Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

Post by ViewTrick1002 » Thu, Apr 30, 2026, 10:16 PM UTC

noosphr wrote: post #609

ViewTrick1002 wrote: post #608

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even with Danish insulation and weather and tilting the study heavily towards nuclear power by assuming that the nuclear costs are 40% lower than Flamanville 3 and 70% lower than Hinkley Point C while modeling solar as 20% more expensive renewables come out to vastly cheaper when doing system analyses. https://www.pv-magazine.com/2026/04/17/new-metric-shows-rene...

Thanks pv magazine. I'll be sure to read oil daily about the benefits of LNG plants too.

Post by selfmodruntime » Thu, Apr 30, 2026, 10:16 PM UTC

dalyons wrote: post #453

pu_pe wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What happens in days where renewables can't produce enough energy? Or the evenings where we don't have enough batteries (all evenings so far and for the next decade at least)? You can call it base load or whatever you want, but that energy is coming either from hydro, nuclear or a carbon-based source. And those carbons are hard to come by these days, so even if nuclear power is expensive, at least it is reliable.

It takes a decade at least for any new nuclear starting today to come online in the west. In that decade you’ve built an awful lot of batteries for the same amount of money. No one wants to bet $10s of billions of nuke capex against the relentless progress of batteries and other tech over the next 10 years, and then the 30+ years of plant operations. It’s a suckers bet , so the only ones who can take it are nation st…

Post by selfmodruntime » Thu, Apr 30, 2026, 10:19 PM UTC

jlnthws wrote: post #128

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…

I wonder where they store coal waste.

Post by epistasis » Thu, Apr 30, 2026, 10:23 PM UTC

noosphr wrote: post #605

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…

>Building lots of new nuclear instead of doing the cheaper option of tons of batteries and renewables This is not the cheaper option. You need to have batteries that can store power for at least a week to have base load as reliable as nuclear power. There isn't enough battery capacity in the world to do this for a state like California, let alone the whole country.

Post by lucb1e » Thu, Apr 30, 2026, 10:28 PM UTC

spacebanana7 wrote: post #333

boringg wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Couldn't ask for better unintended outcomes from that Iran war than to fast track deployment of renewable and nuclear energy. Get europe off their anti-nuclear, pro gas stance. France gains a fair bit from this development. Russia loses influence as does the mid-east if the trajectory holds. Winners: heat pump manufacturers, nuclear re-processing, uranium enrichment, eVs, nuclear heavy manufacturers, solar panels (Ch…

Gas is an excellent compliment for renewables. It scales up and down quickly, and can cover all the weak spots around intermittency and dunkelflautes. The carbon emissions are relatively low too, because in renewables/battery heavy grid the actual quantity of gas needed is relatively small. The problem arises in importing gas from unstable places.