Belgium Shuts Down Nuclear Reactor For First Time

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Iâ(TM)ll make you a deal: you share some electricity, and weâ(TM)ll share some much more hard to get by liquid gas that is flowing in in abundance in Zeebrugge? Or: there might be more going on than some blind closing of a nuclear power plant.

...and a fat lot of good that will do them when they don't have a natgas power plant to burn the gas in. The hands down easiest thing to do here is either to change the law, solve the technical problems and get that reactor back online or install a whole bunch of renewable capacity and grid storage (Belgium being mostly flatland-n-all). Even then, building a natgas plant will probably still be quicker and cheaper in terms of construction than building a new nuclear reactor. The long term costs of buying nat

Eur 0,00 for wind and sun? good luck with that.

I will also just note Belgium is at a northern latitude and you're expecting solar to be your lifeline during winter for heating???

200 days of rain. LeT's Do SoLaR.

While the price of capital to build that wind and solar capacity is rapidly going to the heavens. And that's before the fact that coldest days are not windy and being in the north, not too sunny either. So this is the form of power that overproduces when you have little need for it, and doesn't produce almost anything when you really need it.

So those two are fundamentally unsuitable for purposes of winter heating nations in colder climates even if you could install enough of them like Germany already did. They have something like double their peak consumption in nominal solar and wind capacity. And they're now having a wave of bankruptcies and production stoppages among companies because they can't produce only when it's windy and sunny and then have to shut down their industrial processes in unpredictable manner when it doesn't because power price goes to insane levels. We're not talking some small actors either. You have the likes of VolksWagen announcing that they're going to be moving production out of Germany because they can't cope with constant spikes in electricity prices because CCGTs that were supposed to smooth out the wind and solar price spikes are now extremely expensive to run as well.

And that's before winter with gas storage capacity filled almost to the brim. The reason everyone is so worried in those nations is because we're moving into the revolution territory with those electricity prices and what seems to be rapidly upcoming de-industrialization of many countries who foolishly overinvested in wind and solar expecting that there will be enough cheap gas to smooth out the times when it doesn't produce. Those nations are so desperate that they're quietly demounting jet engines from jets for winter and hooking them up to generators in hope of extracting at least some hilariously expensive energy to smooth out wind and solar spikes so entire grid doesn't come down, because they can go online in seconds rather than minutes that it takes most CCGT peakers. Because they now understand that they have overinstalled wind and solar and their grids are teetering on the brink.

But you can't tell that to the public, because Green movement has a religious strangehold on highly educated humanists in large cities. That is they have a stranglehold on what used to be called "journalistic profession", which is nothing but propaganda profession for their cult today. That's why we're closing down nukes in Germany and Belgium in the middle of the biggest electricity generation crisis of our lifetimes by far. Engineers can only do so much when religious nutjobs tell them that The Science and it's High Priests say that all of the good, average and bad options are Evil and will cause a Doomsday, leaving them with only unsuitable options to work with.

German wind power peaks in the winter: https://www.cleanenergywire.or... [cleanenergywire.org]

They would be much better off if they were using electricity for heating, but they are stuck with gas. They should have retrofitted more heat pumps and used the increased demand to fund installation of even more renewable power.

Renewables are a lot better from an investment standpoint. They cost less, and come online much faster than nuclear and even fossil fuel plants. They are also extremely cheap to operate because there is no fuel,

Observe the Priest of the Green Faith at work. When cornered with reality, he instead goes to an unrelated tangent. Like noting an obvious factoid such as "heat is energy storage" (yes, so is pressure as is altitude in a gravity well of a planet. So?), and then move on to pretend really hard that just because people probably won't be freezing to death because houses will not go to ambient temperature outside right away, everything is fine. In fact, German have better insulated houses than "European standard

You clearly know nothing about how Europeans live and stay warm.

Also, you can actually buy a heat storage unit for your heat pump. Handy for hot water.

There are no technical issues with keeping Doel online. This is just a 'green' goal that was set decades ago. The plant should have an operational lifetime of at least 60 and many are even estimating beyond 100 years.

In practice this particular plant has plenty of problems, one in particular are thousands of fine ruptures in the pressure vessel. And that is only the tip of the iceberg.

I guess if you google a bit harder, you find a very long list of defects which are the reason why the plant is going offline before 2025.

They are shutting it down because it's not technically possible to keep it running. That's buried at the bottom of the summary, which no one reads, but you don't even have to RTFA to find that out, only why

More specifically: They were planning the shut off for 5 years, so 1) They did not order more nuclear fuel (3 years delivery time) and 2) they did not hire new engineers (training time 3 years). They don't have a solution to keep it running during this winter so there's not much a point to delay the closure.

