Nuclear - future for Ireland?

This will be done while also supporting the UAE’s strategy for becoming a net-exporter of liquefied natural gas (LNG) by 2030 by replacing local gas consumption with clean electricity from nuclear. Barakah will divert up to $4 billion-worth of natural gas annually, which can be used for other energy needs or for international export.

Biomass from rainforests ? That's nuclear power. DRAX provides the power that Hinkley C doesn't. It's the poster example of why you don't wait for nuclear.

If supermarkets paid farmers properly then they might not have to consider biomass or solar. But they don't so it's win-win.

Yes we are pretty maxed out with hydro. But it can allow 20 times it's production of non-synch on the grid. And we can add more pumped storage. Again more useful for it's multiplier effect than it's actual production. What's the status on the Silvermines ?

Maybe it's even possible to have two Turlough turbines pumping and two generating at the same time which would allow nearly 3GW of renewables on the grid ???

Tidal - Northern Ireland. IIRC 300MW earmarked.

Geothermal - we are talking about 2050 who knows how deep we can go by then. It's being done in Cornwall. NI looks promising.

I suggest you bring your opinions unbacked claims to the attention of Eigrid at your earliest convenience.

As they seem to be of the opinion that they are going about it the right way and you should be able to save them billions, at some distant point in the future, whereas they are probably more focused on keeping the lights on for the next 20 years.

The onus is on you to explain how in the event nuclear throws a wobblie 75% of the synchronous component can be replaced within 5 seconds.

And how nuclear would be backed during the construction delays, commissioning delays - because the first few years of a new plant can be a but jittery, refuelling outages and unplanned outages , and Black Swan events like the Korean fake parts scandal that took multiple reactors offline at the same time.

And what use nuclear would be on an already decarbonised grid where most of the generators are out of contract or will be in a few years time vs. nuclear which needs to be paid for whether it's electricity is needed or not, and where it doesn't produce enough electricity to to do the heavy lifting at peak demand.

Nuclear is a solution looking for a problem, and it's not even remotely close to being a full solution. It requires lots of zero-carbon peaking plant, the very existence of which proves nuclear isn't needed.

Worst case scenario - by the time nuclear could arrive here it almost certainly be cheaper to just buy foreign carbon credits to cater for the few remaining % of reducing emissions for a few years until we get to true net-zero, rather than mortgage the future to feeding a white elephant.

Turlough Hill has 4 turbines

SNSP today is 75% , the target is 95% ie 19:1

Water is denser than steam so there's that.

2050 is neither today nor tomorrow. The conditions for tidal race are there off NI, and there's a tidal dam in Korea. A Shannon barrage would generate huge amounts of power but might upset the twitchers. Hope for the best, plan for the worst.

Nuclear on time, on budget, is fanciful as is expecting to not have a Black Swan event.

Until last year the contracts for renewables were for 15 years with a fixed start date. All of them be well out of contract before nuclear appears.

New contacts are now for 20 years , again many of them will be out of contract before there could be multiple reactors reliably online.

Nuclear turning up afterwards would have to rely on supporting itself solely by providing missing capacity unless , and so many accusations are admissions, you plan is to steal capacity from renewable plant that's already on the grid ?

Also Nuclear will also be competing with the price of short term storage.

Good thing Fukushima Daiichi didn't use them then eh?

And that lads at Fukushima Daini were able to jury rig 9Km of cabling by hand to prevent three meltdowns there after all the redundant backup power failed.

And that Yanosuke Hirai insisted that the Onagawa plant was built 14.8m above sea level.

And at Tokai the third diesel generator could power the cooling system. And that the extensions to the sea wall were completed two days before the tsunami.

Japan and by extension the entire nuclear industry dodged a few bullets there.

It wasn't unimaginable, there were historical records that it had happened before. There were stones with inscriptions warning to never to build below this point all along the coast.

Which of these shows resilience rather than luck.

A seawall completed 3 days before the Tsunami ?

An engineer's instance on preventing what was done at Fukushima Daiichi to make it cheaper to pump water ?

A herculean effort by the engineers on site to manhandle one tonne segments of cable through waist deep water before three reactors went pop after every redundancy had failed ?

Also a reminder that a lot of the Japanese plants never restarted because they weren't up to code. Resilience my arse.