Belgium was to end the nuclear in 2025. The war in Ukraine pushed the government to change position and extend two reactors for a period of ten years. Engie Electrabel, the operator of Belgian nuclear power plants, hardly negotiates the conditions of this extension.
by Cédric Vallet (Brussels, Correspondence)
enters Engie and the Belgian government, negotiations are dragging out. The challenge: the extension, for ten years of the lifespan of two nuclear reactors. The government, under the aegis of Prime Minister Alexander de Croo (VLD, Flemish Liberal), had undertaken to finalize the discussions before December 31, 2022. The two parties, whose showdown is intense, did not have can keep this commitment and have agreed to continue the negotiations, this time without mentioning a cleaner date.
If it is so difficult to reach an agreement, it is that “the actors involved did not really want to go, analyzes Thomas Pardoen, professor at the Polytechnic School of the Catholic University de Louvain-la-Neuve. On the one hand, Engie’s strategy was to get out of nuclear. On the other, the Minister of Energy, Tinne Van der Straeten, Flemish ecologist, must defend a solution that she could not imagine a few months ago. “
During its taking office, in 2020, the coalition in power, made up of socialists, environmentalists, Flemish and French-speaking liberals as well as Flemish Christians, undertook to end the atom, In accordance with the 2003 law on the exit of nuclear, one of the totems of environmentalists, and to operate a controversial replacement of part of the production capacities by gas power plants, which we now know that theie will be the One of the operators. This government agreement, however, left an ajar door to the extension of two nuclear reactors, “in the event of an unexpected problem of security of supply”. This sentence, the French-speaking liberals (MR, reforming movement), fervent defenders of the atom, have long hung there, even if they have the majority of which they belong.
The war in Ukraine and the increase in electricity prices have completely rebatted the cards. The executive finally decided, on March 18, 2022, to extend two reactors, those of Doel 4 and Tihange 3, with 2 gigawatts of capacity. “The government has decided to very quickly redefine energy policy following the war in Ukraine,” said Tinne Van der Straeten, before the House of Representatives on August 30, 2022. Between the end of Russian gas imports and the intermittences of French nuclear energy, the latest estimates concerning supply security show the emergence of non-covered needs from winter 2025-2026.
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