Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants • Hacker News Board

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#331

Post by anonymars » Thu, Apr 30, 2026, 3:46 PM UTC

crote wrote: post #324

otikik wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ~20,000 people died due to the Earthquake > Irrelevant. Well, that needs more nuance. You have to understand that Japan is unusually well prepared for natural disasters. From earthquake resistant building codes, to alarm systems, education, to building, to earthquake refuges. I would venture to say that it is the most earhquake-prepared country in the world (although I have no proof of that point and I don't feel l…

Sure, but Chernobyl didn't require a massive tsunami, and neither did Three Mile Island. On top of that there have been dozens of near-misses. On the other hand: what would have been the result of the earthquake and subsequent tsunami hitting a wind farm, or a PV installation? Nuclear reactors are inherently a very risky business, with virtually unlimited damages if something goes seriously wrong. I'm sure all the re…

Thought experiment: imagine nuclear were 100 times as deadly as it is, but ten times more prevalent (supplanting other fossil fuels, or even hydroelectric)

What would be the net effect? (I think it would be roughly on par with gas or hydroelectric and an order of magnitude safer than other fossil fuels even with this extremely pessimistic hypothetical)

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#332

Post by mm0lqf » Thu, Apr 30, 2026, 3:46 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.

theres the well known inherent problem with the graphite at UK AGR reactors which could be very bad (can crack or misshape in such a way that the control rods or fuel rods cant be moved), not to mention the boiler cracking at the weldseams, they only mitigated this at some sites because they all are slightly different in design, they basically ignored it in the ones which didnt yet have it for decades ,the regulator ended up finding exactly that lessons learnt on older reactors were not being applied to newer ones which had the same problems inherent to them

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#333

Post by spacebanana7 » Thu, Apr 30, 2026, 3:47 PM UTC

boringg wrote: post #307

716dpl wrote: post #31

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...

Couldn't ask for better unintended outcomes from that Iran war than to fast track deployment of renewable and nuclear energy. Get europe off their anti-nuclear, pro gas stance. France gains a fair bit from this development. Russia loses influence as does the mid-east if the trajectory holds. Winners: heat pump manufacturers, nuclear re-processing, uranium enrichment, eVs, nuclear heavy manufacturers, solar panels (Ch…

Gas is an excellent compliment for renewables. It scales up and down quickly, and can cover all the weak spots around intermittency and dunkelflautes. The carbon emissions are relatively low too, because in renewables/battery heavy grid the actual quantity of gas needed is relatively small.

The problem arises in importing gas from unstable places.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#334

Post by spacebanana7 » Thu, Apr 30, 2026, 3:50 PM UTC

sheauwn wrote: post #142

lifty wrote: post #66

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.

If sunlight is blocked the amount of people who die due to starvation from crop failures will probably more than make up for the difference in lost solar power energy. That is to say, we'll have much larger issues than a stable power grid to contend with.

It doesn't necessarily take a full blockage of sunlight. Extreme weather conditions that create multi week collapse in solar outputs is enough to create grid stress, if one is totally dependent on solar and 24hr batteries.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#335

Post by adrian_b » Thu, Apr 30, 2026, 3:52 PM UTC

716dpl wrote: post #250

dalyons wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Building _new_ nuclear is not going to make their energy costs cheaper. It is the most expensive form of generation

While this is true, we don't have a good solution for long term energy storage. Even with plummeting costs and new technologies like sodium ion, batteries still only get you maybe ~12 hours of discharge. Pumped hydro give you longer storage, but there are limited places where you can build it. Unless geothermal becomes competitive, nuclear is still the best solution for carbon-free baseload.

There is a good solution for long term energy storage: use solar energy to make synthetic hydrocarbons. This is a solution that has been proven for billions of years.

We can already capture solar energy at a much better energy efficiency than living beings. Making hydrocarbons with hydrogen extracted from water by electrolysis and concentrated carbon dioxide has acceptable efficiency and already almost one century ago it was possible to do this at a large scale where fossil oil was not available.

