Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants • Hacker News Board

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#341

Post by ambicapter » Thu, Apr 30, 2026, 3:58 PM UTC

foolfoolz wrote: post #323

Alexsky2 wrote: post #253

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 impre…

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…

The math in this comment is all over the place.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#342

Post by WaxProlix » Thu, Apr 30, 2026, 3:58 PM UTC

foolfoolz wrote: post #323

Alexsky2 wrote: post #253

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 impre…

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…

There is so much misinformation in here, so densely packed.

Ivanpah is is not the largest solar power plant in California. It's an experimental solar-thermal plant. Talking about megawatts per year is not a meaningful term (megawatt-years would be). Ivanpah despite its much talked about failures delivers between 350 and 850GWh per year.

The largest solar plant in California is Edwards Sandborn, producing somewhere around 2500GWh per year (it's newer so numbers are less published).

Diablo Canyon produces around 18000GWh/year, which is huge.

But with all costs combined, Diablo's price per MWh is close to ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY DOLLARS off of a massive initial capex. Modern solar battery installs trend towards $30-60 for the same output.

So I'm sure your tour guide had some neat numbers but you should be careful not to repeat them verbatim (or unremembered).

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#343

Post by pqtyw » Thu, Apr 30, 2026, 3:59 PM UTC

cogman10 wrote: post #168

leonidasrup wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear reactors are regularly maintained, tested and checked. When possible, old plants are upgraded to new safety standards. You can upgrade certain components, and safety systems. However things like the containment structure or pressure vessel can't be changed. You for example can't retrofit a core catcher, but you could improve the turbines, I think Steam Generators as well, replace PLC's, Tsunami proof your sit…

Right, and ultimately Japan has decided the safest and I assume cheapest route with these reactors wasn't to rebuild but rather to decommission. These reactors can be made safer, but they all still have a foundational design flaw which means the ultimate goal should be replacing rather than continually spending money reinforcing.

All nuclear reactors are massively safer than coal power plants though. If you excluded climate change and Co2 emissions entirely and measured harm/deaths adjusted by the amount of power generated the difference would be astronomical.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#344

Post by thrownthatway » Thu, Apr 30, 2026, 3:59 PM UTC

ben_w wrote: post #227

thrownthatway wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> bigger families is to encourage low standards and unprotected sex amongst young adults Factually incorrect. The best way to ensure big families is to foster a culture getting marriage younger, stating married, and starting families younger. Women have their best years of fertility from about 17 to their early thirties. Telling young women to prioritise long educations and a career over family is counter productive…

You have a western view of things. There are other cultures which have communal upbringing, e.g. Kibbutz, Hadza, and ǃKung; and while they have ceremonies which are called marriage, Europe has seen religious conflicts over the things smaller than the difference between ǃKung and Catholic marriage sanctity. The fact is that marriage as it is understood in the west today bears little in common with the institution of t…

You’re a cultural relativist.

You think all cultures are equal?

They’re not.

Only one culture gave us pretty much everything the modern world enjoys today: Western European culture.

Microchips, invented be Westerners. Electricity. Telecommunications. Space travel, space probes, space telescopes. We pioneered and perfected all of those things. First to end slavery. Universal suffrage, gay marriage. We did all of that. Modern medicine, antibiotics. First to solve HIV. Eradicated malaria, tuberculosis, polio. All Western achievement.

Other than the Jewish tradition you mentioned, the others are merely irrelevant.

Other then Israel in the Middle East, basically no one is queuing to get in to countries other then Western ones. Everyone wants to come to the advanced European economies, France and Germany, the UK, and the US, Canada, New Zealand, Australia.

Why? Because we’re awesome and everyone wants what we have.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#345

Post by pyrale » Thu, Apr 30, 2026, 4:00 PM UTC

thrownthatway wrote: post #280

swiftcoder wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How much money does it really cost? The problem is as much time as it is money. We have reactors producing energy now, it will take a decade plus to replace them, and due to both climate policy and supply issues around the wars in Russia and the Middle East, we can't afford to do without the energy for that decade...

> climate policy Fuck climate policy . There could be an earthquake any moment now that ruptures a massive natural CO formation that would eclipse any anthropogenic generated emissions in matter of hours. What have we done to mitigate that risk? Nothing . There is a non-zero chance Earth will be relieved of the responsibility of harbouring complex life any moment now by a loose pile of gravel travelling at 60 kilomet…

> What have we done to mitigate that risk

Climate change isn't a risk that needs mitigation, it is not a contingency of hypothetical events. It is happening right now, and lives are already being claimed.

