Last night I was talking with fellow Blueshirts about Irish politicians’ reluctance to think about energy policy in a strategic way, or to look further ahead than the next election at issues that have a 20-30 year horizon. Ireland’s not even on the end of a pipeline, and any deal Germany makes with Russia isn’t going to concern itself with us. We are still opening peat burning stations with relatively high CO2 emissions, and our gas supply is running out. To diversify, we’ve got interconnectors with the UK – current and planned – and in the next decade or so, we’ll have an interconnector direct into the French national grid. Which is striking, given how sniffy Irish people are about nuclear power.
Ireland has no nuclear power stations. We’re dead against them, and have spent the last 15 or so years pursuing fairly ineffectual legal battles against the UK for the radioactive pollution discharged into the Irish Sea, most particularly from Sellafield (or Windscale, as was, before its last major accident in 1957). In fairness, if the UK thinks its power stations are so safe, you have to wonder why they’re mostly dotted along the western coast lines of Scotland and Wales, away from the UK’s major population centres, and 40 miles from ours.
We’re against nuclear power in pretty much all its forms. The odd time that a US nuclear submarine stops off in Cork, there are loud protests at even the thought of having a nuclear reactor in our territory. We tend to ignore the fact of radioactive waste created by our own hospitals. A few years ago, the government distributed iodine tablets to thousands of people, just in case Sellafield ever blows up Chernobyl style. It was more or less a publicity stunt, and actually was widely ridiculed. But nuclear power is still quite the no no, in Ireland.
Except of course that we use it every day in the electricity that pulses across Ireland from the UK’s national grid. Which we’ve more or less been able to ignore because the UK doesn’t draw most of its power from nuclear energy. But once we’re connected to France, the international poster child for nuclear energy, Ireland will find it a lot harder to continue the NIMBY-istic hypocrisy of condemning nuclear energy as we use it to boil our kettles and run our factories. France might act as if it can sew up any energy deal it likes with Russia, but it has announced a new building programme of nuclear reactors just in case. So any deal we do with France is based on the assumption that most of the energy we get from them will be tainted by its nuclear origins.
Which reminds me of the long-running Irish debate about neutrality. Since before World War II, Ireland has styled itself as being neutral in any conflict our allies are involved in. We’re a very Western flavour of neutral; in WWII we interned German soldiers but shipped the British ones home. Today, though we are shy of joining NATO, we’re in its Partnership for Peace. Yet during the Balkans conflict, we sat firmly on our hands, taking them out to wring occasionally at the human cost of it all. Cold war peace was all very well, but our only goal was to enjoy it, not to preserve it. I remember campaigning during a referendum on the Maastricht Treaty outside Pearse Station in Dublin in the 1990s, and foolishly engaging rabid anti-Maastricht people who swore blind that a ‘yes’ vote meant we’d be in NATO within minutes, and despatching our troops to Russia or worse. (And the neutrality supporters were always those glassy-eyed, ultra-Catholic young men who seemed to wish they’d been born in 1932, not 1972.)
But we’ve rolled along ever since, enjoying the fruits of other countries’ labours to preserve at least European peace, and never getting our own hands dirty. The title of this post – the Irish solution – comes from a cynical acceptance of double standards promoted during the 1980s that outlawing contraception and abortion in Ireland were fine, because you could always get them in the UK if you had the money. That cynicism maskes a utopian kind of thinking that refuses to face up to the reality of a population’s policy needs, and glosses them over with rhetoric about what we aspire to being. Free-riding is a well known political phenomenon, of course, but the self-righteous cant that underpins it is base hypocrisy.
But when you trace back through the debate, though, you find that attitudes soften over time. Successive waves of information and discussion didn’t just spread around the hard data that couldn’t be ignored. They encouraged people to refer back to their own experience, and open up conversations with people they know, conversations that couldn’t have happened before the whole country was talking about it. From one opinion poll to the next, people started believing or accepting that legalising contraception wasn’t the end of the world, or that perhaps Ireland should begin to shoulder some of Europe’s responsibility in our foreign policy. It’s iterative, it’s incremental, but we do have a sense of our national debate being on a progressive, upward trajectory.
