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.
Good. More countries should realize the capability of nuclear power. Whilst it isn’t renewable, it’s much cleaner than fossil fuels
It’s also cleaner than most renewables too. Ecologically it’s a no brainer.
it was russia that was responsible for germanys phase out, because thier sole export is energy to europe.
That’s nonsense. In Germany, the nuclear phase-out began under the first red-green government in the year 2000 and it was completed in 2011, when the cabinet under Angela Merkel decided to phase out nuclear power by 2022. On 30 June 2011, the German Bundestag voted in favour of the exit with 513 of 600 votes from members of all parties. There’s no way that this was controlled by Russia.
There’s a huge movement for renewables in Germany and nuclear power always had it tough in the country where there’s no space for the save storage of nuclear waste.
Edit: If anything, Russia would even have an interest in longer operating times for nuclear power plants, because the raw materials for many of the fuel elements used in European nuclear power plants still come from Russia until today.
It’s a good baseload but it’s inflexible. We need more ways to take advantage of it at quiet times.
Electric car chargers are part of it. Maybe house batteries. We need our devices to be smarter about power and when they use it.
It’s also very expensive to build and run.
Yes but the problem in all of Europe and the US has almost never in history been too much power. Power requirements go up and up and up and every country wants more and more every year.
Peak loads are always the worry and cause blackouts and brownouts. Low loads almost never happen, even at night because of businesses that constantly leave everything running.