Dáil Eireann chose to legislate in the Electricity Regulation Act of 1989, to prohibit the generation of electricity in Ireland using nuclear power and the ban was reflected in subsequent amendments to planning laws. So there should be no nuclear electricity available to Irish household or business consumers, at least none generated in Ireland. The 1989 ban followed the 1970s controversy about a proposal to build a nuclear station at Carnsore in south Wexford, almost 180 kilometres from Dublin. At the time, there was already a nuclear station at Wylfa on the island of Anglesea, a few miles north of Holyhead, and roughly half the distance of Carnsore from Ireland’s largest city. The fear of nuclear fallout was exacerbated by the Chernobyl disaster in Ukraine in 1986 and Dáil deputies were persuaded that the 1989 ban would offer protection of some kind. This never made sense, given the nearby plant at Wylfa and the notion that no power from nuclear sources would be consumed in Ireland never made sense either, once electricity interconnectors from the United Kingdom were constructed.

These interconnectors are now a net source of imports from the UK, supplementing inadequate generation capacity in Ireland. Some of the power coming from the socket in your home or business is nuclear electricity – the electrons which buzz along the grid do not carry birth certificates, no portion of UK electricity can be identified as nuclear even by Dáil deputies, so the decision to take power from the UK system was a decision to consume nuclear electricity in Ireland.

The Wylfa plant was closed in 2015, but its replacement has just been announced by a new trio of SMRs (small modular reactors), with an aggregate capacity in excess of the single plant already decommissioned, with possibly more to come. The ideal site for a large new station is often the site of one decommissioned earlier, since the export transmission lines are already in place, a serious cost factor if a previously unconnected location were chosen. One of the arguments against the 1970s Carnsore plan was that the minimum size of nuclear stations at the time was too large for the Irish system and the alternative chosen was the coal station at Moneypoint, in reality three units of 315 MW each rather than a single nuclear giant of 1,000 MW or more. Irish demand is now much greater than it was in the 1980s and the SMR technology promises a smaller efficient unit size than was available 40 or 50 years ago.

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A recent report from the Irish Academy of Engineering is the latest to question the continuing relevance of the 1989 legislation. Ireland is already importing nuclear-generated electricity, an interconnector from France is under construction and will give access to more nuclear imports, while the plans for the Wylfa site mean that there will be a nuclear station quite close to Ireland anyway. The minister for energy has announced plans for an interconnector to northern Spain, where the previous government’s intention to phase out nuclear, currently 20% of capacity, are being reconsidered. This is in response to the severe blackouts in the interconnected systems of Spain and Portugal in April 2025, blamed partly on their high reliance on interruptible renewables.

The Irish system, where generation and transmission shortages contribute to prices amongst Europe’s highest, faces the same prospect. If the new SMR technology proves to be economically attractive, the Irish push for more renewables implies greater reliance on interconnection, but raises also the question of domestic nuclear. After all, neighbouring countries, including ones with good interconnection, are liable to prioritise domestic demand over exports in emergencies. Can you imagine the outrage here in Ireland if power was being exported during blackouts?

The Chernobyl-induced fear of nuclear has receded and several European countries which had stopped building nuclear plants have changed their minds, prompted also by the growth of renewables and the resulting risk to supply continuity. The academy of engineering authors are urging the State departments and agencies do their homework now, in the expectation that newer nuclear technologies are emerging which promise to deliver better supply security and more acceptable capital costs than were achieved with earlier designs. There is something of a renaissance under way around Europe in nuclear power, after a couple of decades in which only a few new plants were built. If the outcome is the availability of nuclear units at sizes suited to Irish requirements and at more affordable costs than the earlier technologies, policymakers here should be exploring the possibilities now. The effect of the 1989 legislation is to provide a ready-made excuse for administrative paralysis. If the SMR revolution really gets going, equipment manufacturers will be swamped with orders and slow learners down back of the queue.