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.
Ah yes “common sense”, the go to argument from everyone ranging from people who want to throw out migrants to nuclear shills.
After all, why wouldn’t we burn billions on a technology that is less efficient per kw/h, takes decades longer to build, doesn’t scale, has a worse LCOE than renewables and leaves us with toxic forever waste? It’s just common sense bro.
“After all, why wouldn’t we burn billions on a technology that requires destructive mining and large scale plastic waste production for a worse climate footprint? What a solar shill”
See, I too can make emotionally charged statements with no basis in reality. All energy solutions have more nuance than “radiation bad” or “cheap good”
All of these points are true for nuclear as well, plus it’s more expensive.
By all means, enlighten me. Show me your sources. Everything I’ve looked at shows current gen solar having a larger construction impact and higher lifetime greenhouse gas emissions per unit electricity.
Or is this just your “common sense”? Surely if you have such a strong opinion it’s not based on sound bites and headlines?
https://www.carbonbrief.org/solar-wind-nuclear-amazingly-low-carbon-footprints/
Are you agreeing with me or did you just not read your source?
Solar averages at 6gCO2/kWh compared to nuclear’s 4gCO2/kWh
Here’s another breakdown of the same data to make it more clear.
From the start of this thread I’ve been saying that nuclear has no substantial benefit over renewable energy while being more expensive, more rigid and excruciatingly slower to build.
The difference in 2gCO2/kwh is meaningless and even then nuclear is still getting undercut by wind. Cope harder.
Lmfao holy shit you’re dense. You know you can’t just drop wind turbines in any location? That insolation and geography can limit effective solar usage? That nuclear has way more flexibility?
Do you know how to read that chart? Did you notice that the majority of emissions happen upfront during construction of those sources, unlike nuclear which is amortized over its whole life span?
Did you realize that might matter quite a bit when we need to halt/reverse emissions NOW to stop spiraling?
Ignoring all that and you even admit I’m right in the end. Someone here is coping and it definitely isn’t me.
This is legit some of the most braindead shit I have read in my entire life.
Not enough to be relevant
Scale is just how much you build
Continuous power generation.
We could build it faster if we were willing