Data centres drive Ireland to reopen nuclear power debate
Banned by law since 1999, Dublin reconsiders atomic energy
Rising electricity consumption by Ireland’s insatiable data centres has prompted the government to do something that has been unthinkable for decades: reignite a debate about nuclear power.
Data centres account for nearly a quarter of all electricity used in Ireland — a share set to rise to at least 30 per cent by 2032. Their consumption grew 10 per cent last year from 2024, far outstripping the 2 per cent growth of all other users.
But unlike France and the UK, nuclear power has never been an option in Ireland. Several high-profile protests beginning in 1978 succeeded in killing plans for a nuclear plant on the south-east coast. Bans against the technology since 1999 have ensured things stay that way.
As Ireland seeks to deliver more electricity to satisfy surging demand from data centres, however, Taoiseach Micheál Martin recently told a business dinner: “We’re open to that [nuclear].”
One of his Fianna Fáil party backbenchers, James O’Connor, has introduced a bill to lift the veto on nuclear power.
“Nuclear is the way to go,” O’Connor told the Dáil, Ireland’s lower house of parliament, in May, citing Finland, which has a similar size population and generates almost 40 per cent of its electricity from nuclear. Finland has the lowest non-household electricity prices in the EU, while Ireland has the highest, according to statistics agency Eurostat.
A favourable tax regime has lured global tech companies to set up their European headquarters or establish large operations in Ireland. They make an outsized contribution to its state accounts because they can book profits in Ireland even on sales of products abroad, as their Irish subsidiaries hold intellectual property rights.
But Dublin was forced to impose a de facto moratorium on new data centres in 2021 because it could not keep pace with their electricity demand.
“The reason we’re seeing nuclear on the agenda now is to satiate the immense energy demands of the multinational sector and data centres,” said Seán Fearon, at the Autonomous University of Barcelona and author of a report on the cost of data centres.
In the US, the data centre sector is increasingly eyeing nuclear power, with companies racing to restart mothballed plants, such as Palisades in Michigan and Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania. AI “hyperscalers” such as Amazon and Google are looking to use small modular reactors (SMRs).
Ireland first flirted with nuclear power during the 1973 oil shock to alleviate its over-reliance on energy imports, but the Three Mile Island reactor meltdown in 1979 turned public opinion against it.
Ireland relies on imports for four-fifths of its energy needs. Some 40 per cent of its electricity generation came from gas last year, with wind making up 32 per cent and net imports via interconnectors with the UK 16 per cent, according to official data.
Ireland has doubled its generating capacity from wind in the past decade, although it has failed to capitalise on its offshore wind resources since the first project, Arklow, came on stream 22 years ago.
A decision on the first offshore wind project since Arklow is due in September but O’Connor argued the “mistake” of prohibiting nuclear had made Ireland “very vulnerable”.
In a country where half a century ago, the then energy minister derided opponents of nuclear power as “members of the flat-Earth society”, many Irish now appear to agree.
In an opinion poll in April, 43 per cent of respondents wanted the nuclear ban scrapped compared with 28 per cent in favour of keeping it. That compared with an equal 43 per cent split in 2021 over whether Ireland should build a nuclear power station.
Besides the Taoiseach, Ireland’s finance, public expenditure and energy ministers have all suggested it is time for a fresh debate, although they still say renewables take top priority. The fate of O’Connor’s bill is unclear.
But even if the ban were lifted, nuclear power would not solve high prices, ensure security of supply and deliver on Ireland’s legally binding carbon budgets, said Hannah Daly, professor of sustainable energy at University College Cork.
“Nuclear is certainly not something that can address any of those challenges in the next 15 to 20 years,” she said, adding that “nuclear will face the same, if not more, constraints as the offshore wind industry is facing — and offshore wind doesn’t rely on importing uranium”.
She added: “I’m concerned that by proposing nuclear as a sort of silver bullet solution . . . it will actually delay renewables even further.”
Kieran White, chief executive of renewables company Perigus Energy, which has solar and wind projects in Ireland, said the country needed to fix planning hurdles and grid constraints hobbling the renewables industry.
“The risk is that we spend too much time debating theoretical future options while forgetting the deliverable projects that are key to unlocking lower-cost, homegrown and green power this decade and the next,” he said.
The irony is that Ireland is already exposed to nuclear power via its imports from Britain, which still has a fleet of five operational atomic energy plants.
More will follow when an electricity interconnector with France is finished in 2028. France produces about 70 per cent of its electricity from nuclear.
“We should be doing, in the 2020s, what the French did in the 1970s,” said Eamonn O’Reilly, chair of the energy and climate action committee of the Irish Academy of Engineering. The Academy estimates that a fleet of small modular reactors could supply 48 per cent of Ireland’s electricity by 2050.
“It takes a long time to get ready, hence we should start now,” O’Reilly said.
Opponents of nuclear power cite the cost overruns and construction delays at recent projects in Europe.
However, Dave Kirwan, managing director of Centrica Power, whose parent company has a 20 per cent stake in the UK’s existing nuclear power stations, said smaller reactors, which can be built on the site of data centres, offer promise. “I’m seeing real traction [in the UK] that could deliver quicker than you think,” he said.
Ireland is now allowing new data centres to be built, provided they meet 80 per cent of their power needs from additional renewable generation within six years. But Daly estimates that by 2040, they could gobble up 55 per cent of Ireland’s electricity.
Given such challenges, proponents say Ireland cannot afford to ignore nuclear.
“I worry that we think we have the luxury of 10 to 12 years,” Kirwan said. “I don’t think we do.”