I said:
Neither Poland nor the Czech Republic have signed up for the OL-3 or Hinkley experience, and neither should Ireland.
The degree to which you and two other posters are trying to deflect from my proof of solar being more expensive than nuclear is extraordinary. The point of my picking OL-3 is that it is clearly not a poster child for cheap nuclear, and that despite this, solar is still more expensive. Had I used a South Korean APR-1400 as a performance and cost basis, the relative cost advantage of nuclear would have been considerably larger.
solar is only more expensive when you manipulate the numbers as I explained earlier
Per Mwh delivered it’s far cheaper
IEA figures for how much each produced in 2025 and how much more than in 2024.
2,859 TWh Nuclear +35TWh
2,723 TWh Wind +199 TWh
2,653 TWh Solar +600TWh
Notes :
IEA figures are a little different to others which show solar beating wind last year , see below
Nuclear in 2024 was an increase of just 7 TWh (seven) on the previous record set in 2006. A good bit of the increases in recent years was Japanese restarts and France doing delayed maintenance.
Total renewables in 2025 were 10,808 TWh so will pass coal's 10,858 TWh this year. At their current rate of increase Wind + Solar will probably outproduce gas next year.
Ember figures - Solar beats wind, renewables beat coal
2,812 TWh Nuclear
2,778 TWh Solar - average yearly increase 27% over the last decade.
2,715 TWh Wind - doubles every seven years.
Renewables 10,730 TWh beat coal 10,476TWh.
Learn to read
I clearly wrote “8 nuclear plants on the Irish Sea” (I didn’t specify if active or not, so that’s my bad)
go here
Click download
Examine this picture uk government provided
use your fingers if it helps
There’s already several nuclear plants close to Dublin including one directly across the sea
“delivered”
That’s the snag, in case of Ireland and solar “delivered” has a 10% capacity factor asterisk next to it
Hilarious people pushing solar in a country that’s so far north and barely sees the damned sun behind rain clouds
And the proceed to ignore and not provide the humongous storage costs that would be needed to smooth out the 10% capacity which is heavily weighted towards few days in summer
"Neither Poland nor the Czech Republic have signed up for the OL-3 or Hinkley experience, and neither should Ireland"
This is quite important. Flammanville, Hinckley and even OL3 shouldn't be used as a stick to beat renewables if they are too expensive / not recommended for Ireland.
So where does Ireland go next? Too early in Polish AP-1000 project for accurate costs or learnings.
What about the older pressurised water reactors WWER or VVER in their native rusky? There are some VVER-440 running and recently completed in the EU.
Any idea if these are feasible for Ireland?
Edit; in theory Moneypoint could take 2 VVER-440 without major grid upgrades. With these being around since the 1970s how come SMRs are the latest scam instead if using a tried and tested design?
Tony Blair started the ball rolling in 2005 in spite of the 2003 report. Your map is from 2012.
8 Confirmed new sites.
0 completed reactors. EDF predictions range from 2017 - 2030 for the first one and they've always been wrong. And this year's cost increase was only £2.5Bn instead of the more usual £3Bn.
It's like maintenance on a second hand boat standing for "Bring Out Another Thousand"
You may want to check up on the Sellafield/Windscale/Calder Hall/Moorfield site for actual reactor counts. ;) Rather than spend £100Bn cleaning it up they should just declare an exclusion zone/wildlife sanctuary.
government sources said if Hinkley Point C had been generating power during the energy price spike that followed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, it would have saved energy users more than £4bn. - And they could have exported power to France which was having it's own nuclear production woes then.
The answer is that energy users would not have saved £4Bn because the CfD subsidy for Hinkley-C will be a Billion a year once it starts operation so those supposed savings would already have been clawed back,. And then another Billion for Sizewell-C
"delivered"
Excluding Asia, during the 34 year lifetime of our first windfarm which is being re-powered, 60% of nuclear plants were delivered an average of a decade late and cost at least 2.5 times the original price. The other 40% were abandoned at great cost.
In 20+ years time Nuclear might deliver a gradually increasing amount of baseload depending on if/when additional reactors get delivered. They will require zero carbon spinning reserve to be delivered within 5 seconds. Nuclear takes ~20 minutes to ramp up so it'll probably have to include gas.
Solar is displacing peaking plant right now. Also Lincolnshire solar farm to last 60 years
No snag. Per MwH delivered its far cheaper than nuclear. So much cheaper that it can sit there 89% of the time doing nothing, costing us nothing . That’s how expensive nuclear is.
