Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants • Hacker News Board

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#71

Post by leoedin » Thu, Apr 30, 2026, 1:35 PM UTC

formerly_proven wrote: post #34

nandomrumber wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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> And the West is also largely not keen on producing new humans (time and costs as much as anything else). In my state the immediate costs to parents for raising a kid up to the age of 18 are around eight median gross incomes with the opportunity costs usually estimated about as high. This means having a kid loses parents around one quarter to one third of their total lifetime income . That's before even considering…

> Having kids is a financial and ecological disaster. As an outside observer it's remarkable to me people are still having any kids at all, which speaks to the strong subjective factors overpowering whatever objective considerations one might have about it.

Objectively if no-one has kids then there will be no more humans. I guess you could consider that an ecological win. If you don't, then someone has to have kids.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#72

Post by triceratops » Thu, Apr 30, 2026, 1:35 PM UTC

nandomrumber wrote: post #32

andrepd wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. This is pretty much the summary of the whole discussion. Building new nuclear is a debate, seeing as renewables are dirt cheap it might or might not make sense to build new nuclear reactors that take a fuckton of money and many y…

The West built the existing rector fleet cheap and fast in the past, and those reactors have proven to be safe and reliable and maintainable. It’s a proven technology with decades decades in service. We actually don’t know m any of the long term risks and unintended consequences of providing wind / solar + batteries at scale. What rational is there to scrap the one and mandate the other?

> What rational is there to scrap the one and mandate the other?

No one said "scrap", you're making up a lie and arguing against it. They're saying keep one and build more of the other.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#73

Post by actionfromafar » Thu, Apr 30, 2026, 1:36 PM UTC

derektank wrote: post #41

notachatbot123 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Humankind should depopulate, we cannot sustain infinite growth and are already destroying our planet. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_overpopulation

There’s more forested land in Europe today than there has been since the middle ages

More tree plantations.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#74

Post by roenxi » Thu, Apr 30, 2026, 1:36 PM UTC

nandomrumber wrote: post #26

pjc50 wrote: post #2

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…

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> And the West is also largely not keen on producing new humans (time and costs as much as anything else).

> And seems to think it can just import people from other, far, away places.

That seems fundamentally OK? The #1 problem leading to humans not having enough to live comfortably is that we have an enormous number of humans and limited resources. We can't unlimit resources. There isn't a very nice way to force people to stop having children. The remarkably low birthrate is an amazing outcome of a superficially intractable problem.

If the Africans catch up with everyone else and stop having too many children, the only thing that needs to happen is better education and the situation is actually good. We're on a reasonable trend with AI and robots. People are choosing not to have kids. That's workable.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#75

Post by hylaride » Thu, Apr 30, 2026, 1:36 PM UTC

ramon156 wrote: post #39

elric wrote: post #24

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 underfun…

> Belgium is nearly bankrupt can anyone jumpstart me on this, since when is belgium bankrupt?

Bankrupt is a politically loaded term, but they have very high debt and taxes, political gridlock (it is very divided among French and Flemish linguistic lines, plus all the other traditional left/right polarization), and it is all but impossible to make reforms. IIRC there was no sitting government for 500 days at some point. It's also got all the classic problems of an aging population.

Belgium is a curious country that was formed via historical quirks around religion (many Flemish/Dutch speaking catholics not wanting to be part of protestant Netherlands, but that is a gross oversimplification and the history is very complex - read up on wikipedia if curious). Historically the Flemish were the poorer part of the country, but after deindustrialization the story flipped as most of the industry was in the French parts. The result is bitterness that holds the whole country back.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#76

Post by ben_w » Thu, Apr 30, 2026, 1:36 PM UTC

nokz wrote: post #56

formerly_proven wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And the West is also largely not keen on producing new humans (time and costs as much as anything else). In my state the immediate costs to parents for raising a kid up to the age of 18 are around eight median gross incomes with the opportunity costs usually estimated about as high. This means having a kid loses parents around one quarter to one third of their total lifetime income . That's before even considering…

This (rational) attitude is why state pensions need to have a strong correlation with the number of children you parent until they complete secondary schooling -- there needs to be a financial payoff for the time, effort and money invested; those children are the ones financing the state pensions.

The people planning for retirement are mostly past child raising age; the best way to have bugger families is to encourage low standards and unprotected sex amongst young adults, which is the exact opposite of the public health and morality pressure my entire generation and those that followed me have been on the recieving end of.

That said, medical tech is speeding up like everything else, so non-human surrogacy, artificial wombs, longevity meds, are all likely to impact this balance on similar timescales to such a cultural shift.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#77

Post by artursapek » Thu, Apr 30, 2026, 1:37 PM UTC

formerly_proven wrote: post #34

nandomrumber wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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> And the West is also largely not keen on producing new humans (time and costs as much as anything else). In my state the immediate costs to parents for raising a kid up to the age of 18 are around eight median gross incomes with the opportunity costs usually estimated about as high. This means having a kid loses parents around one quarter to one third of their total lifetime income . That's before even considering…

Having kids and raising them is your primary purpose as a man. Anything else you spend your time on is secondary to that.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#78

Post by cogman10 » Thu, Apr 30, 2026, 1:38 PM UTC

thrownthatway wrote: post #62

cogman10 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Funnily, I have almost the opposite view. I'm terrified of old nuclear because those first gen power plants are all missing a lot of safety lessons. Nuclear disasters happen at old plants. I want old nuclear plants to be either u…

What nuclear disasters? Exactly? Name one nuclear disaster at an old nuclear plant whose lessons weren’t applied to the whole fleet.

Fukushima. It was a Gen 1 plant which already has the issue that a thermal runaway is possible. There were other examples of this happening like TMI. The backup for Fukushima was onsite generators which were flooded and ultimately failed causing the meltdown.

The safety lessons we learned from all gen 1 reactors was to apply passive shutdown mechanism where if input power fails fission ultimately stops. That's not something that can be applied across the fleet because it requires more infrastructure and an almost complete redesign of the reactor's setup. Which is why these early reactors all have a potential risk of thermal runaway.

Edit: It looks like all gen Is have been decommissioned as of 2015, which is great. But we really should now be talking about decommissioning gen IIs and leaping forward to Gen IVs.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#79

Post by thrownthatway » Thu, Apr 30, 2026, 1:38 PM UTC

formerly_proven wrote: post #34

nandomrumber wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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> And the West is also largely not keen on producing new humans (time and costs as much as anything else). In my state the immediate costs to parents for raising a kid up to the age of 18 are around eight median gross incomes with the opportunity costs usually estimated about as high. This means having a kid loses parents around one quarter to one third of their total lifetime income . That's before even considering…

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Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#80

Post by subscribed » Thu, Apr 30, 2026, 1:38 PM UTC

__alexs wrote: post #51

formerly_proven wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And the West is also largely not keen on producing new humans (time and costs as much as anything else). In my state the immediate costs to parents for raising a kid up to the age of 18 are around eight median gross incomes with the opportunity costs usually estimated about as high. This means having a kid loses parents around one quarter to one third of their total lifetime income . That's before even considering…

Having kids is pretty far down my priority list but like, there's more to life than earning money.

Sure, as long as you're comfortable, meaning you can find a good job that will work around your parental duties, and thst pays well enough you can rent or buy within a catchment area :)

Sure, that's doable. Millions of working parents in powerty in every G7 country can attest how easy it is.