Belgium Plans To Nationalize Nuclear Power Plants (bbc.com) 46
Belgium plans to buy its seven aging nuclear reactors from French power giant Engie in a "full takeover" aimed at securing domestic energy supplies, extending reactor operations, and developing new nuclear capacity. "The move would also mean suspending plans to decommission nuclear operations in Belgium," reports the BBC. From the report: The move would reverse the phase-out of nuclear energy legislation approved in the early 2000s amid safety concerns prohibiting the building of new nuclear power plants and limiting the operating lifetimes of existing ones to 40 years. Only two of Belgium's seven nuclear reactors are operational - located at plants in Doel and in Tihange - and their operating licenses were recently extended until 2035. The other five reactors were shut between 2022 and 2025 and plans to dismantle them will now be suspended.
Engie and the government said they aim to reach an agreement on the takeover of the nuclear stations by October 1st. In a joint statement with Engie, the Belgian government said the move also highlights its aim to extend operations of existing nuclear reactors and to develop "new nuclear capacity" in Belgium. "By doing so, the Belgian Government is taking responsibility for Belgium's long-term energy future, with the objective of building a financially and economically viable activity that supports security of supply, climate objectives, industrial resilience and socio-economic prosperity," the statement adds.
Engie and the government said they aim to reach an agreement on the takeover of the nuclear stations by October 1st. In a joint statement with Engie, the Belgian government said the move also highlights its aim to extend operations of existing nuclear reactors and to develop "new nuclear capacity" in Belgium. "By doing so, the Belgian Government is taking responsibility for Belgium's long-term energy future, with the objective of building a financially and economically viable activity that supports security of supply, climate objectives, industrial resilience and socio-economic prosperity," the statement adds.
Socialize losses, Privatize profits (Score:2, Insightful)
I hate when the wrong lesson is taken from the USA.
Re: (Score:3)
1. Ban nuclear in the law
2. Buy nuclear plants
3. Unban nuclear
4. Profit
Re: (Score:1, Troll)
I hate when the wrong lesson is taken from the USA.
It's kinda sad when you allow your enemy to live in your head rent free. Must suck to read a story about Belgium nuc plants than the only thing you can think of is posting anti-US hate. Frist Psot too - Your day is complete.
happy (Score:2)
Re: happy (Score:4, Informative)
As a Belgian, I am not that happy about the idea of re-nationalizing TGEM with Engie.
The nuclear provisions fund (via Synatom) was supposed to cover decommissioning and waste. It was built up during decades when the plants were still public and nit profitable. But a big part of that money was lent back to Electrabel, which then could generate profits on it and pay dividends to Engie shareholders.
So profits where privatized, and now the longterm risks become public again. Restarting these plants will take additional billions in public money. And it is only needed during wintertime, in the summerthere is overcapacity because of renewables. So the nuclear sites will never be profitable again, and less and less so.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Having an aluminium plant working only in the summer is not going to be profitable. Having batteries with only 1 charge cycle per year would be even worse.
Unless Belgium itself has water shortages, desalinating seawater in Belgium is not a good idea. You are not going to move that water to Saudi Arabia it would be more expensive than desalinating over there. The world doesn't have a fresh water shortage. We only have local shortages in some places and it turns out it's often cheaper to desalinate seawater i
Re: (Score:2)
Depending on uncertain imported oil and gas is already not profitable and has a higher probability of becoming fantastically expensive every time some kooky world leader sneezes.
Re: (Score:2)
Having an aluminium plant working only in the summer is not going to be profitable.
I don't think it's meant to be profitable. It's meant to store power. That can be part of a system that's overall profitable because you sell the power.
Having batteries with only 1 charge cycle per year would be even worse.