Maybe that’s just catch-up, because we’ve come very, very far since the 1980s and the Kerry babies. Irish political and social debate isn’t marked by the nativist exceptionalism you used to see. It has a leavening dose of self-consciousness and knowingness from observing other countries discussing the same questions, usually half a generation ahead of us. As we develop economically and socially, that lag is getting shorter. We even find ourselves dealing with the same issues as the rest of Europe, round about the same time, such as immigration.
I wouldn’t expect too much, though. Irish people may grudgingly come around to accepting the fact that we rely on nuclear energy, and phase out the moralistic anti-nuclear rhetoric. We might even have a grown up conversation about what it means to buy power whose means of producing it we disagree with. But we won’t be sharing the risks of its production any time soon.
{ 37 comments }
Alex 03.06.07 at 11:22 am
In fairness, if the UK thinks its power stations are so safe, you have to wonder why they’re mostly dotted along the western coast lines of Scotland and Wales, away from the UK’s major population centres, and 40 miles from ours.
Well, excluding Dungeness, south of London, Sizewell, northeast of London, and Bradwell, due east of London, Berkeley (halfway from Gloucester to Bristol).
Anyway, wouldn’t that be “along the western coast lines, upwind of the UK’s major population centres”?
abb1 03.06.07 at 11:30 am
So any deal we do with France is based on the assumption that most of the energy we get from them will be tainted by its nuclear origins.
I believe it’s the same with Italy: nothing nuclear there after Chernobyl, yet most of the energy imports is from France’s nuclear power stations.
Kevin Donoghue 03.06.07 at 11:32 am
Isn’t “NIMBY-istic hypocrisy” a bit harsh? The phrase “services lawfully available in another state” seems applicable to both nuclear power and abortions. This seems to me to be just an example of the PPM issue which has given the WTO such headaches. If the French and the English are willing to risk, respectively, radiation sickness and eternal damnation in order to supply us with services, are we obligated to prevent them from running these risks?
Maybe it’s OT but if I wanted to get hot under the collar about Irish hypocrisy (and I don’t really) I think the stance we take with regard to American outsourcing of torture would be the thing to think about. We rely on “clear and explicit factual assurances†that prisoners are not transferred through Irish territory without the express permission of the Irish authorities. Ms Rice tells us it ain’t so and we pretend to believe her; much like the rest of Europe.
Chris Williams 03.06.07 at 11:41 am
Hang on, the Irish have contributed more than their fair share to UN peacekeeping ops since 1945. In strict body-count terms, that’s c.90 fatalities out of about c.1600; probably the highest in relation to population of any state.
NB: I make no comment about whether or not UN missions are an unequivocal Good Thing.
ajay 03.06.07 at 12:25 pm
alex: Also Torness, just down the coast from Edinburgh, Hunterston, near Glasgow, and Oldbury, near Bristol. In fact, most UK nuclear stations are pretty close to a major city, which makes sense given that most of the electricity goes to major cities.
But I suppose this entire post is about the difficulty of inserting reality into Irish political debate…
Daniel 03.06.07 at 12:39 pm
There were Irish troops in Kosovo, weren’t there? Half of them seem to have stayed there and opened pubs.
Maria 03.06.07 at 12:54 pm
Here’s some reality for you; a map of UK nuclear power stations.
Maria 03.06.07 at 12:58 pm
We’ve certainly done more than our fair share of manning UN peacekeeping forces.
That’s a separate question from maintaining ‘neutrality’, i.e. sending condolences to the German people on Hitler’s death or staying out of NATO. (not that I’m suggesting those are morally equivalent acts)
john b 03.06.07 at 1:34 pm
Weird map: it claims that Sellafield is three power stations, while only counting (e.g.) Sizewell as one, despite both featuring multiple reactors built at different times. It also includes Winfrith, Dounreay, Windscale and Trawsfynydd even though they were closed years ago.
Once that skewing is taken out, there’s no evidence at all for the claim that UK reactors are concentrated near Irish population centres and away from UK ones. And that’s even before you take into account the direction of prvailing winds…
Maria 03.06.07 at 2:03 pm
I think the map counts reactors not ‘stations’. E.g. Sellafield was at least one reactor prior to 2001, then started building the Mox reactor which was the subject of separate legal action by the Irish government.
Maria 03.06.07 at 2:16 pm
John b, ‘Windscale’ as you understand it may have been closed down years ago after the 1957 accident, but the old reactor still poses a risk, as do all old nuclear reactors. There is in fact a new revitrification plant on that site today.
