Not so. What isn't farmed is mountains or wetlands, and Irish folks know their rights. There is *a lot* of small farms here, and nearly all <300 acres. One farm can have 5000 or 8000 acres in other places. Having been denied the right to own land in their own country, many Irish are passionate about ownership.

Are you familiar with the proposed solar farm next to the village of Duleek, maybe 30-40 minutes north of Dublin?

It will have capacity for 95 MW output, and occupy the orange area on the attached OpenStreetMap image.

If you zoom in to that, you will see a small blue patch I've added - this represents the space a 1 GW ThorCon MSR would occupy.

That's ten times more output, for not even 1% of the space occupied.

...

Attached Thumbnails

 

No, but I'm a bit surprised. Large wind farms get opposed over their noise. There's no noise to speak of, so those are usually overruled. But that's in the Boyne Valley, which is prime territory for tourists & archaeologists, so there will have be a high court challenge if it's approved. I remember such a court case (5-10 years back?). It's not until you apply for planning permission for a neuclear facility that you'll understand Ireland. People can name neuclear reactors: 3 mile island; Chernobyl; Fukishima; Zaporizhzhia. They don't want one here. The Government doesn't either, because in this country, the tail wags the dog .

here at finland there has been ppl complaining about windfarms because they say windfarms produce *infra sound.

*sound below hearing threshold.

Then we are in agreement: the issue is perception.

The people of Ireland are afraid due to high-profile accidents, but are probably unaware that - whilst nuclear incidents can be expensive to cleanup - they have killed or harmed far fewer people than coal, or oil, or gas - and that would remain true if we could wave a magic wand and convert all power to nuclear.

Likewise, they probably don't understand that modern reactor designs specifically address the lessons learned from those incidents (and other lower profile ones), and make nuclear power even safer, cheaper, and environmentally cleaner.

I'd probably have said the issue was trust. Whatever about Chernobyl, after Fukishima nobody would trust neuclear, regardless of what assurances they were given. Let's not forget that last time I heard, Fukishima has a lid put on a pile of super-hot neuclear stuff boring it's way down towards the centre of the earth.

In any case, the Greens are in the Governing Coalition. They can bring it down. Need I say more?

I haven't seen anyone here proposing we should ramp up submarine-derived, water-cooled fission plants of which Fukishima was one. The failure at Fukishima was due entirely to it's location. Obviously had it been even 1 kilometer inland no accident would have occured.. an accident in which it is important to recall that nobody died, rain wasn't turned acid, air wasn't fouled over large areas for many years, and even with that nevertheless somewhat catastrophic accident, it's carbon footprint was nil.

FWIW the same is true for 3 Mile Island and Zaporizhzhia whose only difficulty was the attraction Uranium can have for some radical terrorists

None of those safety concerns exist with modern designs that don't require a flowing water source and neither enriched uranium nor any other bomb-making material is required. Perception is the only issue and that perception is skewed by the calculations of money-grubbing journalists who go for the cheap thrill every time since "If it bleeds, it leads".

It's a pretty safe bet that somewhere in the world, some journalist each and every day will write some attention grabbing story with a headline like "Scientists In a Panic! It's Back to the Drawing Boards!" and it is literally always overwrought male bovine feces.

Watch to see over the next several years how that reporting changes regarding nuclear power since it will happen. Unless some totally unforeseen breakthrough in an area we can't yet even fantasize about occurs, we really don't have a choice unless you imagine global, possibly nuclear bombs raining from the sky to wipe out a major percentage of human population is a worthy and desirable alternative.

The problem? A thermostat set to 70 degrees instead of 68.

Ours is set at 24°C (75°F) and the AC is rarely used.

Yahoo.

In case I wasn't understood or thought to be over-reacting with "bombs from the sky" alternative, my point was that if we don't at the very least start making serious progress toward curbing climate change until we start seeing a foot of sea level rise and massive areas of drought and F6 hurricanes, consider the economic impact of Covid child's play, and just how economic pressures so often spark warfare.

As for seeing the consequences of climate change before getting real, I would make 2 points.

1. We, or to be precise, the 'global south' is already seeing the effects of global warming. If you want to google "Pakistan floods" you will see that their fertile soil, homes, possessions and evertything that matters has been washed out this year. This sort of thing happens in India, Pakistan & Bangladesh every year. Or look at the devastation that's going to happen in Japan in the next few days. Just because you're not over your ankles in water doesn't mean it's not too late for an awful lot of people.
2. When any individual hits his personal tripping point in the future, he will discover that it's already too late. Many balanced systems are now in positive feedback worsening the situation. And mankind worldwide will never agree to the absolutely draconian measures now required.

Next, you should be looking for answers. One of the questions you should be asking is: "Who knew 2000 years ago that we would be ruining the earth, and had it written down by the Apostle John at Revelation 11:18? Was he trying to tell us something? Who is he, anyhow?

https://news.slashdot.org/story/22/0...ate-files-show

On oil industry duplicity.

Here is an interesting perspective on Pakistan's 75 year history of flash and riverine floods: https://www.dawn.com/news/1707390/pa...-fail-to-learn

I agree that we should be looking for answers and while it possibly may not hurt to look at 2000-4000 year old superstitious compilitions, it also rather undeniably could. It lends an unneeded air of inevitability to the issue, that whole Master Plan question. Would you look into scripture to learn how to fix your plumbing, or survive a hurricane? Regardless of your religious convictions I doubt it does any good at all, and probably harm, to assume we have an inside track on the worst and assume there is nothing we can possibly do about it.

At some point if you're not part of the solution, you resign yourself to be part of the problem, no?

@leclerc78
Good grief! And with the energy crisis I was thinking I was getting a bit beyond myself by adjusting my thermostat up from 18.5 degrees Celsius to 19 degrees! 24 degrees? That's sub tropical!

Play Bonny!

yeah, thats very warm

my flat has maybe 20 degrees.