Source: Peter Moens, Director of the Doel power plant (and former engineer at the plant) https://www.lalibre.be/economi... [lalibre.be]

"Belgium can extend life of nuclear reactors if it acts soon, watchdog says"

Lots of people say lots of things, but the article you posted to support that statement doesn't even include them saying why they think it can be extended, let alone any actual analysis of whether it's true. That's why it wasn't a citation, and neither is this. Present a meaningful citation or you're just making unsupported statements which mean nothing to any thinking person.

get your panties out of a twist, from the article:

"After the Russia-Ukraine war, Belgium decided to extend the operation period of the Doel 4 and Tihange 3 reactors by 10 years to avoid energy supply shortages. The reactors were previously planned to close in 2025.

Decisions taken by previous governments prescribed that the Doel 3 and the Tihange 2 reactors would shut down in September and February next year, respectively.

With the looming energy crisis, however, the current government started to work on extending the operation period of these reactors. Negotiations between the operators and the government concluded that it was not technically and legally possible to postpone the Doel 3 shutdown process at this stage."

So the government is interested in extending the life of their reactors but Doel 3 was too far gone to do that with.

In short: yes we do... As another comment already remarked: we do have a big LNG terminal so we should be fine. And as also remarked elsewhere: the decision to close this power plant was taken long before by the previous (mostly right wing and certainly not Green) government. The idea was to close even more power plants but these plans have been changed. So there ARE some more of your beloved nuclear power plants working for a bit longer.

But why close them in the first place? First en foremost: cost. Keeping them running increases the cost of electricity for everyone. Due to a complex interplay of regulations and market forces everyone pays extra for the electricity of nuclear powerplants. Just like the today prices of electricity are heavily influenced by the gas prices even when you buy 100% wind energy. And yes, before anyone remarks it, this has to do with the base load capacity.

Another issue with nuclear power plants also has to do with base load capacity: since nuclear power plants cannot power up and power down at will (the current power down has been planned for months and will take a week to complete) it follows that nuclear power is the first in line to deliver power. This means that if the base load of a nuclear power plants in the network is very high it starts to be economically unviable to deliver wind or other renewable energy to the grid since these power sources would only serve to fill the 'gaps' in power demands. And this despite a lower price for these forms of energy. This means that as you try to transition to more renewable energy you have to take nuclear power (at least partially) out of the equation.

Next: clean-up. There has been considerable discussion about who has to pay for the costs of the dismantling of the power plant. In the discussion about a possible prolongation it has also been made clear that the costs must be carried by the owner. In that powerplay the government has made it clear that when they were threatening to close some of the power plants they meant business. And recently a law has been passed that establishes the responsibilities of the power plant owner in the clean-up process. Certainly this issue is not fully resolved but at least there is some movement in the right direction.

Lastly: why these reactors? Because serious defects have been detected during a recent (a few years back) safety check.

https://app.electricitymaps.co... [electricitymaps.com]

switch to production and then to 30days you can see that BE had around 11GW/h of nuclear capability and now have around 10GW/h of capacity... so that agrees with the 1GW/h of nuclear power of the article

now look to the output, always a little less than 5GW/h... so about 50% of the capacity. This means that this reactor was old and already little used (possible with already some minor problems) and that is way it was shutdown. If needed, the remaining nuclear reactors can be p

Likely you are lucky your country didn't make the mistake of going nuclear and could now afford to invest in the improved transmission lines which make renewable energy work at a much cheaper and more reliable level than current nuclear technology allows. Demand proper investment in North-South transmission lines all over Europe. The current capacity is just far below requirements.

Ahaha. If my country had gone 100% nuclear (instead of 50%) we would've had an entirely low-carbon grid 40 years ago, instead of maybe in 20 years.

Unfortunately it doesn't work like that. Nuclear plants have a fixed output whilst the vast majority of potential demand is variable. If a grid was to be "100% nuclear" there would be a need for pumped storage capacity with power output up to several times that of the Nuclear capacity and the ability to store months of power in case of water shortages such as this summer, just so that energy could be absorbed when it is being produced but isn't needed and then released again when not enough is being produce

No, nuclear plants aren't fixed output. Output can be throttled like any thermal plant and they can do load following and frequency control too, though some of the older designs might not be suitable for it without modifications

Due to the French energy mix specifics, the ÃlectricitÃ© de France (EDF) nuclear fleet was designed to provide load following and full ancillary services (primary and secondary reserves), mainly due to a large demand consumption pattern with high seasonal variations.â But as the countryâ(TM)s nuclear program has matured and its energy mix shifted, France has also embarked on improved programs to accomplish rapid load followingâ"from 100% rated thermal power (RTP) to 30% RTPâ"frequency control (Â±7% RTP), and rapid (up to 5% RTP/minute) return to full power, all with minimal reactor trips while maintaining stable power at various power levels. That required upgrades to nuclear plants with additional plant modifications.

