Protesters in Belgium are working to keep nuclear power as a plant operator moves to shut a reactor down
A 50-year-old reactor here was about to shut permanently last week after years of antinuclear protests, when a mysterious projection appeared on its massive cooling tower: the title of the Queen song “Don’t Stop Me Now” next to an image of Freddie Mercury raising his fist in the air.
The stunt was pulled off by activists aiming to save the reactor, taking a page from the antinuclear playbook of Greenpeace and other groups who long sought to close it. The Belgian government also wants to keep the reactor running—after repealing a 22-year-old law this year that required a phaseout of nuclear energy.
The problem: Its operator, France’s Engie, says it is too late. The company shut the reactor at the Tihange plant last week and is pushing ahead with a plan to dismantle it. Engie wants out of the nuclear energy business, which for decades has subjected it to antinuclear protests and the changing whims of Belgian politics.
“Business decisions have been made and set, but we need to reverse course,” said Rob De Schutter, a campaigner with a pro-nuclear environmental group called WePlanet that helped organize the stunt.
The pro-nuclear environmental group WePlanet helped organized the stunt. The plant is operated by Paris-based utility company Engie. WePlanet
Belgium’s topsy-turvy nuclear debate is a reflection of how radically perceptions of nuclear power have changed across the West and beyond in just a few years. Where once governments and the public saw safety risks, some now see a source of low-carbon electricity that is crucial to help economies shift away from fossil fuels.
The war in Ukraine exposed Europe’s vulnerability to gas supplies from Russia, highlighting how gas—or even coal—would be needed to replace nuclear generation. The case for building new reactors is uncertain because their costs are enormous, but experts say prolonging the life of old ones is less expensive than almost any other form of low-carbon energy.
The challenge is to reverse the years of planning that go into shutting down reactors, and then to find the money for safety upgrades. In Spain, nuclear companies are planning to shut their nuclear plants after failing to agree on financial incentives with authorities to keep them open.
The struggle over nuclear power in Belgium dates back to 2003, when the country passed a law to phase it out. Though the law was repealed this year, Engie executives say the company won’t foot the bill to keep running the reactor in Tihange and another near Antwerp.
One big cost emerged when Belgium’s nuclear regulator said the Tihange reactor would probably need to be reinforced to withstand a direct hit from big jets. Large commercial jets fly over it when they take off from the nearby Liège Airport.
More important, executives said, Engie’s strategy is now to build out renewables, gas generation and batteries. The company is set to fire up a new gas-burning power plant that will largely replace the generation lost from Tihange, boosting Belgium’s greenhouse gas emissions, at least temporarily.
“Nuclear is not part of Engie’s strategy,” said Antoine Assice, director of Tihange, who will retire next year.
The war in Ukraine has exposed Europe’s dependence on Russia fossil fuels. Manu Brabo for WSJ
Engie has already sought permission to tear down the reactor’s cooling towers that loom over the city of Huy from the banks of the Meuse River. Doing so would make restarting the reactor effectively impossible. But another pro-nuclear organization 100 TWh, which is short for terawatt hours, has filed a motion seeking to block the move, which would make restarting the reactor effectively impossible.
“It’s completely stupid to destroy the towers,” said Henri Marenne, the group’s founder.
Meanwhile, a spokeswoman for the Belgian energy minister said talks are under way to find a way to restart the reactor and another reactor at the Doel nuclear plant near Antwerp, which will go offline on Dec. 1. Belgium’s pro-nuclear movement says one possibility would be for EDF, which owns 50% of the Tihange reactor, to purchase the other half from Engie and restart it.
Antinuclear protesters began to flock to Tihange after Japan’s Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011. Most came from across the border in Germany, where antinuclear sentiment was running hot. Shortly after, engineers discovered that the vessel for the Tihange 2 reactor contained manufacturing anomalies. The vessel is the core of the reactor where fission takes place, and the only part of a nuclear plant that can’t be replaced.
Engie was able to restart the reactor after confirming the vessel hadn’t been weakened, but the episode lent momentum to the protesters’ campaign to shut the reactors.
“We have a feeling of intrusion from the Germans,” said Christophe Collignon, the mayor of Huy. “They’d do better to worry about their own country.”
Tihange 2 shut down in 2023. Michel Gilles, a former engineer at the plant who is a member of 100 TWh, said all three reactor vessels at Tihange are in good shape. Tihange 3 has been extended until 2035.
“I assure you, the vessel of Tihange 2 could last another 40 years,” he said.
Protesters from Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany gather at the Tihange nuclear power plant. Nicolas Maeterlinck/AFP/Getty Images
A handful of protesters from Germany and the Netherlands who campaigned against Tihange gathered this week to celebrate the reactor’s shutdown. But they acknowledge that the public has turned against them—even in Germany, which closed its last nuclear reactor several years ago.
“If the public would have this chance to decide again in Germany, I’m sure they would take nuclear,” said Walter Schumacher, a retired German mathematician who was one of the antinuclear protesters at Tihange. “The public is saying climate is the biggest problem, that we have to do everything—we even have to use nuclear power.”
The pro-nuclear protest in Huy was organized by Emeric Massaut, a nuclear energy enthusiast who works for Belgium’s railroad. With financial backing from WePlanet, he and two other pro-nuclear activists rented a massive projector that could display an image from hundreds of meters away onto the cooling tower from a site on the other side of the Meuse.
They projected a series of pro-nuclear memes, including “Winter is Coming, Keep Tihange Active.” One showed Russian President Vladimir Putin flashing a thumbs-up with the slogan “no nuclear, yes gas.” Another showed a wind turbine and the number 1,250, which is how many turbines they calculate would be needed to equal the generation from the reactor.
As they were packing up, they were stopped by the police and nearly arrested.
“It’s just about the political willingness and business willingness,” Massaut said. “We decided we’re up for it and we’re going to do something, I would say, on the verge of legality…We hope that the plant is going to come back online sometime soon.”
Write to Matthew Dalton at Matthew.Dalton@wsj.com
Source: WSJ
