Belgium has dropped nuclear phaseout plans adopted over two decades ago. Previously, it had delayed the phaseout for 10 years over the energy uncertainty triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Belgium’s parliament on Thursday voted to drop the country’s planned nuclear phaseout.
In 2003, Belgium passed a law for the gradual phaseout of nuclear energy. The law stipulated that nuclear power plants were to be closed by 2025 at the latest, while prohibiting the construction of new reactors.
In 2022, Belgium delayed the phaseout by 10 years, with plans to run one reactor in each of its two plants as a backup due to energy uncertainty triggered by Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Nuclear power is one of the cleanest. And easily scalable.
Nuclear is actually poorly scalable - with the average build time of a plant being ~7 years (worldwide). Its well over 10 years in the EU and the average in the last 30 years in the US has been 16.4 years. In nations with no nuclear power generation experience it would likely be longer (ie: most nations), and unlike solar it’s been getting more expensive as the technology has rolled out over the decades. They’re such long and expensive projects that South Carolina currently has two abandoned unfinished nuclear reactors they gave up on when the projects ran way over budget.
Meanwhile solar added 700GW of new generation worldwide last year, while nuclear added… 5.5GW. Solar plants take months, not years to build - that’s an order of magnitude lower than nuclear.
We don’t have time left to slowly build out nuclear power plants as we move to greener energy generation to address climate change, so it’s pretty important that we favour solutions that are ready immediately - and if they’re cheaper and renewable with no nuclear waste to manage? Even better.
https://www.pv-magazine.com/2025/01/13/the-fastest-energy-change-in-history-continues/ (This source includes references to any figures I’ve mentioned)
Clean might be debatable, but scalable is just obviously wrong. There is nothing even close to solar and wind when it comes to scalability. When your goal is scalability, anything that takes more than 1-2 years per plant to set up is just worthless. We cant just wait another 20 years for nuclear to make a comeback at this point, its not an option.
Solar and wind aren’t scalable well. Try to increase power output, let’s say, x3. How well is it going? Building additional 2 reactors is completely straightforward.
We still have a lot of roofs that could have solar on them. Scaling up nuclear will deplete fuel mines faster because the isotopes that are legal due to arms treaties are pretty limited.
What? This is what generation capacity looks like in Germany. Solar has gone up 50x in the last 20 years, 2.7x in the last 10 years. We could keep scaling faster, but there is just no need.
We dont need more sources, we need more storage. We already have plenty of surplus solar/wind generation capacity that is being turned off because the grid is lacking storage. We really only need more storage and as you can see from this chart, that is whats happening. This year battery storage filled with solar and wind will probably supply more energy than nuclear did over a year at its peak.
Uh hu… so you are arguing, in good faith, that it’s easier(?), safer(?), cheaper(?), faster(?) to build deveral nuclear reactors than building a couple more wind- and solar parks?
Yes. Watt-comparable amounts, of course.
This is what actual delusion looks like lmao
Why the name calling? The guy is obviously wrong, but calling them delusional is not useful in any way. You’re only spoiling this community
Delusional
Tell that to the dictionary.
Lmao
You’re basically pointing and laughing.
Cyberbullying
Its neither actually, and it makes us dependent on foreign countries
Are you retarded? how many sources of power that are dirtier can you come up with. then pause a moment and list the cleaner sources. then try counting again.
Well if we’re talking about lifetime carbon footprint, renewables. The drawbacks for nuclear are almost entirely political and economical, but that doesn’t make the technology irrelevant.
https://www.bund.net/fileadmin/user_upload_bund/publikationen/atomkraft/20220927_BASK_Papier_Unsichbare_Opfer_der_Atomkraftnutzung.pdf
no. dead kids are not “political”… they are dead.
sorry that study is in german, but the author would have been killed in second world countries like the US for speaking out loud.
there is not one reactor on the planet that is safe or did not kill ppl. not one.
Did I miss something or are we moving the goalposts from dirty to hazardous?
The average operating age of nuclear plants in Germany was 30+ years old. Yes they’re not built to modern safety standards. Yes, operating with radioactive materials is more dangerous than not doing that. But they still ended with a minimal impact to climate change over their lifetime.
If you want sensational claims about energy saftey you can write a whole expose about working conditions in Xinjiang, which produces 45% of all of solar grade polysilicone. Are those deaths less important because they didn’t happen in your neighborhood?
So yes, it’s political because a handful of human deaths override an energy technology that is, mathematically, one of the best tools to save our planet. Throwing away nuclear energy because people can get preventable cancer is like throwing away wind energy because an aluminum blade can drop on your head.
interesting perspective. those lives you are willing to sacrifice; tell me more. can that shit be build in your backyard and stored for a million years? go water plants with mountain dew.
It’s very telling that you think I should be more concerned about my backyard and neighbors rather than the billions of people who will suffer while we try to dig our way out of this pit with more palatable tech that can’t do the whole job.
Also funny that you think having a radioactive hole in the ground that loses the majority of its potency in less than 100 years is too high a price to keep our planet habitable. I’d rather be relocated out of my neighborhood than deal with billions of climate refugees moving in. Your NIMBY-ass logic is why our planet is fucked.
yawn. i still see no reason or argument
nuclear energy was 2% of all electricity before my country phased out. poor or stupid countries might be able to convince their ppl that this cant be substituted. 2 fucking percent. that is nothing.
dunno where your brain was when you shifted to rich people…but especially if you do no like oligarchs you should be against nuclear. they hardly create jobs but big revenue for the owner.
please wake up from your feverdream
So you yawn when people in Xinjiang died making your solar panels? It seems you don’t treat people in third world countries as fellow humans, for some reason.