Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants • Hacker News Board

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#581

Post by tremon » Thu, Apr 30, 2026, 8:31 PM UTC

goodpoint wrote: post #551

pqtyw wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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...

That list includes:

- a nuclear missile test site

- theft of radioactive material

- incorrect disposal of research or medical equipment

- radiotherapy accidents

If you can't be bothered to examine your sources for relevance, why should we?

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#582

Post by simplyluke » Thu, Apr 30, 2026, 8:31 PM UTC

epistasis wrote: post #571

simplyluke wrote: post #556

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.

There's two very different types of reactors: the already-paid-for long-run reactor that's still going, and then on-paper-not-yet-constructed reactor in a high cost of living nation. Building lots of new nuclear instead of doing the cheaper option of tons of batteries and renewables, only makes sense in a few geographic locations. Not all, or even most! Even keeping old reactors running gets super expensive as they g…

> The far bigger fight for climate these days isn't electricity: it's car-centric living

All of transportation, including commercial + aviation, in the US is 28% of greenhouse gasses, electric generation is 25%. They're functionally equivalent. Further, a common refrain from environmentalist messages I've seen my entire life is that "every bit counts" and that's used to justify why an individual should say, buy an EV or recycle.

Personally, I agree with that logic, but I also think grid-level power sources matter more.

If you think we're in an existential crisis then costs be damned, shutter every natural gas and coal plant and replace them with nuclear as quickly as it can be built under extremely aggressive bypassing of red tape that's not safety critical. The US and EU print trillions to fund wars, if it's an existential risk, certainly we can do the same to cut carbon.

If it's a pragmatic decision to slowly shift to wind + solar based on costs (while still burning a lot of natural gas for when the wind doesn't blow and the sun doesn't shine), that's fine, but it doesn't really convey an existential urgency.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#583

Post by illiac786 » Thu, Apr 30, 2026, 8:33 PM UTC

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…

The problem has never been the lack of smart people for Chernobyl or Fukushima. Rather the fact that dumb, short sighted people were in power and drove the smart people away.

And unfortunately, it doesn’t look like this is going to stop any time soon.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#584

Post by vimy » Thu, Apr 30, 2026, 8:33 PM UTC

skerit wrote: post #188

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?

Engie was lying. They just didn’t want to be in the nuclear business anymore.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#585

Post by robocat » Thu, Apr 30, 2026, 8:37 PM UTC

kalessin wrote: post #319

adolph wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, nuclear provides a steady base load, so the percentage goes up or down depending on overall grid utilization. Right now its doing 2.28 MW [0], which is more than what Wikipedia claims as its "Nameplace capacity" of 2.256 MW [1]. 0. https://www.gridstatus.io/live/caiso 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diablo_Canyon_Power_Plant

The correct unit is GW.

To use the strongest plausible interpretation, the writer could be from Belgium, where the meaning of 2.256 depends on whether they wrote the number in French, Dutch or German.

The Belgians apparently typically invert the meaning of . and , in numbers (from how they are used in the US).

  To make large numbers readable, Belgians use either a period (.) or a non-breaking space. Example: Two thousand thirty-six is written as 2.036 or 2 036. In formal Belgian French, the space is increasingly preferred over the period to avoid confusion with the Anglo-American system, but the period remains very common in Belgian Dutch and everyday shorthand.

I would guess Europeans tend to be better at SI units than people from the US. And let's not mention the the cancer of changing the value of G depending on context.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#586

Post by dalyons » Thu, Apr 30, 2026, 8:38 PM UTC

leonidasrup wrote: post #574

dalyons wrote: post #537

Earlier quoted context omitted.

have a read through this: https://cleanenergyreview.io/p/baseload-is-a-myth basically, base load means the lowest point of demand on the grid. And you matched that with slow-to-respond thermal power plants (coal mainly, also nukes). Because those are slow to respond and are most profitable running at 100%, so you tried to keep them there. So called base load generation. But note there is no rule of the universe that…

You don't need to run coal power plant close to 100% to be profitable. You want to run nuclear power plant close to 100% because fuel is cheap and you want pay back CAPEX as early as possible. The article you send is perfect example why it's not economic to build new coal or nuclear power plants in US. The reasons are: very cheap natural gas and no CO2 tax. In US natural gas + solar is the cheapest way to generate el…

so what should europe do? gas being expensive doesnt make nuclear economics better for the role of variable backstop of an increasingly renewable grid. Its still a fatal economic equation for nuclear.

