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Belgium To Give Up Nuclear Power
AmiMoJo writes "Belgium's political parties have reached a conditional agreement to shut down the country's two remaining nuclear power stations. Older reactors will be decommissioned by 2015, with the final closures happening before 2025. The exit is conditional on alternatives being available. 'If it turns out we won't face shortages and prices would not skyrocket, we intend to stick to the nuclear exit law of 2003,' a spokeswoman for Belgium's energy and climate ministry said."
They've been planning this since 2003, when they passed legislation to do so.
Sent from my PDP-11
Ron Paul has said that if he is elected, then he will support the opening of two new nuclear power plants for every power plant that is decomissioned.
I'd happily pay you Tuesday for a biopsy today!
Good for them! Finally, some common sense and rational planning, instead of letting the market get our power from anywhere without regard to the consequences!
What is bothersome is that proof is now showing up that droughts and climate issues are man-made. Now, they are looking to close their nuke plants. Foolish. Instead, it should remain part of their energy matrix until they get enough other energy and storage going.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
They felt this way in 2003, they're confirming they still feel this way today, and those plants will probably be at the end of their design life by the time they are decommissioned anyway.
If they happen to change their minds anytime in the next 14 years, they can always start the construction of new plants then.
It's not as if they're so far from France that they're safe from nuclear power generation accidents or anything...
man, I hate politicians.
nuclear power is seen as bad? lets close it to look like we are great.
belgium already gets tons of energy from france, pretty much all nuclear, why the fuck would we close our plants? what do we have to make up in loss of that power? admitted, these plants were getting older, so should be replaced, but not just closed.
france is just going to build a few more plants to sell more energy if necessary, and its not like we aren't just as fucked if a nuclear powerplant blows up in france or in belgium. at least if its in our country we keep it under control.
Both are already major energy providers to the rest of Europe. With Belgium and Germany shutting down their nuclear plants, both countries are going to make billions.
Belgium is a very low-lying coastal country, like Louisiana for example. The US has plenty of sites not vulnerable to tsunamis and flooding.
1. the space industry was booming
2. the nuclear industry was booming
3. the computer industry was just a support system for the real heroic industries
now: the computer industry is the preeminent world industry (in terms of influence, company valuations, etc), and the space industry and nuclear industry are frail, aged, and dying
not exactly what people imagined 50 years ago, in policy making and the popular imagination
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Why make a mess at home, when you can just pay someone else to deal with the mess?
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
I'm from Belgium and this has been discussed since 2003... why now? Knowing that Electrabel until recently was the owner of these 2 power, the following may explain why the decision has been taken to decommission them:
From the Wikipedia page for Electrabel:
For a long time a majority stake in Electrabel was held by the French company Suez. In 2005, Suez increased its stake to 96.7% and a squeeze-out of the remaining shareholders was completed on 10 July 2007, when the company was delisted from the stock exchange. Following Suez's 2008 merger with Gaz de France, Electrabel is now a subsidiary of GDF Suez.
I won't speculate on the exact economic benefits it will bring to GDF, but lets be clear the decision wasn't made for climate or anti-nuclear reasons. This decision will certainly assure the energy monopoly of GDF in Belgium.
if (false && false) exit_nukes();
Crunching the numbers, the health effects from a normally operating coal plant (+10% cancer rate within 20 km) is about the projected effect of Fukushima's fallout for inhabitants within 30 km. Long term effects of coal outside this range are also similar (same order of magnitude), regular functioning coal vs. major nuclear accident.
Furthermore, the majority of the long term Fukushima radiation effect (Cs) has a half-life of two years, were much of the cancer effect from coal is permanent due to chemical ground water and soil contamination.
France has a power plant near Givet, which is situated in a "peninsula" of French territory going into Belgium. That's going to be pretty convenient when Belgium needs to buy massive amounts of power from abroad (hint: Belgium is very poorly endowed for hydro/solar/geothermal energy)
Misleading titles? Inflammatory blurbs? Keep in mind that Slashdot is a tabloid.
I've been reading foundation recently, and it's spot on. Nuclear power plants breaking down because they're old and in disrepair? Train new technicians and build new plants? Unthinkable! Restrict nuclear power! Nuclear power is one of the only viable mid-term energy sources until we can get ourselves on to decentralized green energy, and even then it's incredibly useful for base load, non-intermittent power generation. We're now trying to get off of it for what exactly? Solar's not that viable in Europe as opposed to, say, California. Chemical energy only lasts so long, and everything else besides geothermal is pretty intermittent.
"People don't want to learn linux" hasn't been a valid excuse since '03.