3000 acres agricultural land converted to an industrial estate and you are proud of it? That’s also gonna result in rainforests being chopped down to feed a growing world population, yay go green
And these panels would deteriorate every year bringing that 10% capacity factor into single digits
“The National Renewable Energy Laboratory found that on average, solar panels deteriorate by about 0.5% per year. ”
..
“But residents are still not happy, with some attending the council meeting to present 500 letters opposing the project.”
The Green lobby continues to dig its own political grave and piss of more communities which will result in a backlash against renewables
Now yourself and your friend seem to be just plain gaslighting or something
Out of one side yee argue how terribly unreliable Nuclear is with its 95% capacity factor
While out of the other side yee argue that 10% capacity factor tech is amazing
It’s like comparing a pushbike to a Porsche
And how exactly will nuclear replace solar here in the next 20+ years ?
At 27% increase per year the solar added in 2026-2028 will likely produce as much power annually as nuclear.
The issue is that supermarkets are squeezing farmers and not passing on the savings to shoppers.
If you've ever seen a solar farm you may have noticed that almost the entire area is still covered by grass.
I never mentioned nuclear capacity factor. The price of solar is amazing.
How? Firstly if you truly care about environment and climate change (I doubt it) you would do a uturn on your continued attacks on nuclear power
If Eamon Ryan or Greta Thunberg can admit they made a mistake when it comes to this tech so can you and other Green “environmentalists” who fail to see the hole they are digging themselves into, which is counterproductive to solving climate change
Then push and lobby politicians to undo the ban and start exploring options seriously with help of our science and engineering universities and Eirgrid
the path Ireland and many European countries followed has already been ruinously expensive and failed to fall drop co2 to levels of those countries that do have nuclear
carpeting the countryside and coasts in wind generators and solar and batteries and power lines for all of them is already pushing communities against renewables and the populists and opportunists are paying attention
Sinn Fein now want to remove carbon tax, and more parties will latch on to this and other anti Green policies especially if it gets em votes, and we seem where that path leads to in US
Well. From the article "If approved, the order would allow the solar farm to occupy the land for 60 years. After that period, the land would return to its original use"
Your understanding of it "3000 acres agricultural land converted to an industrial estate and you are proud of it?"
Every day you post something that clearly shows you are not reading or able to understand basic news articles or other links.
Article is quite clear that 3000 acres of agricultural land is being converted to industrial use for al least 60 years (in 60 years the council finds itself with a scrap yard they need to clean up) and the locals are NOT happy
Which part are you disputing now? Thats before we get to discussing how these panels and the metal for the frames are manufacturing in China with coal and slave labour as per RTE investigation
Do you really want to talk about acres and years , this weekend is Chernobyls 40’ anniversary
642,473 acres Of an exclusion zone for 20-24000 years around the Maine site and 300 years in the wider area
If we include the neighbouring Poleise state Radiological reserve in Belarus, the total restricted area around the disaster site spans roughly
1.4 million acres…
Just a gentle reminder to all concerned………on the 26th of April 1984 reactor no. 4 of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant exploded
This week ground was broken on Terrapower (Bill Gates company) first 4th gen reactor with in Wyoming
The titanic couldn’t sink. Fukishaima was a good design, Till it wasn’t 3 mile island was a very narrow escape.
But you keep focusing a the amount of coal ( about 50% of chinas energy mix) that need to make a panel that will he generate many time more clean electricity.
how much would nuclear cost in Ireland?
How long to build if we decided to do to, icluding changing laws. Picking a site etc?
What do we do in the interim ?
$10Bn for a 345MW reactor ? ( in 2023 "that first Natrium plant is expected to cost just $4 billion" )
Donnie's deregulation will cause problems for the US for a long time to come.
Union of Concerned Scientists.
a $10 billion, 345-megawatt experimental sodium-cooled fast nuclear reactor in Kemmerer, Wyoming. The Natrium reactor was designed by TerraPower, a company co-founded by billionaire Bill Gates, and is the recipient of a 50-50 cost-share grant (up to $2 billion) from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program.
…
The only way the staff could finish its review on such a short timeline is by sweeping serious unresolved safety issues under the rug or deferring consideration of them until TerraPower applies for an operating license, at which point it may be too late to correct any problems. Make no mistake, this type of reactor has major safety flaws compared to conventional nuclear reactors that comprise the operating fleet. Its liquid sodium coolant can catch fire, and the reactor has inherent instabilities that could lead to a rapid and uncontrolled increase in power, causing damage to the reactor’s hot and highly radioactive nuclear fuel.