Maybe you are shielded from that and want to keep your lifestyle rather than adapting.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#346

Post by kalessin » Thu, Apr 30, 2026, 4:02 PM UTC

ViewTrick1002 wrote: post #273

mpweiher wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "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…

None of this addresses the points made. It is talking around the subject by trying to shift the focus or narrow the perspective. The cleanup bill is real. The inability to get insurance is real. The precautionary evacuation of entire cities is real. The possibility of Fukushima scale accidents all depend on local conditions. And it may be as trivial as upgrades and component changes over the decades leading to safeti…

> The cleanup bill is real

This still feels irrational compared to other dangerous industries.

> The inability to get insurance is real

It's real, but how much of it is rooted in emotional fear or bad industrial policy?

> The precautionary evacuation of entire cities is real.

And that's one of the lessons to learn from the Fukushima accident, that's why Canada changed their evacuation plans to be more granular for example.

> Renewables and storage are the cheapest energy source in human history.

Storage gets very expensive as your share of renewables increases (because the capacity factor of storage goes down then). Having an amount of clean firm generation (nuclear) brings the overall cost of the system down.

edit: capacity factor might be the wrong term for storage, the point is their rate of utilization goes down and so does their profitability.

> There's no point other than basic research and certain niches like submarines to waste opportunity cost and money on new built nuclear power today.

I don't understand what we could effectively do with civil nuclear builds decades ago cannot be replicated today. Let's also talk about the cost of the transition to renewables in Germany please.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#347

Post by mpweiher » Thu, Apr 30, 2026, 4:02 PM UTC

cogman10 wrote: post #265

mpweiher wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Fukushima plants were completely destroyed by the meltdowns and subsequent Hydrogen explosions that were caused by the Tsunami. There was never any chance of "restarting" them, so not sure why you brought that up.

Because I'm confused at to what the > On the contrary was about. Contrary to what?

Contrary to your claim Japan is not shutting down its nuclear reactors. It is restarting them.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#348

Post by thrownthatway » Thu, Apr 30, 2026, 4:02 PM UTC

anonymars wrote: post #270

thrownthatway wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

RMBKs are irrelevant to nuclear reactor safety. You had a good argument up until you went there.

Even if we don't treat Chernobyl as sui generis, the safety situation with nuclear power is akin to that of airplanes. We don't bat an eye at the quotidian death toll of cars or coal I've yet to see a nuclear safety argument that doesn't reduce to 'nuclear energy provokes emotional fear' Oh, it occasionally irradiates a swath of land and renders it uninhabitable? How about coal ash ponds or indefinite mine fires or i…

> it occasionally irradiates a swath

That has happened exactly once.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#349

Post by raincole » Thu, Apr 30, 2026, 4:04 PM UTC

toasty228 wrote: post #130

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…

This is such a non problem, here is the waste from the entire french nuclear production ever (the red cube): https://www.discoverthegreentech.com/wp-content/uploads/2023... Meanwhile I've been filtering the german coal byproducts with my lungs, and paying my electricity 2-3x more per kwh than the french

Yep. The anti-nuclear group's narrative is always that "but no one wants that in their backyard..." but my god if only most voters realize that the waste from their whole state/country can literally fit in one single backyard.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#350

Post by pqtyw » Thu, Apr 30, 2026, 4:05 PM UTC

mannykannot wrote: post #195

thrownthatway wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The claim that disasters happen to older plants is not refuted by the observation that lessons learned are applied to the whole fleet. One might object that there is selection bias in the original claim, due to the slowdown in construction of recent plants, but that is a separate issue. A more thorough investigation of the causes of all events leading to a significant degradation of safety margins would be needed to…

> disasters happen to older plants is not refuted by the observation that lessons learned are applied to the whole fleet.

There was a single nuclear disaster in history that actually caused a lot of damage (Fukushima was of course very costly financially). Both Chernobyl and Fukushima were caused by variables that can be easily controlled, though. Just don't build them in coastal areas were Tsunamis are fairly common and more importantly don't allow Soviet engineers to design and operate your nuclear power plants.