"Green" policies are destroying this country

Northern Ireland gets 49% of it's electricity from renewables without offshore wind or much in the way of solar or tidal. So we know it could be more.

What is your solution deliverable by 2030 that meets daily and annual demand variations ?

Wind is reliable in the sense that you can be reasonably sure how much dispatchable plant you'd need in a few days time.

Nuclear last year had a capacity factor of 77.6% , so not double that of wind. And not near the 90%+ often claimed. Newer windfarms further offshore will have capacity factors exceeding 50% (nuclear will never be twice that) but more importantly offshore windfarms being geographically separate and the use of interconnectors mean fewer times without wind somewhere.

This is the graph that tells you much of the time 30GW of wind would power our country on it's own. But we will also have biomass, solar, interconnectors, demand shedding, and storage and natural gas up to 20% of current emissions and hydrogen storage , which may be as hydrogen or other hydrogen carriers like ammonia or other forms of energy to fuel.

The whole windfarm infrastructure doesn't need replacing mid life, just the parts that wear out like blades and turbines. You don't have to replace th cables, or foundations, you don't need to do the surveys again, you don't need to go through the planning permission again, you don't need to build the towers again or place rock armour on the seabed, or 101 other costs. However, replacing other components too means you can also bring old turbines up to modern standards with greater uptimes and efficiencies. And you can get 40 year turbines now.

France had to take half of it's nuclear plant offline this year to replace components known to fail and that should have been replaced during normal maintenance but weren't. Similar cases of corrosion in the US. And so far the oldest grid connected MW sized wind turbine has outlasted ALL of the French nuclear power plants.

"You design for the worst case scenario"

So far we've had loosing 54 reactors in one predictable (except for the date) and preventable incident (don't build where's there's been floods) And then having 40 of them stay off line for 11 years, and causing two other countries including the one holding most of the top ten records for lifetime output from a reactor abandoning nuclear power. That's not the worst case. It's just what has happened so far. Nuclear plants in the UK weren't designed to handle the 1607 flood. And gave up using the other reactor on a site as the only backup power, after PR over Fukushima but not after several near misses with previous floods. The more you look the risks taken in the name of cost cutting in nuclear the worse it gets.

"You design for the worst case scenario"

On top of everything else France had to shut down nuclear power plants this year because of rivers overheating. If a nuclear plant has a 60 year lifetime (hint: 100% failure so far) then it's reasonable to expect them to be designed to meet the environmental standards in average project duration + 60 years time rather than today's standards, otherwise you are kicking the can. See also low river levels, icing and floods taking nuclear power plants offline. And cold. Don't get me started on building reactors in seismic zones with historical earthquakes.

"You design for the worst case scenario"

How about something that been causing outages worldwide since at least 1984 in Israel, Japan, the United States (California, Maryland, Wisconsin, Florida), South Korea, and Sweden, Scotland and France. Oh look the UK is finally doing something about it as Even minor disruptions to water flow can cut electrical output. Not solving the problem just mitigation that will probably involve reducing power output to reduce cooling water input.

"You design for the worst case scenario"

As far as I can see the nuclear industry doesn't even plan for events that have already happened and have a high probability of happening again during the lifetime of a plant. These aren't black swan events. A 100 year event has a 50:50 probability of happening in plant with a 50 year life. (not counting construction and decommissioning which could total a 100 years) Also some 100 year events are becoming 10 year events with climate change.

In contrast

When has anyone ever lost most of interconnected wind or solar without having several days notice ?

Yes we might only get 10% output from 30 GW of wind some of the time but the measured statistic across offshore farms was 10.2% or higher 84% of the time (and the rest of the time the average was close to half that ). Covering 16% of the time using 20% of today's emissions should be a doddle especially when you also have the other renewables and interconnectors and storage. Also most of the low wind output is in summer and we will have 5GW of solar to cover daily peaks then.

If all else fails there'd be oodles of hydrogen wouldn't there ??? Because you keep claiming that the ESB will double charge for it.

We use 1GW more electricity in winter than summer.

Work out the cost of providing 1GW for 30 years and you have part of a budget for insulation. You can do the same for seasonal demand for gas, home heating oil and coal.

Might be worth doing from a balance of payments view to reduce imports.

I'm assuming you weren't in Dublin during the smoggy days we used to get.