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Comments (373)

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  Alexsky2
  A bit unrelated to the Belgium story but I recently visited Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant near San Luis Obispo, CA and learned a ton about the technical details, safety systems, and policy decisions that go into operating a nuclear power plant. When operating at full capacity, it provides up to 10% of California power! While there is certainly always more such facilities can do for safety and efficiency, my impression is that smart people are working hard to ensure the lessons of previous disasters and potential future ones are mitigated, and that nuclear energy, whether through next-gen small module reactors or legacy systems, will be an important aspect of our future energy grid, especially with the rapidly rising energy demand predicted over the next two decades. If you are interested in a tour, the form can be found here: https://www.pge.com/en/about/pge-systems/nuclear-power.html
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  pjc50
  Strictly: France will no longer decommission Belgium's nuclear power plants, as Belgium will buy them. The current owner Engie are majority-owned by the French government.Apparently there also used to be a phaseout policy which is being rescinded: https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/other/belgium-and-czechia-ram...I'm not keen on new nuclear (time and cost as much as anything else), but it's a terrible idea to phase out operating nuclear plants which are still safe and within their planned lifetime.Further background: https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/articles/fifth-belgian-re... (2025)> "Belgium's federal law of 31 January 2003 required the phase-out of all seven nuclear power reactors in the country. Under that policy, Doel 1 and 2 were originally set to be taken out of service on their 40th anniversaries, in 2015. However, the law was amended in 2013 and 2015 to provide for Doel 1 and 2 to remain operational for an additional 10 years. Doel 1 was retired in February this year. Duel 3 was closed in September 2022 and Tihange 2 at the end of January 2023. Tihange 1 was disconnected from the grid on 30 September this year."> "Belgium's last two reactors - Doel 4 and Tihange 3 - had also been scheduled to close last month. However, following the start of the Russia-Ukraine conflict in February 2022 the government and Electrabel began negotiating the feasibility and terms for the operation of the reactors for a further ten years, to 2035, with a final agreement reached in December, with a balanced risk allocation."It seems there has been a complex balancing act which any owner of an old car will be familiar with: spend more money on keeping it operational, vs scrapping.
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  716dpl
  The EU also released a plan in the past week to accelerate the deployment of both nuclear and renewable energy. This oil shock is going to have lasting impacts.https://energy.ec.europa.eu/publications/accelerateeu-energy...
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  Gud
  Yes. A nuclear power plant should be considered a national treasure, like a mine or hydro power plant, or any other large scale resource.To demolish a functional nuclear power facility is pure lunacy.
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  kleiba2
  Interesting fact: Belgium's neighbor Germany has commenced a search for a suitable place to store nuclear waste indefinitely in the 1970s. Given that such a place must be safe for hundreds of thousands of years, they have not yet found one.All the nuclear waste they've got is stored in temporary places (above ground) at former nuclear reactor sites.The search is not expected to conclude before 2040 at the very earliest.
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  wiz21c
  Good news: we will leave oilBad news: according to the discussions here on HN it appears that there is no consensus on what the good mix of renewable/nuclear is. Therefore us, citizens, will be manipulated by politics.
• cryptoneo
  Everytime this comes up, HN is becoming more and more an X-like echo chamber: Touting nukes as the solution to a spike-load problem in a densely populated area, and the waste disposal as a solved problem (by externalizing the cost).Meanwhile the prices dropped further than ever, 20kW peak with 20kWh batteries for EUR 10k, which provides >95% self-sufficiency in a 2p Household and lets you sell more than 80% of the yield (though prices are already very low when the sun is shining). And this is without an EV yet. Please enlighten me: Why are we still having these discussions? I don't see why that wouldn't scale in the US as well, what's the status with flexible energy pricing?If anything, we need to build fast, flexible power plants, but their lobby groups are well oiled already without our support.
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  BirAdam
  Everyone focuses on the safety of power production, and I totally get that and think it's important, but the mining and enrichment of uranium should also be considered. Nuclear "disasters" aren't just 3 Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima. There are plenty of other disasters that aren't power plants.Growing up in the USA, my home town was contaminated with uranium, thorium, and radium due to a nearby uranium processing plant that later became a superfund site. It was in the soil, the water, and sometimes even the air. I knew far too many people who've died of cancers, and I, like many from that area, have thyroid issues from exposure.
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  NeutralForest
  I just want Belgium to go all-in on renewables, we [already have a pretty good electricity production make-up](https://statbel.fgov.be/en/themes/energy/electricity-product...) but we're still [too dependent on oil](https://www.iea.org/countries/belgium/energy-mix).Hopefully the current energy crisis is a wake up call.
