Relief in NRW: Belgium shuts down “crack reactor” near Antwerp

Relief in NRW
Belgium shuts down “rift reactor” near Antwerp

Belgium is taking a first step towards phasing out nuclear power: After around 40 years of operation, one of the country’s most controversial reactors will be shut down in the evening. In view of the Ukraine war and the energy crisis, there is also a dispute about security of supply in Belgium.

Belgium has permanently shut down a controversial nuclear reactor near Antwerp. The Meiler Doel 3 has not been supplying electricity since Friday evening, said a spokeswoman for the operator Engie. For years, German opponents of nuclear power and politicians right up to the federal government had fought for the exit. Doel 3 was commissioned around 40 years ago. It is the first of the seven Belgian reactors to be shut down.

In the coming hours and days, the temperature of the reactor will now be reduced, the spokeswoman said. In 2012, experts had already found thousands of hairline cracks in the reactor pressure vessels in block Doel 3 near Antwerp and in another reactor near Liège. Nevertheless, Belgium let the two reactors continue to run without hearing the neighboring countries and checking the environmental compatibility – illegally, as the European Court of Justice ruled, among others.

The second breakdown reactor Tihange 2, around 50 kilometers as the crow flies from the German border near Aachen, is to be shut down by February 1st. “If the two reactors go offline, that will make NRW safer,” said State Environment Minister Oliver Krischer. The Green politician had been campaigning for the shutdown of the so-called “rift reactors” for years.

Because of the energy crisis, the nuclear phase-out in Belgium, which was originally planned by 2025, is controversial. Most recently, the nuclear power plants secured around half of the electricity requirement there. The Brussels government had already agreed in the spring that the two youngest reactors would continue to run until 2035 if security of supply was otherwise not guaranteed. “Of course I would have wished that not only five, but all seven reactors in Belgium would go offline by 2025,” Krischer told the “Aachener Zeitung”. “But I have to accept that in view of the energy crisis and the Ukraine war, the Belgians have decided to continue operating the two youngest reactors.”

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