Status: 23.12.2021 5:27 p.m.
Almost 20 years ago, Belgium decided to phase out nuclear power by law. Now the government is taking a step back. The reason is the concern about bottlenecks in the energy supply.
Belgium is softening the shutdown of its nuclear power plants planned for 2025. The government reiterated its goal of taking the systems off the grid in the middle of the decade. However, two reactors should continue to produce electricity if the energy supply cannot be secured in other ways.
The seven parties in the government alliance had struggled for several weeks to reach a decision on the controversial issue. Belgium currently has two nuclear power plants. The total of seven reactors in Belgium are operated by the French utility Engie.
In Belgium, the step-by-step nuclear phase-out was put into law in 2003. The government of Prime Minister Alexander De Croos announced that it would be implemented by 2025 at the latest when it took office in October 2020.
100 million euros for new technologies
The decision of the government in Brussels does not mean the end of nuclear power per se, as Belgium wants to invest 100 million euros in researching new technologies. The country wants to concentrate primarily on a new reactor concept known in technical jargon as Small Modular Reactors (SMR). According to the German Federal Office for the Safety of Nuclear Waste Management, SMRs could achieve safety advantages over nuclear power plants with a high output, as they have a lower radioactive inventory per reactor.
The final exit from nuclear energy is controversial in the Brussels seven-party coalition. While the green energy minister, Tinne Van der Straaten, is calling for a complete phase-out, De Croos argues for the liberal MR party that, if there is a complete phase-out of nuclear power, security of supply must be ensured by gas-fired power plants – and these are more harmful to the climate than nuclear power plants. Around 40 percent of the electricity generated in Belgium so far comes from nuclear power.
EU at odds over future of nuclear power
There is currently heated debate in the European Union about a possible renaissance of nuclear power. A legal text from the EU Commission on green investments is eagerly awaited. The Brussels Commission under Ursula von der Leyen is considering including atomic energy in a list of “sustainable” forms of energy.
While Germany is pressing ahead with the nuclear phase-out and vehemently rejects the classification of nuclear energy as sustainable, France in particular is one of the supporters of such an assessment.
After the reactor disaster in Fukushima, Germany decided to accelerate the nuclear phase-out, and by the end of 2022 all batteries should have been taken off the grid. At the end of this year, the Brokdorf in Schleswig-Holstein, Grohnde in Lower Saxony and Gundremmingen in Bavaria locations will be shut down.