[mrb]

Ah the old "country's worth of electricity" comparison... Keep in mind that Ireland's entire electricity needs could be covered by a one nuclear power plant (3.8 GW with 4 reactors). IOW, you could offload all Irish datacenters by connecting them to a single nuclear power reactor (~900 MW), a small building that has a footprint of under 50 x 50 meters for the reactor, and another of 100 x 50 meters for the generator.

[gib444]

You don't know about Sellafield, do you?

Nor the law banning nuclear for electricity generation.

Nor the attempt this year to reverse that law which got defeated.

Ireland appears to not want nuclear ;)

[testing22321]

Sweet. Start building TODAY and it will be done in nothing less than 20 years for nothing less than $20 BILLION.

What should they do in the meantime?

[hunterpayne]

Sure, $1B for the plant and $19B for the lawyers. Korea and China build them in 4 years for about $1B each. This is entirely self-inflicted by people who are completely scientifically illiterate.

[rsynnott]

> Korea and China build them in 4 years for about $1B each.

China seems to do 7 years _build time_ at ~$3bn/GW. So you're probably looking at at least a decade project start to end. Also, they're primarily using a reactor that isn't licensed in Europe and won't be anytime soon. The only Chinese plant using a European-licensed reactor type (EPR) took a decade to build (still faster than European builds of the same reactor, but not what you'd call quick).

[testing22321]

No western country ever has. Average cost for the 28 China has under construction today is $7 BILLION

[mrb]

Or Ireland can import electricity from France TODAY as we export on average 10 GW continuously, and most of it is already generated by nuclear :-)

[tialaramex]

If you were to look at a map you'd see that Ireland is on the other side of a bigger island.

Sure enough France exports up to about 4GW to the UK, and the UK exports up to about 1GW to Ireland. Right now, it being the middle of the night here, France sends us about 2.5GW and we sent Ireland about 500 MW.

Electricity being fungible by nature it doesn't really mean anything to say that's French electricity when it reaches Ireland, it could just as easily be British nuclear, or wind power from a Scottish wind farm, or any number of sources or any mix.

[rsynnott]

> France sends us about 2.5GW and we sent Ireland about 500 MW.

It's also a two-way flow; while UK<>Ireland transmission tends to net out to UK->Ireland, it's fairly variable; to a large extent whichever side currently has too much wind is the donor.

[tialaramex]

I believe all of the modern UK interconnects are bi-directional. Most countries have cheaper power when our wind doesn't blow but can't get enough cheap wind power from us when it does.

Current government plans don't seem to take this into account. 40GW of wind power doesn't seem like "basically enough" when you're doing 10GW exports.

They did at least ban "rebidding" where you get permission to build a wind farm, but you think the price you agreed to isn't what you'd prefer so you just bid again next time like nothing happened. Some of the projects which low balled are now stuck, either build it as promised and collect a smaller profit than you'd hoped for or fuck off, no second chances

[rsynnott]

Yeah, Ireland also primarily exports surplus wind power. Trouble is, when it’s windy in Ireland, it is also often windy in the UK, so no demand, so curtailment is necessary.

The HVDC line to France will help with this; it will less frequently be very windy in Ireland and the UK _and_ France.

Longer term, though, everywhere is going to need a lot more storage (and possibly smart variable demand; remains to be seen how practical that is at scale.)

[rsynnott]

We are about to start doing that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celtic_Interconnector

But it is in itself fairly non-trivial; HVDC cables that long are difficult.

[HDBaseT]

Better than kicking the can down the road. Energy is effectively always going to be needed.

In 20 years time the same response will be spouted, it will make you wish you did something 20 years before when it was originally discussed.

[testing22321]

Right now solar plus batteries is cheaper. It 20 years it will be vastly so

[HDBaseT]

I'd also be happy with this too. Solar is great.

I'm still not versed enough on the environmental impacts of batteries. There is a lot of battery tech advancements in the past decade.