Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants • Hacker News Board

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#181

Post by bell-cot » Thu, Apr 30, 2026, 2:23 PM UTC

vidarh wrote: post #152

Projectiboga wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With waste with half lifes in the tens of thousands of years sitting in metal casks which cant last 1,000 years.

You'd likely do less harm if you just dumped that waste in a heap on a roadside than if you shut down the plants and as a result ended up with more coal plans continuing to run. Where shutting down nuclear would result in wind or solar replacing it, you might be better off. Maybe hydro - with a very big caveat that the big risk with hydro is dam failures, which are rare, but can be absolutely devastating when they ha…

Going forward, so long as you have competent engineering, the biggest risk of hydro power will be your water sources effectively drying up. (That could be literal, or diversion to irrigation and other uses, or various combinations.)

But the yet-bigger problem with hydro power is the extreme scarcity of suitable dam locations.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#182

Post by toasty228 » Thu, Apr 30, 2026, 2:23 PM UTC

mpweiher wrote: post #166

kleiba2 wrote: post #105

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 earl…

Interesting fact: Finland just built one, for €1 billion. How can that be, if it's so incredibly difficult that Germany has not managed to do this? The simple fact is that it has virtually nothing to do with any "difficulty" of finding a repository site, the problems are purely political, same as the US: "The Government Accountability Office stated that the closure was for political, not technical or safety reasons.[…

> if it's so incredibly difficult that Germany has not managed to do this?

The german government and institutions were (are?) full of pro gas (pro russian/russian tied) people who spend decades in the government before bouncing of to russia to work for petro companies. It's hard enough when you try, so imagine how hard it is if you don't even try

> Gerhard Schröder, who served as Chancellor of Germany from 1998 to 2005, has worked extensively for Russian state-owned energy companies since leaving office.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#183

Post by seszett » Thu, Apr 30, 2026, 2:25 PM UTC

NeutralForest wrote: post #35

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…

It's fine to shit on things but I have service almost everywhere and I take the train often with usually few issues aside from works on the tracks. Let's not blow up issues, it takes away from what we should focus on.

Well... there are worse places than Belgium for sure, and as a foreign citizen who has been living in Belgium for about a decade I think it's a reasonably well functioning country for west European standards, but I wouldn't use either SNCB/NMBS as an acceptable example as I'm not sure I have even had a single train be on time in the last few years (well I don't take the train much anymore for obvious reasons, but I still have to do it a few times a year) and cell service is absolutely not as good as it should be for such a small and dense country.

And my experience is only with Flanders which is basically one large city, I can only imagine how it is in the less populated areas of Wallonia or Limburg.

But I absolutely think that nuclear is a good option for such a small and dense country. Taking over the plants as they are nearly decommissioned is a stupid move though, but you can't expect anything sensible from this government.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#184

Post by crote » Thu, Apr 30, 2026, 2:25 PM UTC

panick21_ wrote: post #22

derektank wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Renewables are cheap. Renewables plus battery storage still are not and nuclear is a reasonable alternative for base load power.

More improtantly is actually renewables, plus batteries plus massive updates for the grid. The grid updates alone will cost 100s of billions. With nuclear and centralized distribution you would still have to upgrade the grid for 10s of billions, just because of electric cars and electrification (and general maintance). But renewables and batteries make this so much worse, specially once you talk about long distance r…

The main benefit of battery storage is that it is trivially easy to decentralize, so if anything it will save money on grid upgrades. Same with solar: no need to upgrade long-distance transmission lines when production happens right next door to consumption.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#185

Post by StreamBright » Thu, Apr 30, 2026, 2:25 PM UTC

crote wrote: post #163

monegator wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> time and cost as much as anything else you people have been saying that for at least twenty years. In the meantime the renewables have failed to produce a noticeable change in my part of europe, sentiment is increasingly pro-nuke but your adage keeps things still. Of course yf you never start, you never finish.

> renewables have failed to produce a noticeable change in my part of europe More electricity in Europe comes from renewables than from either nuclear or fossil, with renewables rapidly approaching 50% market share. Several countries (even the non-hydro-heavy ones) are already showing multi-day periods where renewable electricity exceeds 100% of demand. If your part of Europe isn't showing a noticeable change, perhap…

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

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#186

Post by dmix » Thu, Apr 30, 2026, 2:27 PM UTC

dalyons wrote: post #175

dmix wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep even before the war German industry was ringing alarm bells about how their high energy costs made it very difficult to compete against China. They should be adopting every sort of energy. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/13/business/energy-environme... > For many industrial companies in Europe, high energy costs have been a big concern, especially since Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. But even before then, ele…

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

Then why is China building 30 new reactors on top of the 60 they already have, if it's not competitive?

https://www.zmescience.com/science/news-science/china-says-i...

The answer is usually more about how China can actually build things, not that nuclear isn't economically feasible.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#187

Post by dalyons » Thu, Apr 30, 2026, 2:28 PM UTC

adev_ wrote: post #164

croes wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And after 10 to 15 years pf construction and billions of euros they will realize that nuclear energy is a lot more expensive than wind and solar plus storage.

> And after 10 to 15 years pf construction and billions of euros they will realize that nuclear energy is a lot more expensive than wind and solar plus storage. It is not. And people who repeat this lie have generally very little clue of the reality of an electrical grid and how it is designed and managed in practice. Solar and Wind are cheaper in term of LCOE. LCOE is a secondary metric in a much larger equation. A…

I think it is actually the pro nuke case that often has misconceptions of how a modern grid works, repeating terms like “base load” etc

Because actually nuclear is terrible in a grid increasingly full of nearly-free variable sources (solar&wind). The nukes need to stay at 100% all the time selling their power at a high fixed price to have any remote chance of being economical. Cheap variables push nuke's expensive power off the grid during the day, and increasingly into the evenings with batteries. This is unavoidable in an open energy market, and is fatal to the economics of nuclear.

Yes they are building a bunch but Chinas grid share of nukes is actually declining y/y and is projected to continue to decline. Renewables are too cheap.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#188

Post by skerit » Thu, Apr 30, 2026, 2:30 PM UTC

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?

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#189

Post by ToValueFunfetti » Thu, Apr 30, 2026, 2:31 PM UTC

crote wrote: post #145

shawabawa3 wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's worth noting that the Fukoshima disaster 1. Lead to basically zero direct deaths 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 3. ~20,000 people died due to the Earthquake Requiring a nuclear plant in Belgium to be safe enough to survive what caused the Fukoshima disaster is probably not a good us…

> 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…

>>1. Lead to basically zero direct deaths

>"Basically zero" is a funny way to spell "a few dozen".

Wikipedia asserts one "suspected" death, which I think is within bounds to call "basically zero". It does list a couple dozen injuries.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_nuclear_accident

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#190

Post by ETH_start » Thu, Apr 30, 2026, 2:31 PM UTC

crote wrote: post #145

shawabawa3 wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's worth noting that the Fukoshima disaster 1. Lead to basically zero direct deaths 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 3. ~20,000 people died due to the Earthquake Requiring a nuclear plant in Belgium to be safe enough to survive what caused the Fukoshima disaster is probably not a good us…

> 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…

The impression I've gotten is that almost all of the massive bills associated with nuclear power are because of an irrational fear of the radiation. Factoring in all the nuclear disasters and the radiations released from them, nuclear causes something on the order of 10,000 times fewer deaths than coal per megawatt generated.