More fossil fuel electric plants putting more carbon dioxide into the air, not to mention radioactive polonium. What? You didn't know that burning fossil fuels puts more radioactive waste into the air than a nuclear power plant?
Love those wild and crazy Europeans!!
I'm sorry, you're going to need to give us a troll car analogy.
Belgium must have considered what happened to Japan during the quake. This alone is good enough reason to give up nukes.
[($)]
The nuclear reactors might outlive the country of Belgium. Flanders might break away before 2015.
It was seventy year ago that Roosevelt sign an executive order to begin nuclear development. Now, the two largest uses of fission energy are boiling water and fueling bombs that never explode (thank goodness). Is that progress?
Those BWR reactors were new and modern at the time they went online.
At the time they went on line... by which you mean "approximately half a century ago, the first two of which went on line prior to the first moon landing, when Lyndon Johnson was president of the US". Right?
We went from horse drawn carriages to landing on the moon in about the same amount of time the Fukishima BWR designs have been around; are you seriously claiming we haven't been able to design better reactors in that amount of time?
-- Terry
The French knows how to build good quality plants. They don't skimp on concrete and steel. Their plants very different from the junk that GE built in Japan.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
It's sad to watch whole countries shoot themselves in the foot over hysteria and foolishness. But those are the times we live in: where most countries have adopted a system where any two idiots can outvote an expert, whether those people are rank and file (straight democracy), or holding elected office (republics and so on.) And all this in environments where experts are actually rare.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
and let me say this: This is the country which has run without federal government for over 500 days now. It is also the country which sold most of its electricity infrastructure to French companies and now wonders why they pay so much more for electricity than their neighbouring countries. The last elections were won by a right-wing party (NVA) which is kept out of the negotiations for the next government because they were too greedy. If this party can turn its votes into ministers before 2015, the whole process will be reversed. So don't hold your breath just yet.
10 ?"Hello World" life was simple then
Notice the part If it turns out we won't face shortages and prices would not skyrocket [...]. Obviously it will turn out that way, so they will not do this.
Its a good thing that all European countries get along so well with their neighbors, and that they always will.
If history is any lesson, this should continue to work smoothly for hundreds of years!
If you have a plentiful source of cheap energy you should quit nuclear too. The condition is rational, whether it will be true by 2025 is another question.
I'm Belgian and I worked in the senate when the decision was made in 2003 to buy support for the government from the green parties. It was clear then to political insiders that the nuclear power plants would not close in 2015, and it is just as clear now. Notice the IFs in the statement. We will face shortages and prices will skyrocket if we close the nuclear power plants, so we won't. Why are they saying this then? Once again to buy support from the green parties, this time not for the government but for the state reform which they helped negotiate and still need to vote through.
I'm from Belgium and on my electric bill there is a list of energy sources from which my electricity is made of. Nuclear only has a 2% portion. Most of the energy comes from renewable energy. And that's even for the standard energy plan, and not the green energy plan, my provider is offering. Even the largest energy provider, Electrabel (which is in French hands: GDF Suez), only uses about 5% nuclear for their energy. Most people think of nuclear energy as being clean. And that's true as there is no emission of damaging gases or something. But what about the nuclear waste that has to be stored for a few thousands of years (although this is only a theoretical assumption). We can't keep shoving our problems into the ground and putting them off for later. It's time to start thinking of the future.
Given they have a caretaker government?
if not nuclear power then what? I haven't heard about this guy from Italy that his cold fusion worked so we will be using resources like coal... which will dissapear probably by the beginning of the next century. Wind and solar power, OK, but not everywhere... so, please enlighten me what my grandkids will have to run their xboxes, dishwashers and ipads...
You should not take this seriously - Belgium politics is a joke.
Thanks to Germany and the dismanteling of 7 nukes - Belgium runs a large risk of falling without electricity when the first spikes arrive in November/December.
There's no way they'll be able to replace the current nukes with extra capacity - those incapables had no planning at all - the only thing they could imagine is putting taxes on the extra profits on the written-off nukes in Belgium.
When they signed in the purple and purple-green governements an agreement on closure of the nukes - they should have written into the law that anyone who voted for them should be turning off his electricity now because of their vote.
It's the same as the greens driving 140 km/h in a small car - and when the journalist asks them why they run so fast - the only answer is phoeh.
Or the green one that makes publicity for volvo...
That was a green car isn't it?
Belgium is a joke - and a nightmare for those living in this mess - but Greece is still worse.
No planning no serious governement en real high energy prices + taxes !
For what? For a show thats tons worse than the muppet-show?
I'm from belgium. Some extra needed intel:
We currently still have no new government, about one and a half year after the elections. There are currently negotiations between 6-8 parties that may form the new government.