If the discharge is over a matter of months and the battery in question is cheap, then not really. It depends on what battery you meant there. If you meant a heat battery, that's generally pretty cheap. Consider for example that a lot of houses have a battery that stores about 15 kWh in their house that cost around $500. They just use a tank of hot water for
Re: happy (Score:4, Insightful)
I think the idea of power plants being "profitable" is part of the problem. Collectively Europe needs more winter generating capacity, preferably not reliant on imported energy. Your choices come down to coal or nuclear. If you are using them as low capacity factor sources, either is going to be expensive to run. A potential advantage of existing nuclear plants is that you have a 4-7 month window every year to phase upgrade projects. As upgrade requirements drop you have the potential for low-to-zero cost energy which can stimulate other industries such as vertical farming.
But long term one thing is clear for Europe: importing gas and oil are huge strategic risks that need to be addressed.
Re: (Score:2)
We have massive winter renewable resources in Europe. We don't need nuclear, just more renewables.
Re: (Score:2)
I think the idea of power plants being "profitable" is part of the problem.
Within reason you are right, but the problem here is not the case of profit vs loss, it's a case of a MASSIVE loss. At this point nuclear power falls into the category of being:
a) waaaay too expensive to make any sense to build as a new project.
b) waaaay too expensive to do the minimum required to keep old plants operational.
I agree utilities shouldn't be run as a for profit business, but at the same time they shouldn't be wholly reliant on huge swaths of public funds to keep running on top of an already ma
Re: (Score:2)
Economical consideration are still important. I disagree that the choices are nuclear or coal. The choice is nuclear and renewables, or only renewables. I am would bet that the later is cheaper.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
It's not as if wintertime didn't exist before we had solar; nuclear plants always had to vary their output according to the seasons. People will also be using electricity for heating much more as gas is phased out, you can't even get new gas connections anymore in Belgium, and new gas heaters and diesel oil heaters are against the law now.
Re: (Score:2)
All of Engie's plants use standard designsm there's no shortage of staff who know how they work and how to maintain them. Standardization is a major pillar of why France's nuclear costs are so low and so safe.
Tihange is dangerous (Score:4, Insightful)
Some years ago the Dutch government distributed iodine pills for everyone under the age of 18 who lives in a certain radius of the plant. The plant is old and should be shut down.
Re: Tihange is dangerous (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Like most reactors in Europe, they are getting well past their design lifetime and only kept active by continual testing to demonstrate that degradation of the reactor vessel and systems is below some threshold of risk that the government is willing to tolerate.
Nationalizing them is inevitable. France did the same thing. They were always expensive and uncompetitive, but as they get older they reach the point where even the standard subsidies aren't enough and the government just has to take ownership.
Re: (Score:3)
Like most reactors in Europe, they are getting well past their design lifetime and only kept active by continual testing to demonstrate that degradation of the reactor vessel and systems is below some threshold of risk that the government is willing to tolerate.
Nationalizing them is inevitable. France did the same thing. They were always expensive and uncompetitive, but as they get older they reach the point where even the standard subsidies aren't enough and the government just has to take ownership.
While we have people complaining about privatized profits and public losses, massive public money injection is the only way for nuclear fission to exist.
There is a reason that the Price-Anderson Nuclear Industries Indemnity Act exists in the USA. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]–Anderson_Nuclear_Industries_Indemnity_Act No private company can absorb the worst case damage a large nuc plant can cause if it goes Oopsies. And commercial insurance for such a thing will either put the insurance comp
Nationalization is inevitable (Score:2)
When our reactors start getting to the point where they need to be nationalized, essentially a bailout so that the private companies that have profited from them don't have to pay the final maintenance costs and instead the taxpayer does, that's going to be a tough sell to the voter and to the ultra wealthy who have stopped funding our
Re: (Score:3)
In Quebec the whole electricity grid in nationalized but ran by a company fully owned by the government. It operates more like a private company to avoid the disadvantage of government bureaucrats. The result is that electricity is 7 cents a kwh there and all profits go to the government. They use about 98% hydro.
Infrastructure and bridges collapsing are a world wide phenomenon because most of modern infrastructure were all built in the same post world war II time period so it's nothing specific to the USA.
Re: (Score:2)
I live relatively close to the Tihange plant (the plant is in Belgium, I live in the Netherlands). The reactor regularly automatically shuts down due to several issues. The concrete containment buildings are full of cracks, they are falling apart due to concrete degradation. Of one of those buildings the building plans have vanished.
