Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants • Hacker News Board

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#91

Post by thrownthatway » Thu, Apr 30, 2026, 1:43 PM UTC

leoedin wrote: post #71

formerly_proven wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And the West is also largely not keen on producing new humans (time and costs as much as anything else). In my state the immediate costs to parents for raising a kid up to the age of 18 are around eight median gross incomes with the opportunity costs usually estimated about as high. This means having a kid loses parents around one quarter to one third of their total lifetime income . That's before even considering…

> Having kids is a financial and ecological disaster. As an outside observer it's remarkable to me people are still having any kids at all, which speaks to the strong subjective factors overpowering whatever objective considerations one might have about it. Objectively if no-one has kids then there will be no more humans. I guess you could consider that an ecological win. If you don't, then someone has to have kids.

No, there will be plenty of Hindus and Muslims, cos they largely don’t give a fuck about any of this noise.

But Christianity and Western Civilisation can kiss its own arse goodbye if it thinks this is a reasonable ideology to instil in to its young people.

Don’t have kids because it’ll economically ruin your life, and it’s bad for the environment anyway.

Righteo then, get on ya spaceship n fuck off to Mars then. Free up some resources and economy for us who believe having a family is the most important thing humans can do and that Western civilisation is actually pretty neat!

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#92

Post by iso1631 » Thu, Apr 30, 2026, 1:43 PM UTC

nandomrumber wrote: post #26

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 Apparently there also used to be a phaseout policy which is being rescinded: https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/other/belgium-and-czechia-ram...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…

[flagged]

Renewables and storage are cheaper and faster.

I agree that Europe needs to be energy independent. And population decline is a global problem.

Nuclear was the correct solution in the 90s. It's not now. Arguably you need to keep a small amount going to maintain a nuclear deterrent and subsidise it for that purpose, but that doesn't need to be any more than the current level of production.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#93

Post by monegator » Thu, Apr 30, 2026, 1:43 PM UTC

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…

> time and cost as much as anything else

you people have been saying that for at least twenty years. In the meantime the renewables have failed to produce a noticeable change in my part of europe, sentiment is increasingly pro-nuke but your adage keeps things still. Of course yf you never start, you never finish.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#94

Post by Projectiboga » Thu, Apr 30, 2026, 1:43 PM UTC

UltraSane wrote: post #58

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…

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.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#95

Post by triceratops » Thu, Apr 30, 2026, 1:43 PM UTC

derektank wrote: post #17

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…

Renewables are cheap. Renewables plus battery storage still are not and nuclear is a reasonable alternative for base load power.

Renewables + battery are already the cheapest solution in some places. By the time a new nuclear power plant is built they will be cheaper everywhere.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#96

Post by iso1631 » Thu, Apr 30, 2026, 1:44 PM UTC

artursapek wrote: post #70

triceratops wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And the West is also largely not keen on producing new humans... And seems to think it can just import people from other, far, away places. Shoving immigration diatribes randomly into unrelated discussions is really tiresome. Sir, this is a comment thread about nuclear power .

It’s absolutely related. It's constantly being excused by politicians as a solution to labor shortages.

Nuclear power is a solution to labour shortages?

Because of powering AI?

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#97

Post by modo_mario » Thu, Apr 30, 2026, 1:44 PM UTC

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-...

So we should burn more gas for some decades because of the ceiling of a backup system in the nonnuclear part of the plant?

Is this like when Van der Straeten with obviously no ulterior motive whatsoever decided we needed to shut them down over the ultrasonic scanning of those vats that nobody else does?

Knowing this country we'll drain a shitload of money trough a bunch of committees. Do feasibility studies of nonsensical shit and then eventually fix and improve support of the ceiling anyway whilst the backup system keeps working ...but at 10 times to cost, in a slow way and a couple years later than one would expect.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#98

Post by NeutralForest » Thu, Apr 30, 2026, 1:45 PM UTC

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #85

NeutralForest wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depending on the country's situation, you might have to use fossil fuels during the transition, that's alright. But the transition is non-negotiable at this point.

> you might have to use fossil fuels during the transition, that's alright The EU has north of €1 trillion into new gas infrastructure. That's €1 trillion of commercial interests with a vested interest in negotiating the non-negotiable. Using fossil fuels for transition is fine, particularly if it's replacing coal with natural gas. But building LNG terminals and installing gas turbines because ding dongs in Dusseldor…

I'm not disagreeing

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#99

Post by JumpCrisscross » Thu, Apr 30, 2026, 1:46 PM UTC

piokoch wrote: post #53

The most important question is: who the hell decided to do such a stupid thing and in the name of what. When we have an answer maybe we can look on other ideas the same people figured out and also rethink them. Say, sorting thrash. EU new idea is to make Europeans to sort thrash into 12 separate beans. So what that all trash goes through sorting process before being dumped, and there are very modern and efficient sor…

> most important question is: who the hell decided to do such a stupid thing and in the name of what

Short answer: Russians and Germans. The former had influence in the latter. And the latter gained a measure of economic command over the continent. (With its export and energy model under shock, that influence is near its post-unification nadir right now.)

I'm glossing over anti-nuclear national politics, as well as the genuine fiscal pressure of capex-heavy power sources like nukes (versus opex-heavy ones like gas). But broadly speaking, take Russian influence in Germany out of the picture, or have one other large fiscally responsible economy going into the Eurozone crisis, and I doubt this would have happened.

Re: Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants

#100

Post by roenxi » Thu, Apr 30, 2026, 1:47 PM UTC

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #89

roenxi wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And the West is also largely not keen on producing new humans (time and costs as much as anything else). > And seems to think it can just import people from other, far, away places. That seems fundamentally OK? The #1 problem leading to humans not having enough to live comfortably is that we have an enormous number of humans and limited resources. We can't unlimit resources. There isn't a very nice way to force peo…

> The #1 problem leading to humans not having enough to live comfortably is that we have an enormous number of humans and limited resources Not particularly. We've ridden massive increases in both quality of life and population (at both the per-country and global scales) over the last two centuries.

In the sense that the global median income crept from about $0 to $10,000 sure over a few centuries. That's a big achievement but it isn't exactly the best case scenario. We want a world where everyone can live at least a 6- or 7- figure salary.