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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."
Since they currently get 55% of the power from nuclear generation, I'd say they're charting a course to the stone age.
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.
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.
"its not like we aren't just as fucked if a nuclear powerplant blows up in france or in belgium"
There being no reason a modern nuke plant should "blow up", it makes more sense to pay France for power and avoid the construction, maintenance, closure, and remediation expenses of having plants in Belgium.
You need electricity. You don't need to own what produces it, and a microscopic country such as Belgium risks nothing by outsourcing power production next door. OTOH it avoids all the pitfalls of new construction.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
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
Outsourcing is never risk free. Belgians are going to pay for the construction, maintenance, closure, and remediation expenses embedded in the power costs, plus profit plus be dependent on someone for energy who will definitely put their own needs first.
If we were looking at a future glut in energy you might be ok. But that isn't really what the predictions are.
Closing down old plants and building something better is a great idea. Why not do that instead?
Pretty hard with old reactors. You require something catastrophic to happen. Pretty close to impossible for new designs that use passive cooling systems.
Om, nomnomnom...
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.
This, they're idiots. First they sold off our national energy company to the french, causing prices to skyrocket so we now pay the second highest price for our energy of all of europe (only Ireland beat us.) Now they're closing down the only reliable local source of energy we have which will force further imports and further price rises. They did pretty much the same with our banks too, selling to the french who then sucked them dry and left us with the bankruptcy and the costs. Oh and our national airline, ... Belgium's politicians are totally corrupt, or at best hopelessly incompetent. And people wonder why we haven't been able to form a new government for more than 500 days now.
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
The crux of the nuclear industry is that old plants are already paid for and depreciated. They are far more profitable than new plants. Also, safety measures cost money, so a profit maximizing business will try to minimize safety measures where possible (including building safer new plants). When things do go wrong, things are so bad that the government has to bail out the owners (just like the banks), so they face limited downside risk with the old plants.
I am afraid you give way too much credit to the anti-nuke movement, and way too little credit to corporate greed.
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
Take heart, Belgians! Once your country goes dark and cold, no worries! Take all your money and move south. I think there will be a great sale on Mediterranean real estate soon, and you won't need as much heat to keep warm in the winters. You will have to learn a new alphabet, but learning greek will be a piece of cake, compared to what your grand children will have to learn - Chinese!
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Not to mention the power companies (Electrabel ) :
We are still paying for the nuclear plants to be payed of earlier ( although they are already payed off for years now ).
Yet they barely investing that money in green energy.
On the contrary : they are charging their customers, for the loss of revenue due to people placing solar panels on their roofs ( because they have to pay them green certificates, because they themselves don't reach the required quota and would have to pay fines).
So the people who actually care about the environment and place solar panels, are getting a bad name, because the other people have to pay for it.
It's a form of 'divide and conquer' : have the people fight each other, and they won't be strong enough to fight the real culprits .
Slipping shoelaces ?
There was a very nice disclaimer though, which went something like "if alternatives can be found to replace the power plants". Without going with coal/oil (and Belgium is not very rich in hydro), there are not that many solid options. Effectively they are saying to the public that "yes we will turn them off" but in reality they are saying "yeah, we will turn them off (but you know... there are no realistic alternatives, so we will just kick the can in front of us and make a decision later)".
"Civis Europaeus sum!"
Having seen a Belgian energy bill, I can't say I fully agree. The price per kWh is not that high, however Electrabel charges something like 10 times the normal price as network connection fees. Which means that the end bill is a LOT higher than for the average European. The end result for the consumer (some of the highest bills to the electrical companies) is the same, but the devil is in the detail.
"Civis Europaeus sum!"
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.
"but nobody has died from Fukushima"
By that same definition, people smoking tobacco and breathing in asbestos right now have not died, so those substances are perfectly safe, right? That argument has worked for those respective industries for a while. What are you going to do when people smarten up to the delayed incubation trick? Just move to the next talking point, I suppose . . .
"From JUST West Virginia"
Because we all know that every state has identical levels of coal mining . . . But, really, mining? Because we all know that there are absolutely no risks to uranium mining. Oh, and there are absolutely no additional risks to residents close to uranium mines that residents close to coal mines don't have to worry about . . .
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!