have a nuclear power station. There are two reasons, one would be professional scare mongers like Dr Hellen Caldicott campaigning against nuclear all her life. She had an easy job of it, given those ratbag British testing surface nukes and hydrogen bombs in a lackadaisical manner because they didn't have to live there and using military personnel as guinea pigs. The other would be shed loads of cheaper than dirt coal. Attitudes there are changing; witness the nuclear powered sub deal. It was never about the cost or scale being too much, it was about coal being just so easy and so cheap.

If Andrew Forrest doesn't deliver on his massive scale solar/hydrogen plans, then I think nuclear power will be in Australias power mix. I have seen some talk of it already.

Hydrogen on its own is very volatile, but it can safely be transported in a carrier like liquefied ammonia then extracted in a carbon-zero manner.