The internals are certainly not going to be great either. The areas that are under constant irradiation don't improve. Neutron irradiation is an issue. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org].
Some years ago the Dutch government distributed iodine pills for everyone under the age of 18 who lives in a certain radius of the plant. The plant is old and should be shut down.
I guess they can't claim they didn't know about the upcoming problem.
Re: (Score:1)
Tihange is nowhere near the Netherlands
Precarious legal environment (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Still nationalised industry is not a good idea, I think.
Nationalized infrastructure is a good idea and usually provides good outcomes... except when you're doing it specifically for the purpose of keeping excessively old nuclear reactors operating.
Thank you (Score:1)
"Belgium plans to BUY its seven aging nuclear reactors "
Lots of people think 'nationalizing' is some patriotic act that doesn't cost anythin g.
It's not.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Not at all, I read lots of comments that claim that nationalizing EVERYTHING would solve all problems, they do NOT know that the government has to BUY the companies for market price or even above, because they are morons.
Also, I have never, ever been on Facebook or ANY social media, because I'm an asocial old fuck.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
"Belgium plans to BUY its seven aging nuclear reactors "
Lots of people think 'nationalizing' is some patriotic act that doesn't cost anythin g.
It's not.
I think lots of people are more questioning the concept of outsourcing your energy needs to another country, since that seems not merely anti-nationalist, but anti-country.
Long past time for Belgians to provide for themselves. Given their anti-maintenance stance, it’s a question if they actually know how. It’s also a question as to how much they actually need. The hell do you mean 5 out of 7 reactors are currently dead? If half your country isn’t sitting in the dark, do Belgians even k
gdfgsg (Score:1)
sfdg sg g sdg fdg fdg sfgd s g sfdg sfgd dsfg gs fdg gs sg sg g ggf fdgs sdfg dgj jyb
Re: gdfgsg (Score:2)
Good (Score:3, Interesting)
As the USA has shown the more you privatize your nuclear fleet the worse off it gets. The regulatory environment by necessity has to be so stringent that you effectively create double work and there are just losses and inefficiency everywhere.
When we look at successful and expanding nuclear power in the past decades and right now in the present whats the common thread? State ownership.
France? Famously a state-owned-enterprise.
China? State-owned-enterprise, several of them actually. They have 2 that build plants and others than support them.
India? State-owned-enterprise.
Now is this the answer for all energy? No, renewables like wind and solar have done excellent with private investment because those make sense from an ROI and regulatory standpoint, nuclear just fails on both those standpoints. It takes too much money up front, takes too long to recoup and requires too much regulation to operate safely and it's failure mode, although quite rare, is simply insane compared to other energy sources. Sure it's a 0.001% of major problem but that major problem could destroy an entire economic region.
The other advantage of state-owned nuclear is that it is an easy lever for price stabilization in the energy market.
Re: (Score:2)
France? Famously a state-owned-enterprise.
China? State-owned-enterprise, several of them actually. They have 2 that build plants and others than support them.
India? State-owned-enterprise.
Russia? Whoops!
Washington State? WPPSS (Whoops)
Re: (Score:2)
Is this a real argument?
Russia has operated a successful nuclear program for decades. Sure there was that one thing (which actually makes my case for the insurance and liability aspect, how do you ensure that type of event, rare as it might be?) and they have more under construction reactors than the US does.
I am certianly no fan of the Russian state as it currently is but to take a single incident and use that to decry the entire concept i am laying out is not only an obvious fallacy it's just fucking stu
Re: (Score:2)
Not good. This isn't a case of private vs public. This is a case of needing to shutdown a plant that is past its design life, and political will trumping engineering decisions. The only thing being nationalised here is the massive clean-up cost of the facility when they finally do. Both of Belgium's last remaining reactors are in a truly abysmal state. You point to China? Well China's oldest reactor is younger than both of the newest reactors in Belgium, and even China shut that one down and gave it a major
Re: (Score:3)
Cleanup costs get nationalized anyway. China's reactors are newer for sure but that's not really the point here, it's about being to expand. Reactors are old because it's been made a bear to replace them in the last 40 years, something China has worked around by... you guessed it, state control of nuclear power industry.