It's usually better to run it at 100% of course because the marginal cost of doing so is negligible.

Anyway the 100% figure I used was just exaggeration, nobody does that in practice, not even France. But like 70-80% is absolutely feasible and we'd probably be there now if it weren't for russian fuckery that derailed plans for two new reactors.

You donâ(TM)t even need the plant itself to load follow. Just use the excess energy generated to pump water up a bill and then use that when you have a short term spike in demand. Our store the excess in batteries.

Ahaha. If my country had gone 100% nuclear (instead of 50%) we would've had an entirely low-carbon grid 40 years ago, instead of maybe in 20 years. Unfortunately it doesn't work like that. Nuclear plants have a fixed output whilst the vast majority of potential demand is variable. If a grid was to be "100% nuclear" there would be a need for pumped storage capacity with power output up to several times that of the Nuclear capacity and the ability to store months of power in case of water shortages such as this summer, just so that energy could be absorbed when it is being produced but isn't needed and then released again when not enough is being produced and more is needed. Even more unfortunately, the huge pumped storage hydro capacity that would be needed to match such a nuclear investment just doesn't and can't exist without turning the whole of Norway into uninhabitable hydro lakes. This means that countries which have lots of nuclear have had to rely on gas power plants (in France's case, often from elsewhere in Europe) in order to keep their grids stable. Apart from some gas plants and hydro, there are a few other power sources that can rapidly control their output to match demand. Wind power and solar are maybe the main ones. Batteries and most other currently available storage just aren't affordable at the capacity needed.

Ahaha. If my country had gone 100% nuclear (instead of 50%) we would've had an entirely low-carbon grid 40 years ago, instead of maybe in 20 years.

Even more unfortunately, the huge pumped storage hydro capacity that would be needed to match such a nuclear investment just doesn't and can't exist without turning the whole of Norway into uninhabitable hydro lakes. This means that countries which have lots of nuclear have had to rely on gas power plants (in France's case, often from elsewhere in Europe) in order to keep their grids stable.

Apart from some gas plants and hydro, there are a few other power sources that can rapidly control their output to match demand. Wind power and solar are maybe the main ones. Batteries and most other currently available storage just aren't affordable at the capacity needed.

There are nuclear plants that were designed to load follow. They're usually the very oldest plants, designed at a time when the assumption was the grid WOULD be 100% nuclear and there would be a need to have load following nuclear resources. I'm also aware of nuclear plants that weren't designed to load follow in areas with high renewables penetration that have been playing with a limited form of load following (more like slow ramping up and down to match the profile of renewables) so that local utilities don't have to curtail large amounts of solar power.

The reason nuclear plants run more or less flat out is that the cost to run them is pretty trivial. Most of the cost of a nuclear plant is divided between the capital outlay up front, and the ongoing need for support staff (which have to be employed whether the plant is running at 50% capacity or 100% capacity). In terms of fuel expense, you're talking a few dollars a MWh. It just makes very little economic sense to throttle them.

I'm sure people can find a way to consume variable amounts of cheap or free energy. Not just storage, how about data centers, they can be turned on and off on a whim for a variety of workloads, Universities would love this.

That's what happened here. The two reactors not having life extensions have hydrogen damage that can't be repaired. The reactor vessel is highly radioactive and impossible to do the necessary work on.

The two that are being extended have to be closely watched because they are likely to suffer the same fate sooner or later.

Dude, that was in 2012. Since then there have been numerous studies and all but 1 say that it was acceptable to continue operations and even that one admitted that it was largely theoretical conjecture as to the mode of failure and poorly understood.

Welcome to the real world, where internet arguments like "it was 3 to 1 in favour" don't work.

They need to buy insurance. They need to have a reasonable defence in case an accident does happen and they are looking at liability. You don't fuck around like this, at least not when grown ups are in charge.

These plants all have design lifetimes, with the expectation that new plants would be built over time to replace them. The problem is the fact that very few new nuclear plants have been built in the past few years, so the existing ones are reaching or exceeding their design lifetime without any replacements being available to take over. Couple that with the increasing price of fuel and increasing demand for power, and you have some big problems.

"Belgium can extend life of nuclear reactors if it acts soon, watchdog says EURACTIV.com with Reuters Jan 18, 2022"

https://www.euractiv.com/secti... [euractiv.com]

You permanently troll and powerplants don't give a crap about your heart. Especially since you came to the brilliant conclusion that nuclear is a bad idea because the power plants don't last forever only 40 to 60 years.

No, the actual fact is that these shutdowns have all been pushed back unsafely because it takes too long and costs too much to replace the reactors, and now they're reaching the points where they absolutely have to be shut down or explode. It proves what a spectacularly terrible idea it is to build nuclear plants in the first place, because of what a massive problem they become later on.