Actually, Windscale is simply part of several separate plants that make up the Sellafield complext, each with a different function, hence the number of plants on the map. Sellafield itself currently comprises three main processing plants; Thorp, Magnox and MOX.
The issue with Sellafield is not so much the westerly prevailing winds which might pose a danger to the midland cities or the south east of England in the unlikely event of a nuclear accident. The issue is the prevailing currents in the Irish Sea into which radioactive effluent is leaked/pumped. That is an every day reality, not a hypothetical.
Matt 03.06.07 at 2:16 pm
I’d suppose those nuclear power plants all have containment domes. If so there’s not too much chance of them blowing up “Chernobyl style” since one of the biggest problems there (among many!) was that since the design was claimed (for no real reason, of course) to be so safe it didn’t need a containment dome of the sort that’s on all western plants. Waste disposal is a real and large problem for nuclear power stations and there are probably others, too. But fear of a “Chernobyl style” disaster at western plants is more a sign of hysteria than a real fear.
Chris Bertram 03.06.07 at 2:25 pm
Interesting map. There are lots near me. Now I know why Manx cats have no tails.
Daniel 03.06.07 at 2:44 pm
if you superimpose RAF and USAF sites with nuclear weapons, and overlay the Chernobyl cloud it is frankly surprising I only have one head.
EWI 03.06.07 at 2:45 pm
Yet during the Balkans conflict, we sat firmly on our hands, taking them out to wring occasionally at the human cost of it all. Cold war peace was all very well, but our only goal was to enjoy it, not to preserve it.
I agree with the other posters above who have pointed out that Irish troops have been sent to preserve the peace in Kosovo (and without the public caterwauling that characterised the Republican-controlled US Congress on this issue during the Nineties).
Maybe Maria can tell us where Fine Gael types would like the Irish Army tanks (all fourteen of them) to be deployed first, in this ideal world?
P O'Neill 03.06.07 at 2:49 pm
There is equally rampant NIMBYism in the national attitude to rubbish, whose rapid rate of increased production is outpaced only by the fury that greets the proposal to locate any disposal facility within 10 miles in any direction from anyone’s house. There is an impressive ability to not think about the fact about the fact that the stuff has to go somewhere.
There’s also the issue of water charges, which seems to the one point of agreement of all parties on the island — they’re agin it. In contrast to the rubbish, this marks an impressive ability to not think about where the stuff is coming from.
Maria 03.06.07 at 2:51 pm
I’m talking, ewi, about having a foreign policy that doesn’t start from the premise that it’s all too difficult and dangerous for us and we should just stay neutral because we’re special in some way.
Foreign policy does not equal tank deployment. You don’t have glassy eyes, by any chance?
Ray 03.06.07 at 3:13 pm
Ireland is involved in setting the foreign policy of the EU. It is not involved in NATO. Tank deployment is a significant difference between the two.
(Although there were plenty of ultra-Catholics opposed to the Maastricht treaty – and mainly for other reasons – there were also plenty of people on the left arguing against Maastricht on the basis that it weakened Ireland’s claim to neutrality.)
Daniel 03.06.07 at 5:07 pm
#15 Maria is right on this one; Irish troops were part of the (uncontroversial) UN peacekeeping force, not the NATO force.
soru 03.06.07 at 5:32 pm
There may be some confusion on that point as the first troops into Pristina were the Irish Guards.
Perhaps relevant to this discussion:
‘It recruits Catholics and Protestants alike in Northern Ireland, the Irish neighborhoods of major British cities, and (unofficially) the Republic of Ireland. (The latter permits its citizens to enlist in the British forces, but forbids active recruiting.) ‘
franck 03.06.07 at 7:10 pm
To me a lot of this is historical memory. After all, a lot of Irishmen fought in WWI on the British side who favored an independent Ireland, and they were repaid with massacres and the Black and Tans. Why die for Britain if you don’t have to? A lot of the appeal of neutrality comes from not having to die from foreign wars drummed up by militarists in other countries. I imagine after the Iraq war, this approach is gaining appeal in Britain as well.