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  skerit
  For years, even leading up to starting the decommission of the power plants, Engie has been saying it's literally impossible to reverse the decision. And now that we're 2 years into the decommission, suddenly it is possible after all.How is that possible? And what are the consequences?
• thelastgallon
  Everyone is scared of nuclear energy: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-p...Every country should invest massively, nuclear for energy and defense, to eventually protect themselves and solar for energy security.
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  deanc
  Good. It's time we realised that we need a good strong stable power grid and clean nuclear energy is absolutely going to be a massive part of this.
• boringg
  Amen - we need more sense coming from European politicians.
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  techteach00
  I think I'm super pro nuclear everything now. See the new Russian built nuclear plant in Bangladesh. Crazy populated country currently not able to import adequate fossil fuels due to the strait conflict.Nuclear energy is a God send if managed with extreme care.
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  rmoriz
  I‘m very interested in the financials of this decision. Nuclear plants are designed for base loads but are way more expensive than solar and wind energy. The losses will increase the costs of energy.
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  lifty
  There's a very dark scenario where for some reason or another (all out nuclear war or asteroid hit) sunlight is blocked, in which case having stable base load energy production from nuclear would be very useful. I know this is an unlikely scenario and hopefully it never happens, but it's always good to think about tail risks like these.
• veunes
  The interesting part will be whether Belgium can turn this into a coherent long-term plan
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  declan_roberts
  Nuclear energy is one of the few technologies that have big tent support. How many things can we get both the Rs and Ds to support? Build build build!!
• trgn
  keen to keep an eye on this. it implies restarting shut down reactors, all the while a transfer of know how to different ownership.
• kvgr
  They had so much cheap electricity they had lamps on highways. This is pure civilization regress.
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  elric
  This doesn't seem like a terribly great idea, for several reasons. Belgium is nearly bankrupt, with a government deficit that the EU is already giving us grief for, in spite of some of the highest tax rates in the world. That same government hasn't exactly managed any of its semi-public companies particularly well: the national telco is for shit, postal service is nearly bankrupt, railways are mismanaged and underfunded, etc.The reactors in question have been shut down by virtue of being too old (1974, 1975, 1982, 1985). Some of them have cracks in the reactor vessels. Maintenance has been lacking. There was also a case of sabotage which was never resolved.Meanwhile Belgium has a lot of off-shore wind power in the north sea, but lacks battery capacity and transmission lines. Spending money on that would likely be a much better investment.
• nikanj
  I wonder if there will one say be an autobiography that reveals the russian hand behind the naive EU fossilsmaxxing.
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  xchip
  Feels like a bailout. Belgium’s playbook is simple: skip maintenance, let it decay, then replace it on the taxpayer’s dime.
• StreamBright
  Not a big surprise, eventually we are going to move to nuclear one way or another
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  shevy-java
  I understand the "Realpolitik" here, but ...> "This government chooses safe, affordable, and sustainable energy. With less dependence on fossil imports and more control over our own supply," he wrote on X.Really? So nuclear power plants are suddenly the new "clean" hype? Because if Belgium is stating "more control over our own supply", can we mention a little something THAT BELGIUM HAS TO IMPORT URANIUM? So the "own supply" here is ... what exactly? Besides, I question the "nuclear is now clean" campaign that Leyen is doing. She is the ultimate lobbyist. It is also strange how the EU says "russian energy is bad", but then is silent when uranium is imported into the EU from Russia. We are here being lied to by these lobbyists/politicians. And a few make a lot of money, at the expense of the great majority. Why were renewables barely strategically expanded? China did so. Why are democracies so incompetent nowadays?
• Stoick
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• enricotal
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• renewiltord
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  ramesh31
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  piokoch
  The most important question is: who the hell decided to do such a stupid thing and in the name of what. When we have an answer maybe we can look on other ideas the same people figured out and also rethink them.Say, sorting thrash. EU new idea is to make Europeans to sort thrash into 12 separate beans. So what that all trash goes through sorting process before being dumped, and there are very modern and efficient sorting robots that use AI, etc. that can do sorting much better than any human.So, maybe, just maybe it is better to invest more into new technologies, instead of turning Europeans into wastes sorting machines.And this is only one more example where EU countries are doing something plain idiotic, nevertheless, like in the great Buñuel's movie "The Exterminating Angel", nobody is able to admit that there is something stupid going on and it is enough to open the doors and walk away.
• rob_c
  Good.Lets hope we see less policy which is at a very small step back basically: "we're competing to punch ourselves in the face the hardest" in the international arena.