No, the "actual fact" is that the decisions have been made decades ago based on nonsense nuclear panic. [cleanenergywire.org]

Coincidentally, the phase-out of nuclear power coincided with a new "green energy" surcharge that was necessary to finance the green power [wikipedia.org].

Greens believe that their energy surcharges will magically light up those leaden European winters with all the California-grade sunlight they need.

It proves what a spectacularly terrible idea it is to build nuclear plants in the first place, because of what a massive problem they become later on.

Because all the regular power plants haven't had anything to do with the most massive of massive later on problems?

It proves what a spectacularly terrible idea it is to build nuclear plants in the first place, because of what a massive problem they become later on. Because all the regular power plants haven't had anything to do with the most massive of massive later on problems?

It proves what a spectacularly terrible idea it is to build nuclear plants in the first place, because of what a massive problem they become later on.

Because all the regular power plants haven't had anything to do with the most massive of massive later on problems?

The "regular" ones have, where they are defined as being based on fossil fuels. But since there are other options today, that's a false dichotomy. That's on-brand, since nuclear can only be sold with lies and misdirections (which are just another kind of lie.) It takes too long and produces too great an amount of emissions to construct nuclear plants. In theory we could build them with alternate forms of concrete which sequester CO2, but that hasn't been tested for that purpose yet so it's not happening; also, the same applies to wind farms. Making nuclear cost-effective is predicated upon not only proving commercial viability of SMRs (which has failed every time it has been tried) but also of then parlaying that into reduced regulatory requirements for such reactors that otherwise makes them more expensive and not less so because of per-site regulatory costs regarding inspections which we have deemed to be necessary due to our experiences with nuclear power, and not any supposed paranoia.

It takes too long and produces too great an amount of emissions to construct nuclear plants. In theory we could build them with alternate forms of concrete which sequester CO2, but that hasn't been tested for that purpose yet so it's not happening; also, the same applies to wind farms. Making nuclear cost-effective is predicated upon not only proving commercial viability of SMRs (which has failed every time it has been tried) but also of then parlaying that into reduced regulatory requirements for such reactors that otherwise makes them more expensive and not less so because of per-site regulatory costs regarding inspections which we have deemed to be necessary due to our experiences with nuclear power, and not any supposed paranoia.

Since you talk so much about lies and misdirection, care to cite some figures why nuclear is supposedly so terrible for CO2? This report's [www.ipcc.ch] median estimates place it at around the same as wind and below solar. (Page 7 / 1335)

While we do live in "capitalist societies" it doesn't mean that everything has to be somehow the cheapest thing possible. We don't outsource the military to the lowest bidder PMCs for example. Energy is a matter of national security as much as anything else.

The actual CO2e/kWh is the roughly the same for wind but anywhere from 50% to 300% lower than solar. Note however that neither wind nor solar produce anywhere near nameplate capacity at any time while nuclear is built to produce 90%+, so adjust accordingly.

The actual CO2e/kWh is the roughly the same for wind but anywhere from 50% to 300% lower than solar.

The actual CO2/kWh is about twice for nuclear as for solar, or five to ten times as much as wind... when you consider the entire lifecycle, which the nuclear industry is allergic to doing. I posted a comment with a nice pile of links elsewhere in this discussion, go read 'em.

Do western countries want to remain advanced industrialized nations or do they want to revert to a peasant society powered renewables? Building trillions of dollars/euros in green infrastructure will take decades - including costs and lead times - assuming you can overcome current supply chain and labor issues. The only thing that you can do to maintain an advanced economy is build nuke plants. Why? Because they drop right into existing power distribution infrastructure. They do not require chargers and HV

Here's some links, mostly on CO2, but also one on costs.

https://www.dw.com/en/fact-che... [dw.com] https://www.eenews.net/article... [eenews.net] https://eu.boell.org/en/2021/0... [boell.org] https://www.nature.com/article... [nature.com] https://energy.mit.edu/news/bu... [mit.edu]

Nuclear CO2 emissions are at least twice that of renewables over their lifecycle, which is the only measurement that matters. The estimates that show otherwise have consistently been manufactured by the nuclear industry and equally consistently leave out portions of the lifecycle which are

As opposed to all of your beloved "Green" technologies that cause catastrophic damage and loss of life at every single stage of their lifecycle except for the brief period they're used for unsustainable virtue signalling? Your "green" tech actually IS as enormous and deadly of a problem as you ignorantly pretend that nuclear waste is. Nuclear is the only viable option to secure humanity a future and cut off petrodictatorships. It's got the least deaths per kilowatt hour of anything out there.

People are paranoid about nuclear, but I'm sure everyone else will enjoy their coal and gas based pollution instead!

