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Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

dpa-international.com

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Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#491

Post by Moldoteck »

crote wrote: post #121
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 Apparently there also used to be a phaseout policy which is being rescinded: https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/other/belgium-and-czechia-ram...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's a terrible idea to phase out operating nuclear plants which are still safe and within their planned lifetime I completely agree, but that's a massive "but". Belgium's nuclear power plants are mostly known for their reliability issues. They are outdated 2nd-gen PWR reactors, designed by a company with no other nuclear experience, operating in some of the most densely populated areas of Europe. Keeping them oper…

reliability issues doesnt mean unsafe. Most EU units are gen2 and doing fine. Engie wants units shut down to push for new gas plants. If belgium keeps reactors on engie will suffer massively. Decomissioning of npp is generally fine too. Isar2 decom in germany is going full speed

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#492

Post by triceratops »

peterfirefly wrote: post #481
triceratops wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Germany did indeed make that choice.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46292341 can we call it Triceratops' law now?

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#493

Post by peterfirefly »

ZeroGravitas wrote: post #60
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…

Shutting down at the intended end of life is a third decision point. New renewables are approaching the marginal running cost of nuclear that is still within their intended life span. It would need to be shown that an expensive refurb is better than running it down efficiently while building out new renewables as far as bang for buck in getting off imported gas.

And importing gas famously has zero known serious externalities, as vividly demonstrated in Europe and the Gulf at the moment.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#494

Post by Moldoteck »

ViewTrick1002 wrote: post #295
UltraSane wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A nuclear reactor can generate 1 billion watts of very low CO2 electricity for 60 years.

At a cost which could generate ~10 billion watts of very low CO2 electricity for decades if invested in renewables. Also remember that large parts of a nuclear plant is replaced over its operational life. Control systems, steam generators, turbines, generators, tubing, valves etc. What stays is the outer shell and pressure vessel. A nuclear plant doesn't just "work" for 60 years. And there's no trouble designing rene…

but for ren you need parallel gas firming. For nuclear you need some backup, but not fully parallel grid. Paid off npp can generate very cheaply, at 4-7ct/kwh

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#495

Post by Moldoteck »

Projectiboga wrote: post #94
UltraSane wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A nuclear reactor can generate 1 billion watts of very low CO2 electricity for 60 years.

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

wait till you learn what we do with arsenic which lasts forever...

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#496

Post by dv_dt »

rayiner wrote: post #461
throwaway2037 wrote: post #409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did some research about that nuclear power plant. In 1985 dollars, the total construction cost was 5.6B USD. That is an astonishing amount of money. That is at least 16B USD in 2026 money. If you also include decomissioning costs of about 4-5B USD... how the fuck does nuclear power make any economic sense? PV solar plus batteries: ALL THE WAY. To be clear, I am not anti-nuclear power by any means. I think it is a t…

It’s not a choice between nuclear and PV. It’s a choice between nuclear and the other things that provide base load: gas and coal.

A requirement for base load is a fallacy promulgated by fossil fuel preservation lobbying

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#497

Post by Moldoteck »

jcattle wrote: post #11
modo_mario wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I would put the risk of old NPPs with cracks in their 40 year old concrete more on the gas boiler side. Are you referencing something specific that isn't bullshit?

Tihange and Doel have had incidents and significant maintenance downtime related to issues with concrete. https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/Belgian-outages-...

and this doesnt mean explosion still...

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#498

Post by Moldoteck »

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

its expensive if it takes 20y. It's cheap if it takes under 6-8, like Barakah or China

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#499

Post by Ray20 »

pqtyw wrote: post #343
cogman10 wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> measured harm/deaths adjusted by the amount of power generated

In this case, we find that nuclear nuclear reactors are 2 orders of magnitude more dangerous than gas and coal power plants.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#500

Post by Moldoteck »

adrian_b wrote: post #335
716dpl wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ag…

There is a good solution for long term energy storage: use solar energy to make synthetic hydrocarbons - that'll cost you in the end much more than throwing some nuclear in
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