More datacenters coming to Ireland, despite energy concerns Trouble is brewing in Ireland as a ban on datacenter buildouts in the Dublin area has reportedly been challenged by one developer, while Amazon has now been granted permission for two new facilities near the city amid growing concern over the amount of energy bit barns consume. South Dublin County Council voted in June [PDF] …
Quite, and I think it's a sadly accurate comparison as the unnecessary and quite bizarre standardisation on US spelling is only one part of the problem: the overall interestingness and humour that once set El Regipoo apart also seem to have taken a sharp downturn over the same period. If I wanted to read some boring tech trade journal with too many advertorials that's what I'd do, but I don't particularly. By this point I'm mostly skipping the articles and seeing if there's any interesting comments instead.
Same here - not enough quirky articles for me and I'm moving to commments quicker too. The constant running of surveys to fine tune topics of interest is another clue that something's amiss. I fear that El Reg is either short of ad revenue or tarting itself up for a takeover. It's the only tech paper I read and and the only place where I comment because this is such a decent place and not full of the nobs that ruin everything for everyone. Fingers crossed.
Come on, there will be an expensive "Professional" contract, and the normal "Private" one, which stipulates that power might be arbitrarily and randomly cut, especially during rush hours (early morning to late evening) and in case of too hot, too cold or too mild weather.
Don't worry, it's not all that difficult, there are lots of countries which only have 2 hours of electricity a day (and not necessarily every day)...
There's never really been a focus on strategic defence or sophisticated heavy engineering in the Republic of Ireland at the level needed to support a nuclear power programme. What advanced manufacturing does take place (pharmaceuticals, microelectronics) is more a case of small scale financial stimulation in recent years.
Being Irish, I'd like to see some small safe reactors around the place to guarantee energy independence. I expect we'd buy from France rather than build from scratch.
If you look up RTE archives there was a small reactor at a science fair in the RDS back in the 60's, which the Americans had brought in as a demo.
Maybe the UK government could build one of it's annual nuclear plants somewhere with a tradition of heavy engineering, like Belfast?
Since the NI Electricity Network is a subsidiary of the Irish government owned ESB that would be almost the same, without the risks associated with having ignorant Taigs tampering with sophisticated technology.
There was an attempt to build one back in the late 1970s-early 1980s but this failed due to public pressure.
The fact that the country was in a severe financial state didn't help either.
Another factor which put the Irish off nuclear power was Windscale/Sellafield. The Irish got the worse half of the deal. Rates for cancer were 20 times higher in Dundalk, across the Irish Sea from Seallafield.
While I think that a nuclear power plant would be good for Ireland's energy mix, I am happy to see the number of windmills on the Irish coastline. If there is one thing that Ireland has a lot of, it is is wind. I would like to see wind becoming the dominant source of Irish electricity.
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