During these negotiations this was discussed and approved, if the negotiations fail at some other point, which is still a good possibility as the tough topics about money are not yet discussed, this will all be thrown back into the bin.
Furthermore Electrabel (the owner of the plants) doesn't quite like the idea of opening for a few months more. (That would require financial investments that only pay out in years)
You idiotic morons. Nuclear power is the safest way to generate power. Even with the human equation, it is still safer than coal, and cleaner. It seems that every 25 years or so, something comes along to screw it up. Three Mile island, then the movie China syndrome Chernobyl...even though the only people that use that type of plant are the stupid Russians. The Japanese problem, building a plant with backup power where they did. More people have been killed in coal mining accidents than with nuclear power. When I was a kid in the late 60's-70's, I was against nuclear power too, because I thought, nuclear power = bomb I was very fortunate that I had an 8th grade science teacher who took the time to explain that a nuclear power plant is nothing more than a hot water boiler, and the reaction is controlled and has multiple back ups. I lived within 10 miles of a nuke plant growing up, and it never had any issues. If the rules are followed, they are safe. You can't have it both ways. If you want to heat/cool your home, the power comes from somewhere. Wind/solar are pie in the sky solutions just to make people feel good.
Too much weed and meth.
The Belgian Waffle
All it would take is to raise the price of electricity to $100 a KWh.
I've been in Germany and there are two explanations for what you see there with solar panels: electric prices are really, really high or there are tremendous subsidies for solar panels, such large subsidies that it is basically free to install. Either of these techniques would probably work in the US, but really high prices would be far simpler in our current times. The government could add a $99.88 tax per KWh (considering much of the country is paying $0.12 a KWh now) and anyone with a spare $30,000 would have a big array of solar panels on their roof in a few months.
Traveling through Germany you see homes and businesses with $100,000 or more (US prices) of solar installations all over. Not just a few places but quite widespread. What would push a small business (like a lumberyard or plumbing warehouse) to spend $100,000 on a solar installation? Well, I suppose it could be an extremely unreliable electric power system as well, but my guess is that it is either subsidy or insane pricing of electricity.
We could push for that in the US. It would mean that electricity would become a luxury overnight and candle sales would skyrocket, but we could be 55% renewable in a short period of time easily. It is all a matter of priorities.
According to wikipedia, Belgium has 6000 MW of nuclear power, generating a hair over 50% of their electricity. It seems unlikely that they could replace 6000 MW with fossil fuels within a decade and still be sensitive to local issues, emissions and pollution, fuel transportation, and transmission needs. For renewables, 6000 MW is certainly theoretically possible within a decade, but again unlikely. Beligium has some number of dispatchable MW which aren't nuclear. It's *conceptually possible* [I don't have easy access to the numbers] that the existing (dispatchable) fossil fuel plants aren't all running at night, and that they could make up some of the night time slack caused by reducing nuclear. The daytime could be made up with photovoltaics. It might require some more natural gas to handle cloudy days with higher demand [hotter? colder? darker due to being near daylight savings? dunno], although Belgium does have a fairly large natural gas capacity.
My point: Belgium may well end up reducing but not eliminating their nuclear power generation. They could easily make a big push on photovoltaics, taking public policy lessons from Germany [and borrowing their business practices, now that Germany is ramping down]. Belgium could also build a few SC or CC natural gas plants to help bridge the gap. Keep in mind that about 860 MW of Belgium's nuclear power is nearly 40 years old, and that although nuclear fuel is very cheap, the plants will need capital additions and face higher O&M costs, and fuel disposal is not cheap. If you start adding those costs in, it may be the case that the additional renewables and natural gas production [at existing facilities or building a new one] may not come at a substantially higher price than the full cost of keeping Belgium's first generation nuclear power stations operational and safe.
Personally, I wish Belgium was focused on replacing the roughly 9% of electricity generated from coal with renewables first, but it's their choice, not mine.
Support a few technologists in Washington.
I agree to pay you a million dollars if gravity is suddenly turned off. I am pretty sure its not going to happen, and if it does I don't think I will care anymore.
This is just political speak for the stupid.
The stupid go "Ook Ook, Nuke Bad! Leader shut down. Leader Good ook ook!"
What this really means is the politician will say he will shut them down, but when he doesn't because he cannot due to need, he will just point to his previous remarks and say that is what I said originally.
That said I am sure France would love your money and your sovereignty.
...is they take a huge amount of time to build and they're owned by power companies far away from your house. Whereas you could put up solar panels on your house in a couple days and generate your own power for 20 years, without the transmission cost. With such a large demand, people are coming up with cheaper panels and soon the installs will even accelerate. Installation costs are now a big chunk of the cost.