The deal the Belgian coalition government has reached Thursday after years of debate and overnight talks by government ministers will see the country’s seven ageing nuclear reactors closed by 2025.
However, the country will not close the door on new-generation nuclear technology and will continue to invest in future technologies that could entice opening up smaller plants. The all-night negotiations, according to a government source, included an agreement of investing around €100 million on small modular reactors.
Housed at two plants in Doel and Tihange, the reactors- some of which operated by utility company Engie and operational since the 1970s – have been controversial and have sparked fear in neighbouring countries for a long considering the fact that they’re repeatedly shut down for safety checks.
Belgian law has enshrined the progressive phasing out of nuclear power in 2003.
The reactors’ closures will begin in 2022 and end in 2025, the target the current government committed to meet when it took office in October 2020, with the aim of safely decommissioning and demolishing both plants by 2045.
But the governing seven-party coalition of greens, socialists and Prime Minister Alexander De Croo’s liberals, who had set 2021 as the deadline to resolve the matter, is divided on the issue since the liberal MR party strongly opposes completely abandoning nuclear power which was suggested by Flemish green Energy Minister Tinne Van der Straeten.
Considering that the new gas-fired power stations planned to secure energy supplies were too polluting, MR party believes that some of Belgium’s current nuclear capacity should be retained. The government’s plan to build two gas-fired plants built to make up the energy shortfall will be revisited in March over possible permit issues.
Amid the push for countries around the world to switch from fossil fuels to cleaner energy resources that are not as polluting to the climate, nuclear power continues to divide EU member states over the question of whether to include it – natural gas too – in the European Union’s “taxonomy”: he bloc’s list of sustainable energy sources eligible for investment that promotes greener energies and facilitate the transition to a carbon-neutral future.
While critics argue that nuclear power is not climate-friendly and should be phased out in favour of other energy sources, the internal market commissioner Thierry Breton expects nuclear power and natural gas to be included in the list when it is presented in January.
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