France is absolutely a success story despite the extraordinary issues this year. Their grid's been running at like 1/4th or better of Germany's CO2 per MWh for decades now. [electricitymaps.com]

Like seriously, what's the downside? It was (questionably) a bit more expensive? Oh no. What a horrible tradeoff for decades of clean power with no dependency on russian gas or Chinese panels.

France is absolutely a success story despite the extraordinary issues this year. Their grid's been running at like 1/4th or better of Germany's CO2 per MWh for decades now.

And still at the moment France is importing power from Germany, because half its reactors are down. Also pretty bold to call it a success after the only way that EDF can survive is by nationalization, massive subsidies and influx of taxpayer money.

Like seriously, what's the downside? It was (questionably) a bit more expensive?,

Let me repeat the part about nuclear stopping to be viable once rivers run low on water that is getting too hot. Something that will be a regular occurrence or increase over the next years as climate change makes its impact.

Time the greens of the world got it in their heads that the world has a climate problem, and we need to solve that before we can afford to indulge them in their trendy anti-nuclear stance.

It's not the "greens" that have been blocking onshore wind and increased transmission capacity in Europe. Those are the only things that can deliver sufficient capacity fast enough to solve the energy crisis. The UK's Conservative party banned development of onshore wind farms [theconversation.com] at just the moment that it was most convenient to Gazprom [theguardian.com].

They are right to do it too. Renewables mostly suck for an environmental standpoint unless you have myopia that blinds you to anything other than carbon cycle impacts.

Everytime someone goes OMG OMG a mass extinction even is occurring - derp must be global warming - realize that an equally big part of that is habitat destruction. Unbroken Also realize unbroken habitat is increasingly being revealed to be really really important to the success of many species. So sure your transmission lines are only a 1000

By your logic nuclear power is an environmental disaster, because it concentrates all the generation in one place and needs a vast network of transmission lines to get it to users. The best solution would be lots of local renewable energy that can be built near where people want to use it.

By your logic nuclear power is an environmental disaster, because it concentrates all the generation in one place and needs a vast network of transmission lines to get it to users.

The best solution would be lots of local renewable energy that can be built near where people want to use it.

It takes far, far more transmission infrastructure to build out renewables. That isn't even debatable. Nuclear reactors are co-located with load areas, renewables are not, at all. And there isn't nearly enough space in urban centers on rooves to build enough rooftop solar to negate the need for vast amounts of wind and solar farms spread over wild and rural areas, even if you were comfortable paying many times the "optimized" cost to use power exclusively from rooftop solar.

This is kind of like the hydro

Name a country where nuclear power is co-located with major population centres that consume its energy.

They build them away from where people live for a reason.

Off the top of my head, Huntsville Alabama. The Browns Ferry nuclear plant is around 10 KM away, as the crow flies. There are two other minor communities closer, Decatur and Athens.

To put some context to your attempted FUD, virtually all MAJOR power plants are located away from population centers. The do this because the price of the land is cheaper, and they can be located closer to rivers for cooling. Not because of any dangers you attempted to allude too.

Google maps is not wrong the map I consulted was wrong. But you asked the name of a major city near a nuclear plant and 35 miles is close enough.

What the fark does that have to do with the pathetic Greens blocking nuclear power ?

If there was enough Wind power in Europe, especially well connected wind power, there would be no need for nuclear. Wind power, when well distributed, provide reliable stable power which is flexible, cheaper than nuclear and sometimes even cheaper than coal. Because wind turbines are relatively small, the shutdown of a number of turbines doesn't cause massive grid instability unlike the emergency shutdown of a nuclear plant so the reliability of the grid is better with wind.

These plants were running and helping stop global warming, but the Greens got them shut down. Thus causing more global warming. Because they are farking stupid.

I know it's unfashionable to even

That would be just before more recent evidence [researchgate.net] showing that the hydrogen driven cracking of reactor vessel is worse and more dangerous than they originally thought. Some plants, where problems are not so bad, are being extended, whilst others are effectively irrepairable.

They had no choice. The two reactors that are being shut down were damaged by hydrogen and cannot be repaired. They cannot be safely operated either.

It's nothing to do with "greens", it's just that the reactors were not designed to operate this long and suffered irreversible damage that was not even detectable in the previous decades. If it wasn't for the invention of new ultrasound testing equipment those reactors would have continued to deteriorate and the probability of an accident would have increased.

They had no choice. The two reactors that are being shut down were damaged by hydrogen and cannot be repaired. They cannot be safely operated either. It's nothing to do with "greens", it's just that the reactors were not designed to operate this long and suffered irreversible damage that was not even detectable in the previous decades. If it wasn't for the invention of new ultrasound testing equipment those reactors would have continued to deteriorate and the probability of an accident would have increased. It's only due to the Fukushima disaster that they even bothered to check, hoping for good news that would allay people's concerns.