EWI 03.06.07 at 7:57 pm
I’m talking, ewi, about having a foreign policy that doesn’t start from the premise that it’s all too difficult and dangerous for us and we should just stay neutral because we’re special in some way.
I would really like you to justify that claim with examples. And to explain how our having ten percent of our Defence Forces constantly abroad on UN duties for the past number of decades is shirking any responsibilities to the international community.
Foreign policy does not equal tank deployment. You don’t have glassy eyes, by any chance?
Ok. Maybe I should’ve included a link – the “tanks” I referred to are, of course, these things. (But for the great majority of people who consider armoured cars to be tanks; we’ve deployed those to places like the Congo, Lebanon and Liberia too. Some have seen action.)
In the context of NATO, foreign policy is supposed to be matched by boots on the ground too, and it’s disingenuous to suggest otherwise (of course, I’m leaving out the French case here).
EWI 03.06.07 at 7:59 pm
To me a lot of this is historical memory. After all, a lot of Irishmen fought in WWI on the British side who favored an independent Ireland, and they were repaid with massacres and the Black and Tans.
You can thank John Redmond for that – the early twentieth century Irish equivalent of the “useful fool”.
EWI 03.06.07 at 8:03 pm
‘It recruits Catholics and Protestants alike in Northern Ireland, the Irish neighborhoods of major British cities, and (unofficially) the Republic of Ireland. (The latter permits its citizens to enlist in the British forces, but forbids active recruiting.) ‘
There was a report in the Phoenix a while back that British Legion types coming over here to schools were engaged in activities that were very close to recruitment; there was never a follow-up to that article, unfortunately, so we don’t know if their welcome was rescinded after that.
EWI 03.06.07 at 8:08 pm
Ireland is involved in setting the foreign policy of the EU. It is not involved in NATO. Tank deployment is a significant difference between the two.
Leaving aside the small matter of those planned EU battlegroups for the moment (we’re in the Scandinavian one, if I remember correctly), Ireland is in PfP, which is generally accepted to be the waiting-room for full NATO membership.
If it weren’t for the Irish public having a pesky aversion to getting involved in Grand Military Adventures of the sort most recently seen in Iraq, I’ve no doubt that we would have been marched into NATO a long time in many in Fine Gael had their way (I learn now, some at CT as well).
lemuel pitkin 03.07.07 at 3:20 am
You guys are still burning peat?
jay bee 03.07.07 at 10:19 am
The Irish solution to an Irish problem, I think its some kind of Catholic doublethink – we can have the highest environmental standards in the world but there isn’t the remotest chance of them being enforced if it means closing down a chemical factory and losing a single job.
Things are changing very slowly, just look at the whole flat earth aspect of part of the objections to the Corrib gas pipeline which I was surprised Maria didn’t mention in the context of any current discussion on energy policy in Ireland? In fairness, nobody else did either.
Alex 03.07.07 at 12:03 pm
How many grand military adventures of the sort most recently seen in Iraq has NATO actually undertaken?
Ray 03.07.07 at 12:16 pm
I am amused by jay bee’s comment above.
On the one hand, Ireland is to be criticised for not enforcing environmental standards if it may cost jobs.
On the other hand, protesters worried about the environmental effect of a land-sea gas pipeline are ‘flat-earthers’.
jay bee 03.07.07 at 2:01 pm
Isn’t Catholic doublethink a wonderful thing.
The comment about environmental standards was meant more in respect of the 1980s & in the context of the “Irish solution” theme to the post. I don’t necessarily think that the same applies today.
Different people are opposed to the pipeline for lots of different reasons and “flat earth” was probably a bit strong but I would be critical of those who say they are opposed it on the risk assessment/safety issue.
I was more interested in the fact the pipline didn’t seem to come up in the discussions Maria had with her blueshirt friends about energy/security issues. We’re still burning peat but we’ve found some hydrocarbons only we can’t seem to agree on how to get them ashore.
Pete 03.07.07 at 5:07 pm
I think that importing electricity from countries that don’t care about nuclear power because they have the political and technical infrastructure is a fantastic idea, and I wish the UK government would get on with it. There is no way I trust this lot to build anything after the Dome fiasco and the recent rigged energy consultation; but France seems to be able to do it sensibly, so we should benefit from that.
