From Trust, yet verify

Two weeks ago, on May 15, the Belgian federal parliament reversed the Nuclear Exit Act of 2003 (Dutch ahead). This was approved by a large majority. The Walloon socialist party and the far left abstained. Only the Green party (unsurprisingly) voted against.

Strictly speaking, the act will remain, but the word “exit” will disappear from its title, and it is renamed “Act on Nuclear Energy for Industrial Electricity Production”. The provision that no new power plants can be built has been deleted and the closing dates of the nuclear power plants (some of which are already in the past) have been removed from the text.

This means that the construction of new nuclear plants is possible again. Our government is looking at the possibility of SMRs (Small Modular Reactors) and in the meanwhile wants to extend the life of the remaining nuclear plants. Because the mandatory closing dates of the older plants disappeared from the text, it means that reopening is (at least theoretically) possible. However, the current owner of the nuclear plants (Engie) is not interested in the nuclear plants anymore, so reopening seems pretty unlikely.

The Nuclear Exit Act dated from 2003 and it ran parallel with the rise and fall of the Greens. The (Flemish and Walloon) Green parties were, for the first time, part of our Government back then. They eagerly wanted to decommission nuclear power in Belgium and a majority was found to approve the Act. The Act stipulated that all nuclear power plants should be closed by 2025 and no new plants were allowed to be built in the future. It didn’t go well for the Greens, they lost all their seats in the following election later that year…

After the demise of the Green in the Government, the Act was in gridlock. There was opposition to it because nuclear power produced about 60% of demand back then and no clear alternative was provided. Although the focus was on the expansion of solar and wind, nothing was done integrating them on the grid. There were some (failed) proposals for the construction of gas-fired power plants and for the life extensions of three reactors, but because the legislative work was not completed in time, two reactors were shut down in 2015, as provided for in the Nuclear Exit Act. Later, the Act was amended, and the two reactors were put back online to secure the electricity supply.

By the end of 2020, the Green parties recovered from their defeat and got back in the Government. A member of the Flemish Green party was chosen to be the Minister of Energy and she obviously wanted to finish the mission that the Greens started in 2003. That seemed to work initially. On December 23 of 2021, the decision was made to finalize the nuclear exit. The final approval was scheduled to be signed in March 2022 … but the situation in Ukraine in February 2022 threw a spanner in the works. There was uncertainty about future gas supply from Russia and, after lengthy negotiations, the lifetime of the reactors Tihange 3 and Doel 4 were extended with 10 years in order to secure the electricity supply.

By that time, the majority of the population was in favor of nuclear energy. In a poll in May 2022, 81% of the participants indicated that they wanted to keep the nuclear plants open after 2025 (from 66% in the previous two years). Even half of the participants who vote for the green party agreed with that statement.

That was felt in the results of the following election in 2024. The Greens again lost badly, although not as badly as in 2003. They kept some seats this time but landed in the opposition. The other politicians apparently sensed the changed public opinion on nuclear energy and a majority was found in favor of nuclear energy. Which lead to the reversal of the Nuclear Exit Act on May 15.

In the end, the final balance of that Nuclear Exit Act is that three of the seven nuclear power plants (Doel 1, Doel 3 and Tihange 2) have been shut down in recent years.

The Belgian Minister of Energy calls the reversal of the Nuclear Exit Act a turning point in Belgian energy history. Indeed, it is a first step in giving nuclear energy its central role in the Belgian energy supply back again.