They had no choice. The two reactors that are being shut down were damaged by hydrogen and cannot be repaired. They cannot be safely operated either.

Actually I think the rationale was more along the lines of "we can't procure fuel or train engineering staff fast enough to keep the reactor on to help with the current crisis." Degradation of the reactor vessel might be a longer term concern, but it isn't the reason the plant won't be running this winter. These aren't simple machines, you don't just decide on a whim to flip them back on like a lightbulb or throw the janitor on the lever to start it up.

Also, the characterization that any reactor vessel deg

"Updates to the installations" basically amount to building an entire new nuclear reactor.

It's pretty funny how every time we shut down a nuclear fanboy here on Slashdot, another one MYSTERIOUSLY APPEARS with a BRAND NEW ACCOUNT to tell us ALL THE SAME SHIT AS THE LAST GUY.

Because that would be how normal, decent human beings would handle dissenting voices.

It is exactly how normal, decent human beings deal with shitheels who want to watch the world burn because OOH SHINY RADIATION MAKES STUFF GLOW.

You pathetic children who use slang for the female anatomy as an insult are beyond tiresome. Cunt is the best thing around, thanks!

Oh, you're a stupid fascist prick too.

You don't even know what fascism means if you're promoting more big-corporate-business nuclear power which leads to more big-corporate-nuclear-lobbying and then calling me the fascist. You're the one literally promoting literal fascism.

If you shut down people for their political ideas, you are the very definition of a fascist. And you gloat about it in the bargain. ("Every time we shut...")

Acceptance of abuse is not tolerance. These people are at best stupidly repeating deliberate lies being spread by an industry for its own benefit, not ours.

Maybe you should try reading an actual definition of Fascism, like this one from Wikipedia:

Fascism is a far-right, authoritarian, ultranationalist political ideology and movement, characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy, subordination of individual

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

After Fukushima there was renewed interest in inspecting the reactors with newly developed ultrasound technology. That inspection reveals thousands of tiny flaws in two reactors, due to hydrogen damage.

There were conflicting views on if the reactors were safe to operate in that state. Eventually further tests were agreed, and the outcome of those tests was not favourable.

The same things happened in Japan and many other countries. After Fukushima, new tests were done at other

Only the ones that were not found to be damaged or build on top of previously known fault lines.

Japan screwed up badly. They have excellent wind resources, but they haven't developed the technology. They don't want to import it either. Missed the boat on renewable tech, and on electric vehicles because they wanted to stick with hybrids. Two massive industries that are key to Japan's economy.

Old reactors get old, and at a certain point it's no longer economically and/or technically feasible to keep them running.

And then they get shut down.

Time the greens of the world got it in their heads that the world has a climate problem, and we need to solve that before we can afford to indulge them in their trendy anti-nuclear stance.

Until now I have thought that the first lynchings of Greens by angry crowds would take place in Bavaria this winter. Perhaps the shivering Belgians will beat hem to it.

- We don't care what the nuclear playboys care about, we just want to stop global warming.

- No-one is saying nuclear can solve global warming. Everyone knows it can help prevent it. And you know that, you are being pathetically disingenuous.

- These plants were constructed already.

Nuclear cannot "prevent" global warming - unless we time travel and introduce nuclear back around 1820.

Today, nuclear can only help mitigate it - which is indeed why it should be used right now, since global warming is the much bigger and vastly more urgent threat than the treat of nuclear accidents which is local (for some definition of local) instead of truly global (for any definition of global); or the issue of spent fuel storage.

I am telling you the facts, you thick cunt.

You wouldn't know a fact if it crawled up your ass and died, like your brain did.

Nuclear is also literally helping reduce global warming.

It literally is not, because the idea that the only thing but nuclear is fossil fuels is a false dichotomy.

Nuclear cannot overcome its drawbacks without SMRs working out, but nobody has ever built a commercially viable one.

Wake up, we are trying to save our civilization not the biosphere. The biosphere doesn't need to be saved, it won't disappear because of AGW. Life will still flourish on earth long time after all human and most species we know have disappeared.

Your first sentence: we are trying to save civilization Your last sentence: life will be here when we are gone My face: :|

Yes, that's my point, I see you can read. Now, think.

We can transition to renewable energy (more nuclear included) and still have economic growth.

Degrowthers should be ignored as there is always an alternative motive to their arguments. On the right it's good ol' fashioned racism (too many brown people!) and on the left it is the idea that by stopping economic growth can bring about the collapse of capitalism and some type of alternative mode of production and blurry lines inbetween.

Human population growth is slowing and will eventually stop and start to rec

The Earth has a human population problem, far too many are breeding and consuming everything.