“Of particular concern, NRC staff has assented to a design that lacks a physical containment structure to reduce the release of radioactive materials into the environment if a core melt occurs.
There's an old adage that "failing to plan is planning to fail"
Unless you've a plan to keep the lights on until nuclear can deliver power (including provision for zero carbon spinning reserve and backup), you'd be effectively condemning us to have to revert back to fossil fuel to keep the lights on.
The alternative is to invest in renewables, in which case we won't need nuclear.
The vast majority of our decarbonisation has to be done before nuclear could (maybe) arrive.
As awful an incident as the Chernobyl incident was and forever will be remembered, I fail to see the value of refering to that tragedy when comparing the technology used in modern reactor design to the RBMK design used in reactor #4.
The fact is that nuclear power plants are operating safely worldwide, 24/7. Like any source of significant energy with hazard attached, it requires diligence, upmost professionalism and respect to Operate safely for years to come. You cannot refute the benefits of such a capable energy source when exploited correctly.
I doubt I'll ever see nuclear power adopted here in my lifetime, sure we can't even build a metro. Having said that, i wouldn't be against one being commissioned in Ireland because I trust it would be run at the highest level of competence by the operators, who's own best interest would be to achieve that.
R.I.P to all those who either perished, we injured or were affected by the Chernobyl accident 40 years ago. I do hope engineers have extracted all the lessons learned from the event similar to what we've seen in the Aviation sector following tragedies.
that’s extra funny as the current plan is to keep burning gas up to 2050 and beyond with new peaker gas plants being built all over the country like the one in Athenry
https://www.oireachtas.ie/en/debates/debate/dail/2025-09-18/37/
The Green “mentalists” have pushed us into a situation where more and more gas is being constructed to backup their unreliable wind and solar that failed to even approach the co2 levels of nuclear while leaving us with expensive electricity bills and divided communities
You wrote converted to an industrial estate. That is quite different from a solar farm.
For a troll who arrogantly tells other people to learn to read, you should practice what you preach.
Mention something positive for a change. What reactor type, what power output, what location in Ireland. How much do you think it would costs? Instead of being an anti-renewable mouthpiece for big oil 🛢
more gas would be built without wind , RES makes up over 50% or our energy mix. So that’s 40% less gas due to RES
What is this shite? Seriously, do you read what you write? Why are you spamming fake culture war talking points on a thread about Nuclear in Ireland? You honestly think Solar farms in Ireland will lead to more rainforests being cut down? Do you have any proof of this claim, or are you just spamming this thread with fake news and lies? Anyway, Ireland has approx 11.4 million acres of farmland in the country. Taking your 3,000 acres at face value (this figure includes acres that are under planning at the moment) That would equate to 0.0263% of current farmlands changed to solar farms. Not 1% Not even 0.1% 0.263%..
I am re-watching the HBO show Chernobyl. While I am pro-nuclear in the sense of if it makes sense from a cost and business point of view we should do it (its not though), the show really makes one pause and think..
You know whats hilarious? Someone who admits they have solar panels on their own roof, spamming a Pro-Nuclear thread and constantly downing Solar. If solar are so bad, why do you have them? That tells me you are playing a role, you are an actor. I dont believe a word that comes out of your mouth and its as clear as day that
1) You don't really have a clue what you are talking about
2) Talking through both sides of your mouth
3) Being dishonest in your argument
4) Lack cognitive capabilities to make coherent pro-nuclear arguments.
Yet again with personal attacks and insults from someone who struggles to form a coherent sentence
I installed solar 6 years ago because I was curious and i understand just exactly what 10% capacity factor amounts to in this country
Anyone trying to sell solar (which is even more unreliable than wind) in Ireland as a solution to unreliable wind backed up by gas which has led us to have a grid that produces so much co2, depends on gas imports via a single pipeline and resulted in second most expensive electricity in Europe is a charlatan, whom is talking out of their rear
Meanwhile EU countries like Netherlands and Italy already banned conversion of agricultural land to solar and battery industrial estates by implementing “roofs first first” policies which I fully support
If you want to spend money on solar by all means go ahead, imho it then teaches people just unreliable renewables are
Speaking of which
18x CO2 of nuclear France today