Eimear Nà Mhéalóid 03.07.07 at 5:37 pm
Pete at 32: and Irish people trust our government to build/contract out/project manage anything remotely dangerous even less. This would still be true if there were a change of governement. Until we see some major construction projects both competently completed and up and running trouble-free for a reasonable length of time, FG or anybody else can forget about convincing Irish people to accept nuclear power generators.
dearieme 03.07.07 at 8:58 pm
“neutral in any conflict our allies are involved in”: isn’t that a wee bit, um, you know……
EWI 03.08.07 at 3:21 am
How many grand military adventures of the sort most recently seen in Iraq has NATO actually undertaken?
What is NATO for?
Who, exactly, is in Afghanistan at this moment?
Answers on a postcard, please.
Valuethinker 03.09.07 at 8:32 am
re location of British nuclear power plants:
– you have to build them on the Coast, because nuclear power stations, like all heat engines, obey Cornot’s law: they gain increased efficiency if the difference between the input and output temperature is maximised.
Put it another way, the cooler the input water (sea water!) the better. the most efficient plants in the world are based on the sea.
The French have had to shut down some of their stations during recent heat waves: the rivers ran dry.
The only reason Britain has power plants in the Midlands and Yorkshire is the coal mines were there (and the big industrial consumers).
– the stations were located largely for grid balancing reasons. Because you cannot store electricity, where you produce it, relative to where you consume it, is an important question.
In general, it’s best to have your most stable sources of power (nukes run almost all the time) relatively close to population centres: hence Sizewell (Suffolk), Hinkley (Bristol), Dungeness (Kent).
– politics was also a factor. If you put a plant in an isolated rural community, the jobs it creates creates an automatic constituency for the plant. It’s also a regional development strategy.
Those jobs are high paying and high skilled, and they last for forever, because a nuke is a long life asset.
– there’s no doubt the British have played silly bu–ers with the Irish over Sellafield and atomic waste dumping. But there is a general superiority complex about the Irish that the British hold.
– generally on British Irish policy, remember that Blair is the first Premier in a long time who did not depend on Ulster Unionist support in Parliament. Major kept his government by it, and Thatcher’s key security adviser and trusted personal friend (until he was assassinated) was Airey Neave, an Ulsterman. Neave had run MI9 (pilot and aircrew escape networks in WWII in Europe) and had a long history of shadowy dealings with the security services.
It’s no coincidence Blair, who is married to a Catholic, and is on the point of conversion, was the first British Premier able to conclude a deal with the Provisional IRA.
In general Unionists still have a big influence in the senior levels of the civil service and the Army. ‘Ulster will fight and Ulster will be right’ was a slogan from 1913 and the fight against Irish Home Rule, but the attitude is still there in Westminster
Valuethinker 03.09.07 at 8:41 am
I think Ireland could do a lot more with wind.
Ireland, like the west coast of the United Kingdom, has some of the best onshore and offshore wind resources in the world.
Linking to the French grid makes sense in that case, in the same way the Danes link to the German and Scandinavian grids.
Wind is intermittent. You can only have a large percentage of your power from wind (typically over 15-20%) *if* you have alternative power sources and you can trade power: sell them power when it is windy, and buy it back when it is not windy.
Note offshore wind blows a lot more frequently than onshore– even a 10km distance offshore the wind is something like twice as frequent at the minimum speed necessary.
An expert investor in the field who owns power facilities in Ireland told me that a wind farm in Ireland is competitive *without subsidy* with a new gas fired power station. Since we don’t tax CO2 output, that means it is actually cheaper than a fossil fuel station.
Taking a leaf from the Danish book, combined heat and power units, providing neighbourhood and office park heating, can work well with a large proportion of wind in the total grid supply.
A gas fired station is limited to about 65% thermal efficiency (Cornot’s law again). A combined heat and power station can get 80-90% efficiency, if there is a strong, regular demand for heat.
Ireland should give up burning peat. It is the messiest fuel (other than lignite brown coal) in the world from a CO2 point of view, and it’s extraction causes huge environmental problems for local flora and fauna.
It’s a crime to burn peat when you have so much wind available.
Valuethinker 03.09.07 at 8:43 am
http://www.iwea.com/windenergy/index.html
map of Irish wind farms here.
By contrast, Germany has nearly 20,000 MW of installed capacity, and Spain 12,000 MW. Even France is planning 3,000 MW.
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