Call to scrap law banning nuclear power made at Clean Energy Options talk in Carrick-on-Suir

Caption for photo above: Chartered engineer Denis Duff of 18for0, Noel Buckley, Chairman of Marlfield Village Committee, Clonmel; Dr Anne Baily, Suir Valley Environmental Group; Economist Colm McCarthy and Milo Power, Chairman of Suir Valley Environmental Group at the Clean Energy Options talk in Carrick-on-Suir. Picture Anne Marie Magorrian.

An engineer with extensive experience in power generation called at a Clean Energy Options talk in Carrick-on-Suir for a law banning nuclear power in Ireland to be rescinded.

The call was issued by engineer Denis Duff and supported by fellow guest speaker economist Colm McCarthy at the talk hosted by the Suir Valley Environmental Group in Carrick-on-Suir’s Nano Nagle Community Resource Centre on Friday, March 10.

Off-shore and onshore windfarms, solar, hydro and other low carbon emissions energy sources along with nuclear were examined at the event.

Mr Duff, who worked in power generation for ESB for 31 years, said he was a member of 18 for0, a group of Irish volunteersexperienced in power plant construction whose concern was that Ireland has an energy system fit for purpose to create reliable clean, safe and affordable electricity for the country.

“I am not saying we should go nuclear but we should look at it and see why are so many countries looking at it. Could it do something for us? If it can, we should consider it and if it can’t we can say at least we looked at it.”

He said nuclear energy was against the law since 1999. “If you look back on the Dáil record, it was based on a whim by one or two politicians. There was no assessment behind it and no logic behind it as such.

“We are saying the law should go and we should treat nuclear like any other technology based on environmental laws and all kinds of other laws that every other technology has to comply with. “

Mr Duff pointed out that while the law banning nuclear power didn’t prohibit it being investigated as a power source, this was the knock on impact. It was stopping experts doing studies on it as a possible power source for Ireland. An Energy Security study published last September didn’t examine nuclear because it’s illegal.

Looking at renewable energy, he said wind and solar power, our third biggest energy source, produced 37% of our electricity in 2020 but the country is a long way from 100% of electricity being produced by renewables, which was the plan for 2050. He doesn’t believe the country is going to hit any of its renewable energy supply targets.

Mr Duff highlighted the problem with solar and wind power was their unpredictability. Solar wasn’t suitable during the highest electricity demand time in mid-winter while wind depended on the wind blowing. He pointed out that you have to produce energy as the demand is required.

Before the talk, he looked up the Eirgrid Smartgrid Dashboard for the previous night and it illustrated the shortcomings of renewable energy. At midnight, Irish customers needed about 4,000megawatts of electricity and wind energy was producing about 3,000mw.

But from around 2am to 3am the wind started to die off and by 10am it was producing just 100mw of electricity but the demand was about 5,800mw. This meant fossil fuel sources had to produce 5,700mw of energy to meet immediate demand.

In relation to other low carbon energy sources, he said Ireland’s geology wasn’t good for geothermal while carbon capture (the capture and storage of carbon dioxide underground) was banned in Ireland.

Bioenergy was only ever going to play a small role, particularly if you are going to use more land for rewilding. People said hydrogen was the future but he explained it was an energy storage mechanism and not an energy source in its own right and was very inefficient.

He said 18for0 believed adding 18% of nuclear sourced energy for the 2030s alongside the renewables would “steady the ship enormously” and result in fossil fuel energy decreasing to zero with emissions almost completely gone by 2040.

He said nuclear power was a genuinely low carbon energy source that required a smaller amount of plant to produce more energy and it produced a lot of energy more cheaply. The new nuclear power plants can be small and built underground.

Economist Colm McCarthy echoed Mr Duff’s call for the removal of the law banning nuclear power. Referring to improvements in nuclear energy production, he declared it was “bizarre” to say in advance this country was not going to check out a commercial technology that may be developed.

He doesn’t believe the 1,000mw nuclear power stations built up to now suit a small country like Ireland.

He suggested: “Let all these companies in Japan, Britain, France and the US spend billions of dollars on building the next generation of nuclear.

“We can sit back and say right fellows give us a shout when you are finished and we will see if it suits us.

“But to say in advance that we are not going to consider it; that is bizarre.

During the questions and answer session, a woman in the audience argued the consequences are a lot worse if something goes wrong with nuclear and pointed to the nuclear bombing of Japan in World War 11, the Chernobyl nuclear disaster and current threat of disaster if a nuclear power plant in Ukraine is shelled.

A man in the audience expressed concern that “a nice rosy picture” was being painted about nuclear.

Mr Duff said no energy source is trouble free and argued that nuclear energy production has come along way since Chernobyl.

A lot of lessons were learned and nuclear reactors were changed as a result of the disaster.

Excluding consideration of this energy source was akin to saying: ‘I am not going to buy a boat because of the Titanic sinking’, he said.