Skip to main content

Belgium Ponders Non-Nuclear Future

Though this article from Expatica is more than a year old, I'm sharing it with you because it presents the dillema that many European nations with aging nuclear reactors are facing: How to meet their Kyoto targets while phasing out nuclear energy and still keeping the lights on:
Currently, nuclear energy remains the number one source of electricity in Belgium, amounting to 70 percent of production. That will fall to 52 percent of domestic electricity production in five years time.

[...]

But due to the fact that electricity only amounts to 16 percent of total energy use, nuclear-powered electricity amounts to 9 percent of use in Belgium.

Oil and other fossil fuels account for 90 percent of Belgian energy use, while renewable energy — such as wind, solar, biofuels etc — accounts for 1 percent.

Renewable energy use will only increase to 3.7 percent — or at most 5 percent — in 25 years time, because it remains expensive to produce.

The Belgium government intends to abandon nuclear energy from 2015 and in the 10 years after that, the nation's seven nuclear reactors will need to shut down.
Am I the only person shaking my head as I read this? While I topped out at Introduction to Calculus as a high school senior, you don't need advanced math skills to figure out that if Belgium phases out all of its nuclear capacity that renewables alone can't fill the gap -- a leap the author doesn't seem to be able to make.

Even better, we also get the meaningless statistic that's being repeated over and over again: While nuclear provides (insert percentage of electricity) it only provides a small fraction of total energy use -- as if you could replace all of the nuclear generating capacity with fossil fired capacity with a snap of your fingers and without suffering any ill effects in electricity prices or air quality.

Instead of looking at Belgium's current energy mix as a blessing, and an incredible boon toward meeting their Kyoto targets, this piece was titled, "Belgium's Nuclear Addiction". Perhaps Belgium's real addiction is to faulty reasoning.

Technorati tags: , , , , , ,

Comments

Anonymous said…
Good commentary!

I've recently done a post that profiles a number of the European countries' electricity usage pictures using charts from the International Energy Agency. The differences in energy policies between the European countries are strikingly visible when you look at the charts.

Italy is in a bind now, paying high prices for imported oil and gas, because of its 1980's-era decision to close its nuclear facilities. Belgium, which is a quite industrialized country, needs to avoid going down that road.

Fortunately, polling results for Sweden look favorable to keeping its nuclear capacity (contrary to the 'official' government policy, inherited from the anti-nuclear flaky politics of the 1980s).
GRLCowan said…
Someone in a newsgroup was asking for comments on this about four years ago -- before the Ghislenghien disaster -- but never acknowledged my response.

--- G. R. L. Cowan, former hydrogen fan
How personal mobility gains nuclear cachet
Fat Man said…
I hope that Belgium Shuts down its plants and dismantles them before the Jihadis take over.
Anonymous said…
It could be very instructive to have one European country after another attempt to defy the laws of physics by simultaneously abandoning nuclear power, reducing greenhouse emissions, and meeting rising demand. People don't quite understand that the greens to which they've ceded power on energy issues just say "no" to everything without having real solutions. How can you prove that conservation and renewables won't be enough, until you try it out. Once blackouts become routine perhaps the real debate will finally begin.
Brian Mays said…
Eh ... It's just one more reason the French have to make fun of the Belgians.

Popular posts from this blog

An Ohio School Board Is Working to Save Nuclear Plants

Ohio faces a decision soon about its two nuclear reactors, Davis-Besse and Perry, and on Wednesday, neighbors of one of those plants issued a cry for help. The reactors’ problem is that the price of electricity they sell on the high-voltage grid is depressed, mostly because of a surplus of natural gas. And the reactors do not get any revenue for the other benefits they provide. Some of those benefits are regional – emissions-free electricity, reliability with months of fuel on-site, and diversity in case of problems or price spikes with gas or coal, state and federal payroll taxes, and national economic stimulus as the plants buy fuel, supplies and services. Some of the benefits are highly localized, including employment and property taxes. One locality is already feeling the pinch: Oak Harbor on Lake Erie, home to Davis-Besse. The town has a middle school in a building that is 106 years old, and an elementary school from the 1950s, and on May 2 was scheduled to have a referendu

Why Ex-Im Bank Board Nominations Will Turn the Page on a Dysfunctional Chapter in Washington

In our present era of political discord, could Washington agree to support an agency that creates thousands of American jobs by enabling U.S. companies of all sizes to compete in foreign markets? What if that agency generated nearly billions of dollars more in revenue than the cost of its operations and returned that money – $7 billion over the past two decades – to U.S. taxpayers? In fact, that agency, the Export-Import Bank of the United States (Ex-Im Bank), was reauthorized by a large majority of Congress in 2015. To be sure, the matter was not without controversy. A bipartisan House coalition resorted to a rarely-used parliamentary maneuver in order to force a vote. But when Congress voted, Ex-Im Bank won a supermajority in the House and a large majority in the Senate. For almost two years, however, Ex-Im Bank has been unable to function fully because a single Senate committee chairman prevented the confirmation of nominees to its Board of Directors. Without a quorum

NEI Praises Connecticut Action in Support of Nuclear Energy

Earlier this week, Connecticut Gov. Dannel P. Malloy signed SB-1501 into law, legislation that puts nuclear energy on an equal footing with other non-emitting sources of energy in the state’s electricity marketplace. “Gov. Malloy and the state legislature deserve praise for their decision to support Dominion’s Millstone Power Station and the 1,500 Connecticut residents who work there," said NEI President and CEO Maria Korsnick. "By opening the door to Millstone having equal access to auctions open to other non-emitting sources of electricity, the state will help preserve $1.5 billion in economic activity, grid resiliency and reliability, and clean air that all residents of the state can enjoy," Korsnick said. Millstone Power Station Korsnick continued, "Connecticut is the third state to re-balance its electricity marketplace, joining New York and Illinois, which took their own legislative paths to preserving nuclear power plants in 2016. Now attention should