The step that has the least efficiency for now is concentrating the dilute carbon dioxide from air, which plants do much better.

There is no doubt that the global efficiency of such a process could have been greatly improved if only a small fraction of the resources allocated to much more frivolous goals had been allocated to this purpose.

While other alternatives are speculative, it is enough to look outside to see plenty of PoCs that this is feasible.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#336

Post by Kon5ole » Thu, Apr 30, 2026, 3:53 PM UTC

mpweiher wrote: post #257

crote wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1. Lead to basically zero direct deaths "Basically zero" is a funny way to spell "a few dozen". It also led to a $187 billion cleanup bill - which is expected to grow by a few more tens of billions over the next decades. > 2. Was caused by the forth most powerful earthquake to have ever been recorded in the world (since ~1900), and the most powerful earthquake ever recorded in Japan Sure, but Belgium has to be prep…

> "Basically zero" is a funny way to spell "a few dozen". The actual death toll of the accident itself is zero. There was one incident of cancer that was ruled a "workplace accident" by an insurance tribunal that went through the press without much vetting. However, this was for his overall work at the plant, largely preceding the accident. The WHO says there has been and will be no measurable health impact due to Fu…

>Nuclear is insured.

You should read the article you linked to. It actually explains that nuclear is defacto not insured, and that is the reason why they have only paid 15000 euros in total.

The TLDR is that basically no matter what happens, the cost is covered by the government of the country the plant is located in, and secondly other governments.

This is course also true even if nothing goes wrong with the plants, future tax payers pay for decommissioning, maintenance, storage etc.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#337

Post by StreamBright » Thu, Apr 30, 2026, 3:54 PM UTC

abenga wrote: post #238

StreamBright wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Renewables are not suitable for replacing nuclear, coal and other traditional sources of energy due to the fact that you cannot control production.

Why do you need to control production? Why not over provision and store?

How?

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#338

Post by pqtyw » Thu, Apr 30, 2026, 3:56 PM UTC

cogman10 wrote: post #54

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…

> 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…

> Nuclear disasters happen at old plants.

You used plural? What disasters are you talking about?

Even Chernobyl wasn't technically first generation (not that it has anything to do with power plan safety in western countries anyway).

Three Mile Island kind of proved it was fairly safe given that's the worst disaster to ever happen without any external factors (like tsunamis or being designed and run by soviet engineers..)

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#339

Post by foolfoolz » Thu, Apr 30, 2026, 3:57 PM UTC

bryanlarsen wrote: post #329

foolfoolz wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

diablo canyon has 2 reactors that can make 1.1MW per hour continuously. about 2.2MW/hr they both aren’t always on but that’s the goal. It’s closer to 2MW/hr actual the largest solar plant in california is Ivanpah. It made 85GW/year. Thats 97MW/hr. It would take 20 clones of Ivanpah to match one diablo canyon. Ivanpah took 4 years to build, cost 2.5B and was in discussions to close because it’s not cost effective. htt…

Ivanpah is solar thermal. Nobody is advocating for solar thermal, photovoltaic has decisively won.

mount signal, the largest PV plant in california makes 1,200GW/hrs per year. it would still take ~15 copies of mount signal for a single diablo canyon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Signal_Solar

my whole point is solar is great, but the insane scale it requires to get reasonable output is really underestimated. you would need solar fields 100sqmi big. probably many of them. solar alone won’t be the future of humanities energy needs because it’s not efficient enough. we should still keep building solar. but if we aren’t building nuclear too its not enough growth

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#340

Post by wombatpm » Thu, Apr 30, 2026, 3:57 PM UTC

close04 wrote: post #12

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…

> 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. This is a different choice because the car analogy usually has "buy new one" as a term. Not having to build a new plant makes the choice far less controversial and also cheaper.

Also, turbines for gas plants are back ordered until 2030