In 1999, Dáil Éireann passed the Electricity Regulation Act, prohibiting the use of nuclear fission for electricity generation. The prohibition has been repeated in subsequent legislation and remains in force.

There was no concern about energy security in 1999 and there were no active plans for nuclear power from the ESB or anyone else.

But the customary appetite for virtue signalling by politicians prevailed and any advance consideration of nuclear options was discontinued. The 1970s had seen a proposal for a nuclear plant at Carnsore Point, south of Wexford town and about 170 kilometres from Dublin.

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The ESB abandoned the scheme in the face of widespread opposition and built a large coal-fired station at Moneypoint in Co Clare instead.

There had been accidents and radiation releases at several nuclear facilities around the world and public apprehension was easily mobilised.

As it happens, there had been a nuclear plant at Wylfa, just north of Holyhead on Anglesey island in north Wales since 1971, about half the distance of Carnsore from Dublin and a greater risk to the inhabitants of Ireland’s largest city given the wrong prevailing winds.

The Wylfa plant was decommissioned in 2017 but has been selected as the preferred site for a new one, so fingers crossed for the indefinite continuation of westerly winds – the USA and Canada are a long way away.

So long as the United Kingdom and France continue to operate nuclear plants, and both are building again, the territory of the Republic will share the risks. These risks are not zero but the evidence is that they are very low – only a small handful of the 450 or so nuclear plants around the world have ever experienced any radiation leaks at all, and the data show that the full system risks are materially lower than with coal when the risks in mining are accounted for.

The 1999 ‘ban’ on nuclear fission does not enjoy extra-territorial application, nor does the rising import share in electricity supplies sit well with the aversion to nuclear generation.

The electrons wafting their way across the Irish Sea on the UK interconnectors do not carry certificates of origin, and a portion of the UK power coming out of the socket in your home is nuclear on arrival.

The Government has announced a plan to build an interconnector to France, which will not include a valve to exclude nuclear power either, since there is no such thing.

The decision to opt for coal rather than nuclear in the late 1970s turned out to be the better option – nuclear stations had a very large minimum efficient size at the time, judged too large for the Irish system, and capital costs were prohibitive. Coal turned out to be more affordable, before it became taboo in the 1990s because of high emissions.

The world has changed dramatically over the 50 years since Moneypoint was conceived, and this is reflected in recent reviews of the issues from the Irish Academy of Engineering.

Abandonment

They have called for the abandonment of the ban on producing, rather than just consuming, nuclear electricity.

Noting that there is no realistic prospect that 2050 carbon neutrality targets can be achieved, they also argue that partial reliance on natural gas for a declining portion of power output can be reconciled with energy security, and question whether it is wise at this time to end coal-fired generation entirely at Moneypoint.

The current intention is that coal-fired generation at Moneypoint will cease and the coal-handling and storage facilities will lie idle.

But Moneypoint is almost fully depreciated – it was commissioned over 40 years ago and has further limited life if operated sparingly. With only about one-sixth of primary energy coming from domestic renewables, the current reliance on gas-fired power cannot be wished away.

Constructing more gas-fired units, knowing that they too will face downtime because intermittent renewables will be cheaper whenever available, it could be cheaper to retain the option of using one or even two of the three 300 MW units into the longer term.

There would be no capital cost, higher emissions but cheaper storage of reserve fuel supplies. There is no importation terminal for liquefied natural gas and no storage capacity.

The alternative to extending the life of Moneypoint in reality is investment in new gas-fired plants. The problem is exacerbated by the policy, also an explicit ambition of government, for continued expansion of Ireland’s fleet of data centres, already an outlier by comparison even with larger European countries and a huge driver of electricity demand.

Encouraging the data centres to arrange their own power supplies does not address the underlying problem – why encourage more demand when there are serious worries about supply? Current plans are seeking to wish away the inherent trade-offs in energy and climate policy.