Btw battery is rapidly changing the math on > US natural gas + solar is the cheapest way to generate electricity

california went from 45% gas in 2022 to 25% gas in 2025 almost entirely because of batteries (and more solar), and they're just getting started. I know its not generally true across the US, but very soon batteries are going to be pushing a huge amount of gas off the grid.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#587

Post by bell-cot » Thu, Apr 30, 2026, 8:43 PM UTC

vidarh wrote: post #557

bell-cot wrote: post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

While "big dam failed, lots of people died" is a very clicky headline, you are overselling it.

Between the direct costs (at the plant), and still having a 1,000 sq. mile exclusion zone 40 years later, Chernobyl really isn't overshadowed by the potential of thousands of dams.

And by the hellish standards of that war - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Russo-Ukrain... - 200 to 300 dead is a rounding error.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#588

Post by leonidasrup » Thu, Apr 30, 2026, 8:58 PM UTC

deepsun wrote: post #577

ardit33 wrote: post #562

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Don't forget a large Russian campaign in Europe to discredit all energy sources that don't involve buying from Russia. Financing green movements, working with governments, especially Germany (Gerhard Schröder now holds good positions in Russian energy companies, Angela Merkel had good relationship with Putin). Puting worked in Germany as KGB agent before his ascension.

The beginning of Soviet and German cooperation goes back much earlier, to early 1970s. The famous policy of "Wandel durch Handel"

"Wandel durch Handel (WdH, German for "Change through trade"), also known as Wandel durch Annäherung, is a political and economic notion, mostly associated with German foreign policy, of increasing trade with authoritarian regimes in an effort to induce political change. Although most strongly associated with Germany, similar policies have been pursued by several Western countries."

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

For example, West Germany has helped with building Soviet gas network.

https://ost-ausschuss.de/sites/default/files/pm_pdf/German-R...

All subsequent goverments of Kohl, Schröder, Merkel supported expansion of gas imports from Russia. It was cheap and reliable even during Cold war.

And little bit of money from Gazprom to politicians always helped.

https://correctiv.org/en/latest-stories/2022/10/07/gazprom-l...

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#589

Post by saltyoldman » Thu, Apr 30, 2026, 8:58 PM UTC

booi wrote: post #486

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…

$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…

7B for the first set of batts.

Then 7B in 2046 money which is probably $15 today.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#590

Post by epistasis » Thu, Apr 30, 2026, 9:02 PM UTC

DennisP wrote: post #580

epistasis wrote: post #571

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's two very different types of reactors: the already-paid-for long-run reactor that's still going, and then on-paper-not-yet-constructed reactor in a high cost of living nation. Building lots of new nuclear instead of doing the cheaper option of tons of batteries and renewables, only makes sense in a few geographic locations. Not all, or even most! Even keeping old reactors running gets super expensive as they g…

Back in the 1980s if the US had followed France's lead, then we'd be in the position they're in now: 70% nuclear with much lower per-capita emissions.

That's great, but we live in the 2020s, not the 1970s. Technology has changed over 50 years. France talks about building more nuclear, but what's actually getting put on the grid is renewables, not nuclear.

It wasn't the weird enviors that stopped nuclear in the US, they don't have much power. What really stopped it was that the industry ordered too many reactors at once in the 1970s, they didn't standardize on a design, they had a ton of construction projects that were starting to run long, and then TMI happened and scared everyone because TMI had been mismanaged so much, leading to oppressive regulation on the already-failing construction projects.

The reason nobody built nuclear for 30 years after that was because it didn't make financial sense. The only reason any of the utilities signed on for new reactors in the mid 2000s was that state legislatures passed bills saying that the public would pay for any cost overruns from construction, rather than the utility! That's how bad of a financial deal it was. And the disasters at Vogtle and Summer show that the utilities were right to not want to build without passing the buck to others: nuclear is a financial disaster.

People want to put on rosy-colored glasses and look at the best possible picture of nuclear, rather than the messy full picture, which involves tons of cost overruns, and all the failed projects that simple did not work.

The US nuclear industry could have done all sorts of things to succeed: they could have standardized like France, they could have done Candus like Canada, whatever. But they didn't and it looks like they can't. We go into climate action with the industries and technologies we have, not the industries and technologies we read about in scifi.