Belgium 2030 energy commission suggests scraping 4 year old nuclear phase out.

[NNadir]

I'm not sure if Belgium represents a new record for shortest lived nuclear phase out. The Dutch were in competition I think, but I'm not sure.

Anyway, here's the link for the preliminary report of the Belgian energy commission:

http://www.ce2030.be/dow.php

A Commission entitled COMMISSION ENERGY 2030 realises a study and a report which should lead to the elaboration of the Belgian energy policy by the year 2030. This Commission, set up by Royal Decree of 06 December 2005 (Moniteur Belge / Belgisch Staatsblad 19/12/2005), is composed of Belgian and foreign experts. The General Direction on Energy of the Ministry of Economic Affairs and the Federal Planning Bureau are cooperating with the activities of this Commission...

...The study should enable to objectify the debate, starting from the most complete possible technical, economic, social and environmental evaluation of the results of the various scenarios of energy policy, with a special attention given to the supply security and the independence of the country

http://www.ce2030.be/dow.php

The Belgian energy policy will have to consist of a balanced mixture of contributing elements. First, if important post-Kyoto carbon-reduction limits are pursued, energy savings will have to be an important component of the policy. Then, a diversity of primary-energy sources and conversion technologies should be opted for, with a cost-effective integration of renewables, whereby the cost effectiveness is best geared by carbon prices rather than absolute objectives. Given the existing constraints and the costs reported, taking into account all hypotheses and uncertainties involved, and based on the combination of scientific, technical and economic arguments, we are led to conclude, that in case the nuclear phase out is implemented, the expected post-Kyoto constraint will be extremely expensive and strongly perturbing for our economic fabric. It is not literally impossible, but the risks of not succeeding are indeed very large, and likely at a very high cost, or by ‘exporting’ our CO2 problem.

The circumstances when the nuclear phase-out law has been voted into law have indeed changed significantly; the urgency for climate-change action is becoming more apparent and the era of very cheap oil and gas prices is almost certainly behind us. This facing with current reality and future expectations, requires a paradigm shift of the current official Belgian standpoint on nuclear power. In the Recommendations, a proposal will be made to 'neutralize' the often quoted antithesis/contradiction between nuclear power, on the one hand, and energy efficiency & renewables, on the other hand, through a win-win situation, whereby the latter can benefit from the cost savings obtained by the former.

http://www.ce2030.be/public/documents_publ/Exec%20Summary%20CE2030%20Prelim%20Report_FIN%20-%20Nov%2013%202006.pdf

[Porcupine]

1. How much does a public commision cost in Belgium nowadays?

The reality is that the general public in most of the industrialized world is reluctant to trust their governments to produce and then control extremely toxic poisons. Persons appointed to government commisions tend to be part of the 2% that owns everything and don't have a problem with it.

Until reactor design and waste disposal schemes are changed and DEMONSTRATED there is reason to distrust the current nuclear power industry.

[hunter]

2. Extremely toxic poisons -- like coal, maybe?

The record with nuclear wastes is considerably better than that of coal.

But we will build more coal plants that will kill and disable many more people and do more damage to the environment because we have an irrational fear of all things nuclear.

[NNadir]

3. Do you have any proof of any of these contentions?

Or are they just made up? Do you make them up simply because the Commission thinks you're completely out of your mind?

In fact, reactor design has been demonstrated, almost half a thousand times. There are tens of thousands of reactor years of experience in which the reactors operated harmlessly, not that you would or could have noticed. There are zero years, on the other hand, in which coal plants operated harmlessly. I agree that there is a tiny fragment of the population that doesn't want to see this reality, but the point is that these are precisely the people who are having a grand - and very dangerous - hallucination.

It is in fact equally absurd to assert that the "general public" is quite as stupid as some people think they are. Public support for nuclear energy is growing, which accounts for the fact that governments around the world are planning new reactors. When Sweden actually acted on its twenty year old "nuclear phaseout" the public outcry was so large that the policy quickly disappeared. There is no longer a nuclear phase out in Sweden.