Tell that theory of yours to Japan, where the sales of adult diapers outpaced baby diapers a decade ago. No, things have not improved since then.

Greed, has consumed the human population. Infected it thousands of years ago. Empires rise, fall, and never find a cure. Don't expect the present to be any different.

The Earth has a human population problem, far too many are breeding and consuming everything.

Actually, it doesn't. There was a study done a few years ago; I wish I could find links to it; that indicated the Earth can easily support 10 times the current population.

What we have a is a urban density and resource management problem; compounded by political issues. Most of the human population is packed into cities in limited locations. In a developed nations like the United States, Japan, and most of the EU, this isn't a problem because we have the infrastructure to support this. In developing

This won't make a dent unless they go nuclear, but if they do they're screwing themselves up.

No, in times like these, what we need is Japan's ultimate population control mechanism: Mekagojira. That, or more tentacle hentai.

I don't know that Putin can kill Russians faster that Elon Musk can reproduce to save the world from a population crisis.

Time the greens of the world got it in their heads that the world has a climate problem, and we need to solve that before we can afford to indulge them in their trendy anti-nuclear stance. Time the nuclear lobby got it into it's head that there are other and cheaper ways to solve the climate problem than nuclear. These ALREADY BUILT plants were helping reduce global warming. The Green morons had them shut down. The Green morons are helping increase global warming.

Time the greens of the world got it in their heads that the world has a climate problem, and we need to solve that before we can afford to indulge them in their trendy anti-nuclear stance.

Time the nuclear lobby got it into it's head that there are other and cheaper ways to solve the climate problem than nuclear.

These ALREADY BUILT plants were helping reduce global warming.

The Green morons had them shut down.

The Green morons are helping increase global warming.

1) Scream a little louder will ya, I don't think they heard you on Pluto. 2) Slinging insults only makes you look like you've lost the argument. 3) Your original comment insinuated that nuclear is the only way to solve the climate problem at a cost per nuclear plant of building several times its capacity of other electricity generation tech that will into the bargain produce energy at far lower prices than Nuclear can and that 'green morons' are trying to sabotage the poor persecuted and much victimised

A reactor which has a capacity of 1,006 megawatt-hours.

If you're wondering why they used the word "capacitated", I guess it's because the reactor will soon be... incapacitated.

Even ignoring capitalization and that participle, the unit of capacity in an electricity context is the Farad, abbreviated F. That megawatt-hours 'unit' doesn't make any sense at all.

The Greens and renewable sector are (were?) preying on the scientific illiteracy of the population and sending them down a cold, dark and poor path with false promises.

Capacity is what that word needed to be. Either the editor or the article used the wrong word.

If the game here is to be pedantic, then I'd argue capacitance is measured in Farad. Capacity is a generic term for "being capable of" ... for example delivering 1,006 megawatts.

Now sure, the unit was wrong. It should be "megawatts" or MWe [wikipedia.org]. Power plants are not batteries (for which "capacity" usually refers to watt-hours).

1,006 megawatt-hours total. I guess they used all that up, so now they're closing it.

Belgium hosts a total of seven reactors, four of which are at the Doel Nuclear Power Plant close to the Dutch border, while three are located at the Tihange Nuclear Power Plant, close to the Germany and Luxembourg border.

A part of me immediately thought "good fences make good neighbors!" But then the more analytical but only slightly less snarky part of my brain caught up and thought "it's Belgium, isn't everywhere close to the border?"

That was my thought as well. Why do they put those "Close to X border" in. It's entirely pointless.

In 2012, during the previous 10-year inspection of the reactor, cracks in the reactor vessel were found. It's not surprising they aren't eager to prolong its use.

Scratch that: there were initial reports of cracks, but those turned out to be false positives: there were stable voids in the reactor vessel wall, not propagating cracks.

There are 2 problems with keeping Doel 3 open: 1. personnel has already been reassigned to other reactors (reading between the lines: personnel shortage). 2. the fuel rods are EOL and would have to be replaced, and those have a lead time of 18 months.

I'm not very familiar with the Belgian situation but that basically sounds like the same shit the Germans did. Full steam ahead to decommissioning and then "oh well nothing we could do now" at the last moment about obvious shit.

No, not specifically now but in general.

In the 1970s I had a professor who was teaching the history of technology who argued that the problem the nuclear power industry was then facing, in the public (but actually almost completely ineffective) opposition to the plants then being built was that the nuclear power industry had never had an accident since it was so new. This counter-intuitive proposal was based on his study of earlier technologies some of which came with opposition based on fears of what terrible things might happen, but once the technology became normalized the actual accidents that did happen dropped out of public concern (think of car and plane crashes) except for one days worth of news (if that).

