Ah the old "country's worth of electricity" comparison... Keep in mind that Ireland's entire electricity needs could be covered by a one nuclear power plant (3.8 GW with 4 reactors). IOW, you could offload all Irish datacenters by connecting them to a single nuclear power reactor (~900 MW), a small building that has a footprint of under 50 x 50 meters for the reactor, and another of 100 x 50 meters for the generator.

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testing22321 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Sweet. Start building TODAY and it will be done in nothing less than 20 years for nothing less than $20 BILLION.

What should they do in the meantime?

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hunterpayne 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Sure, $1B for the plant and $19B for the lawyers. Korea and China build them in 4 years for about $1B each. This is entirely self-inflicted by people who are completely scientifically illiterate.

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mrb 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Or Ireland can import electricity from France TODAY as we export on average 10 GW continuously, and most of it is already generated by nuclear :-)

	▲	tialaramex 11 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		If you were to look at a map you'd see that Ireland is on the other side of a bigger island. Sure enough France exports up to about 4GW to the UK, and the UK exports up to about 1GW to Ireland. Right now, it being the middle of the night here, France sends us about 2.5GW and we sent Ireland about 500 MW. Electricity being fungible by nature it doesn't really mean anything to say that's French electricity when it reaches Ireland, it could just as easily be British nuclear, or wind power from a Scottish wind farm, or any number of sources or any mix.