Most rational people recognize that when nuclear plants are shut they are always replaced by far more dangerous fossil fuel plants. All of these shutdowns have been accompanied by silly day dreams about new renewable plants but the number of nuclear reactors replaced by renewable energy is still zero. In fact, two or three nuclear plants produce more energy than all of the world's existing solar PV power for instance.

There have been zero people in Belgium killed by the storage of so called "nuclear waste." Therefore when you claim that safe storage of so called "nuclear waste has not been proved in Belgium, you are merely demonstrating a poor appreciation of what the word "dangerous" means.

[Porcupine]

4. Plutonium is still poison in Belgium. It still makes weapons grade material

and just like green eggs and ham, I do not like them here or there. I do not like them anywhere.

Our good friend Putin just demonstrated what nuclear power is all about; maintaining political control of your populace. This winter he will probably play games with Europe's natural gas supply again. This demonstrates the folly of having your source of heat, light and electricity in the hands of political elites.

There are nuclear reactor designs (thorium, molten salt reactor) which will not produce plutonium or bomb grade material but they are rarely used. They would even use a material that is far more abundant and safer to handle in all ways than enriched uranium. It's funny how they aren't popular with those who build nuclear reactors. Perhaps because there's profit in producing poisons and then "keeping the poisons safe."

I am well aware that you believe that everyone who disagrees with you is an idiot. You could STFU on this point as it does nothing to advance your arguments.

[NNadir]

5. Really? How many people have been poisoned by plutonium in Belgium?

Are you claiming here - in asking me to shut the fuck up - that you are aware of both or either Belgian nuclear weapons or a plutonium poisoning problem in Belgium?

I will be inclined to shut the fuck up when people stop saying irrational things and not before.

As for who and who is not an idiot, and whose thinking is on a grade school level, I will not comment further, but I will say this:

The plutonium in Belgium today is some of the least suitable plutonium on the planet for the construction of nuclear weapons. The reason this is the case is because the plutonium in Belgian reactors is recycled and thus it contains a very different isotopic mix than the plutonium in any of the world's existing nuclear weapons. Belgian nuclear reactors are run on MOX fuel. By running their reactors on MOX fuel, the Belgians have reduced the amount of plutonium that is on the planet, for better or for worse.

You would actually have to understand something about plutonium and its physics to know any of these things and it is strictly amazing to see how many people who know nothing about the subject are nonetheless inclined to comment on it.

[eppur_se_muova]

6. Correlation with altitude? They're not know as the "Low Countries" for nothing.

I suspect the residents of Tuvalu and the Maldives would argue for a coal phase out.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/03/18/wtuvalu18.xml&sSheet=/news/2006/03/18/ixworld.html

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/3930765.stm

The Maldives' survival as a sovereign nation is truly at stake.

No wonder it was the first country to sign up to the Kyoto Protocol, which sets targets for cuts in industrialised countries' greenhouse gas emissions.

edit to add this, from the end of article above:

In June, the President of the Maldives, Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, wrote to the US President George W Bush, in a rather optimistic attempt to persuade him to ratify the Kyoto Protocol. So far he is yet to receive a response.

This minnow of a nation faces a mammoth task - to persuade members of the US government, whether officials in the Bush administration or lawmakers on Capitol Hill, to make long-term decisions from a global perspective, rather than short-term choices based on national self-interest.

[NNadir]

7. The Netherlands also is dropping its nuclear phase out. n/t

[eppur_se_muova]

8. That's what I meant, Netherlands and Belgium are the "Low Countries".

As in Recueil des Travaux Chimiques des Pays-Bas.

(In fact, Belgium was originally the "Spanish Netherlands" IIRC. And "nether" here does mean low altitude, i.e. flood-prone low coastal plain.)

[NNadir]

9. I know that's what you meant.

Bengladesh is also planning nuclear power; it's first unit will be 600MWe.

I don't know about Tuvulu. They may not have the time.