And Three Mile Island arrived (while I was taking the course in fact) and sort of fit the bill. A worst case power reactor accident that killed no people, and did not even permanently shut all of the reactors on the site, which continued operating.

The abrupt halt of reactor completion in 1980 was due to the abrupt halt in rising electricity demand which all nuclear power projects depended on - customers to buy the power. It flat-lined that year, declined slightly over the next two, and remained nearly flat for 40 years, rising only from population growth. It was not due to "nuclear power opposition" it was simply economics.

But then there were two other notable nuclear power accidents - Chernobyl and Fukushima. Sure there were numerous anomalous factors in both of these cases (though the second were reactors up to western design standards just very poorly sited) but the important point was that the scale of these accidents far exceeded the worst case that nuclear power proponents had ever imagined or acknowledged. These accidents each displaced hundreds of thousands of people, contaminated food affecting millions of people (mostly because of food stocks that were condemned), and total cost $200-700 billion in current dollars, and the contamination did not remain confined to the sites by any means with substantial areas evacuated for many years or permanently off-limits today.

Regardless of the all the arguments about how these accidents were atypical or "should not have happened" - they did. And the results were anything but "normalizing". Sure, not dramatic killers but even just the financial impact was staggering as well as the disruption to the communities nearby.

These two accidents underlay the politics that lead to the phase out of power in European countries where this is happening.

Chernobyl displaced the village of Pripyat and was definitely a disaster, but keep in mind that Kyiv is less than 100 km away and people over there were more or less fine. And it had the ridiculous design with positive feedback loops. Yes, it was a horrible disaster but remember, Ukraine one of the major breadbaskets of the world (as we have witnessed recently) - and that didn't change due to Chernobyl.

Fukushima...Oh please. Yes, the damn TSUNAMI displaced lots of people. The total number of dead due to the

There are things this short article doesn't say.

Officially, the nuclear phase out was decided for 1999. To please the two small green parties. Then it was delayed. Then a new government would be formed and each time a new date for a nuclear phase out would be set in exchange for the support of the greens. Then delayed. Then a new government would need to be formed and... you get the picture. Always promised, never carried out. There was always a governmental decision to prolong the nuke plants.

Note that if this little game was not preventing the plants from operating and being refueled, it effectively prevented the Belgians from building new more modern nuclear plants, which were needed.

Then something happened: The Belgians were unable to form a government for two bloody years. It is still the world record without a government. You need a government to renew the delay of the nuclear phase out. So the decision didn't come. That did not mean the nukes were toast but facing the uncertainty, it is the electricity operator, Engie which decided to stop investing to modernize the plants.

For a foreign operator: a nuke plant is a big vulnerable investment. And the Belgian government used to tax a lot the nuclear plants. They called it in French the "rente nucléaire". The plant in expensive but the fuel is cheap. With a gas plant it is the opposite: the plant is cheap but the fuel is expensive. If you find you are too taxed and want out of the country you just stop to buy gas and you don't lose too much if you abandon your cheap gas plant.

It is also a consequence of something which may sound totally unrelated: The high far right vote in Belgium. The fact that a big number of parliament seats belong to a party nobody want to ally with means all the other parties have to form mega coalitions called "cordons sanitaires". This puts small parties in position of kingmakers and allow them to make demands out of proportion with their electoral weight.

The CO2 per killowathour emitted by Belgium has -of course- augmented since this plant closure.

Now, some politicians seem to wake up and call for the construction of new nuke plants in Belgium. The support for nuclear is rising. Belgium has a very futuristic project of ADS (Accelerator Driven System) which would be nuclear plant where the spallation would be controlled by a particle accelerator and would not come from a critical mass of fissile material. It would allow it to work in sub critical mode (so no corium in case of catastrophe) and burn spent fuel. (Allowing a quasi infinite supply of free fuel). Lead-bismuth cooled so no radioactive cloud in case of catastrophic failure. Unfortunately the online resources in English on it are not very good.

It is not precisely for tomorrow either.

there is proof that those greenpeace people are paid for by gazprom...

So is practically every nationalist party in Europe. They've all gone to Moscow to beg Putin for money.

They've all gone to Moscow to beg Putin for money. Good Luck. Russia is broke... And also quite busy at the moment rounding up more cannon fodder.

They've all gone to Moscow to beg Putin for money.

Good Luck. Russia is broke... And also quite busy at the moment rounding up more cannon fodder.

Really? Russia's been making out like bandits selling natgas and oil at grossly inflated prices and these nationalist demagogues are cheap. You can buy one for a few million Euros and the SVR always has time to talk to Quislings. https://www.bbc.com/news/busin... [bbc.com]

Same people that tried to block wind power claiming it's irrational [theguardian.com] and got Germany to invest in gas. Probably did plenty of damage but luckily not a total loss.

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