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Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

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Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#551

Post by goodpoint »

pqtyw wrote: post #338
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…

> 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 engineer…

I lost count at 50

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

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#552

Post by zajio1am »

panja wrote: post #414
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…

Maybe there is a discussion to be had about WHY it needs to make economic sense? Power is a natural monopoly, maybe it doesn't need to be a part of the economy?

Power distribution is a natural monopoly, power production is commodified/competitive business.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#553

Post by peterfirefly »

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?

It isn't, but it is inching closer.

https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-euro-indicators/w...

Debt to GDP ratio of 107%, only Greece, Italy, and France are worse. Even Spain and Portugal are better! It is frightening how many member states are over 80% when they are supposed to be at 60% or better.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#554

Post by Kon5ole »

thrownthatway wrote: post #348
anonymars wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 .

>That has happened exactly once.

And affected an area about the size of half the continental US, causing expensive countermeasures to be taken for 40 years and counting.

Maybe once was enough?

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#555

Post by orthecreedence »

pjc50 wrote: post #162
graemep wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Renewables (especially wind) are mostly more variable. I have lived in a country that was reliant on hydroelectricity and the consequences of a drought were severe (literally days of power cuts, water cuts because of the lack of power...). Part of the solution was to build coal and oil power. Surely nuclear is better than coal?

One small problem, nuclear is also dependent on water: https://www.theenergymix.com/low-water-high-water-temps-forc...

Such a difficult resource to find.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#556

Post by simplyluke »

Believing we're in a climate crisis and also being anti-nuclear are mutually exclusive positions in my mind, and opposition to nuclear from environmentalist orgs should be viewed as a massive historical mistake as it set us back decades in moving the needle on carbon emissions.

The engineering side of running reactors safely is a solved problem, the US navy has > 7500 reactor-years with a perfect safety record.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#557

Post by vidarh »

bell-cot wrote: post #458
vidarh wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Competent engineering isn't enough. You also need to never end up being in a war zone, and being able to commit to ongoing maintenance forever , or outlawing all construction far downstream (or finding the even more scarce type of locations where nobody wants to build downstream).

Yeah, kinda? In "most" military situations, the enemy would not want the dam destroyed - because it's a valuable part of what they want to conquer, or doing so would flood their own supply lines, or whatever. And having a well-placed reservoir could save your butt if a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firestorm#City_firestorms got started. To keep providing power to the grid, everything from coal to solar to nuclear nee…

The issue is that many large dams will kill a huge number of people if they fail.

The Banqiao dam failure alone is the worst power plant failure in human history by several magnitudes.

Not many dams have the potential to kill that many, but there are thousands of damns with potential to make Chernobyl look like a minor little affair.

As for wars, you just need to go back to 2023 for the last major dam to be blown as part of war. It "only" made 60k people homeless and killed 200-300. Just last year another dam was hit by drones but didn't burst.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#558

Post by peterfirefly »

fazgha wrote: post #48
ramon156 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I had the same thought. Even we have a high debt ratio (near 107% of GDP), we can still pay this debt.

If you want to. Like Italy and France, there is no sign visible from the outside that you are.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#559

Post by thrownthatway »

hylaride wrote: post #173
thrownthatway wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good job. Now detail three strengths Belgium posses. If you hyper focus on the problems, you’ll be completely oblivious to the solutions.

They asked if it was bankrupt, not for a feel good or balanced essay. That being said, Belgium can be and is wonderful. I'm a geopolitical nerd and I loved touring the WW1 battlefields. Ghent is one of my favourite mid-sized cities in the world! It's got some of the best gothic architecture around, an amazing and creative beer scene, and is not overrun with tourists the way Bruges is. I was there for a conference (I'…

Also…

> They asked

I don’t understand this approach.

You’re on an open discussion board.

Yeah, they asked. Now I’m asking something.

Or do you expect the chair to bang their gavel and tell me I’m out of order.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#560

Post by connicpu »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #525
booi wrote: post #486

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$5.6B actually sounds like a good deal. It outputs 2GW+ of power. While solar is definitely cheaper for 2GW of power, you still need batteries for when the sun is down. So you probably need approximately 30GWh of batteries to just replace this one power plant. The batteries alone would cost nearly $7B of grid-scale batteries that must be replaced every 20 years. Ignoring the fact that the nuclear plant already exists…

> $5.6B actually sounds like a good deal. It outputs 2GW+ of power. I don't understand. Are you talking about 1985 dollars of 2026 dollars? After some research, I learned that thermal powerplants (coal/gas/oil) completed in 1985 cost about 0.8B to 1.2B USD per GW. 5.6B USD in 1985 for 2GW sounds like a terrible price -- at least twice the cost.

Nuclear is high capex low opex. It needs such a miniscule amount of fissile material per year, whereas purchasing coal is an eternal ongoing cost.

Just to put some numbers on it, a 1GW conventional reactor consumes about 25 tonnes of enriched uranium per year, while a 1GW coal plant goes through 3.3 million tonnes of coal.

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