Nuclear power in France was a private enterprise for virtually all of its operational life
No, it was for a short while and it was enough of a failure that it was brought back under state control. The entire idea of nuclear power in france was a national security issue, thus th
In Belgium. (Score:5, Interesting)
Part of the explanation is the antinuclear movement has lost a lot of steam in Belgium. The scientists were strongly against the phasing out of the nuclear plants but the full proportional parliamentarian system of Belgium gives to relatively small parties a role of kingmakers, which the green parties used to sabotage the nuclear industry.
In typical Belgian fashion, a nuclear phase-out was promised to the greens but delayed due date after due date because go figure, we need electricity. That policy, while hypocritical was not without effect: Since officially the plants were supposed to be phased out, they were not modernised and their maintenance was kept to the strict minimum.
To add insult to injury, the government instituted a "nuclear tax" that quite burned investors. So, it is moderately surprising Engie does not want to invest in expensive power plants. What they want is to sell gas. Cheap gas plants. This way you have little money immobilised in the country in case the government would go full retard again and want to tax them. And just import gas. So if Belgium ceases to be profitable, you disengage yourself by stopping to buy gas.
Of course, if you want to sell gas, it helps to have non dispatchable renewables so the grid goes unstable and you need gas plants as "backup". When i was a young engineering student, our first year chemistry professor was an oil industry shill who gave us folders from Total. They advocated for wind energy. Not because Total is a company of hippies but because they knew with wind turbines they could sell fossil fuels.
Of course, this pseudo phase out turned out horribly wrong and the electricity penury went so dire old airplanes engines were used as auxiliary electricity generators. The cost of electricity skyrocketed and the CO2 emissions worsened.
Now, the greens are losing votes. I do not know how this decision will turn out. Competence and efficiency are not things the average Belgian voter find very important. But it is probably a good thing the electricity generation goes back to the public. The private sector is bad for these kind of things. The most successful electrical grids were made by public companies.
I also have a confession to make. I am an ancient member of the ECOLO party. The French-speaking green party. Shame on me. I projected my imagination on this kind of parties because i had learned about nature and the CO2 problem via my chemistry class in high school. So i stupidly assumed this party must have been full of concerned scientists.
Nothing was farther from the truth. They were almost all wash-outs with always the same two bullshit degrees and had zero interest in nature. They hated maths. They hated scientists whom they perceived as arrogant. They frowned at me when i talked to them about the greenhouse effect. At the time, it was a preoccupation of science minded people and my dumb party buddies had not heard of it and told me in no uncertain terms they had zero interest in it. I was lectured on the fact that political ecology was not about whales a little flowers and had deep ideologically pure left wing roots and i had to be loyal to that.
They were just a party of vaguely anticapitalist, anti-industry people who could not balance a chemical equation to save their lives. One of the founders was a doctor in physics who ended up dying of COVID because he refused to vaccinate. Another executive was an agronomist and it is all i remember. Then i left the party. Then i left the country (for other reasons)
The SwissOperate their nuclear an hydro as nationa (Score:2)
They are efficient. Never felt the need to privatize...
What do the swiss have that the belgians lack?
Re: (Score:2)
A more stable political system that does not give as much power to smaller political parties.
Also, i am pro-EU but in this particular case, being out of it is probably an advantage. But that is probably going to change.
Re: (Score:2)
A more stable political system that does not give as much power to smaller political parties.
Also, i am pro-EU but in this particular case, being out of it is probably an advantage. But that is probably going to change.
When I studied French in Laussane in 1997, you were fresh out of an EU joining referendum. You said no. At the time I tought that was a bad decistion. While I still think that being a part of a greater whole is better than beain a small independent part, it is now evident that the EU as it currently is, does not gel well (or is downright incompatible) with what Swiss is and always has been...
JM2C
YMMV