For over four decades, it was safe to assume that the prospects of nuclear power becoming a domestic source of Irish energy was somewhere between zero and nil. But there has recently been a significant shift in this political calculation.
Fianna Fáil TD James O’Connor has introduced a new Bill to reverse the current ban on nuclear energy. It is right that the Dáil should debate the matter over the coming months. A number of countries are embracing nuclear power due to developments in its safety and economies of scale.
The Irish government first proposed a nuclear energy plant at Carnsore Point in Wexford in the 1970s following the 1973 oil shock. The proposal soon faced implacable opposition. The meltdown at the Three Mile Island nuclear reactor in Pennsylvania in 1979 prompted a global backlash against the industry. The plans for Carnsore were abandoned in 1981 and the Chernobyl disaster in 1986 effectively ended the nuclear debate for a generation.
But just as the 1973 oil shock triggered radical shifts in energy consumption, so is the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and the current Middle East crisis.
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Nuclear is now becoming a much greater part of the energy mix in many countries. There have been significant improvements in the technology’s safety record over the past two decades. Costs may also be becoming less prohibitive; small modular nuclear reactors offer the prospect of building at a scale more appropriate to Ireland’s size, although this technology is not yet widely available. Importantly, nuclear power enables countries to meet their climate change targets due to its very low carbon footprint.
Roderic O’Gorman, the leader of the Green Party, has criticised O’Connor’s Bill on the basis that nuclear could take 15 years to deliver cheaper electricity. The Government, he says, should instead focus on offshore wind energy.
But there is no reason why it cannot do both. The Irish energy system is in a parlous state because policy has been shaped by sticking plaster solutions for far too long. Even if Ireland develops its full wind energy potential, it will always need backup power sources.
Ireland already consumes nuclear energy via its interconnector with the UK. That will increase when the connection to France is completed. But there are formidable obstacles to generating nuclear energy here. Even if the Critical Infrastructure Bill is passed in full, the planning objections to any designated site are likely to be protracted and politically destabilising. Recent experience of big infrastructure projects does not augur well for a project as complex as a nuclear power plant.
Nevertheless, nuclear is a clean, increasingly safe and potentially cost-efficient option that should be explored.
