As we wrote this Wednesday in our columns, the French group Engie hopes to be able to extend Doel 4 and Tihange 3. Nevertheless, it has confirmed to exclude a “mini-extension” of Doel 1, Doel 2 and Tihange 1, as hoped some.
Information that visibly stung the president of the MR, Georges-Louis Bouchez, for whom it will be “5 reactors as decided”, if not nothing, since it threatens to block all the files present on the table of the government. He took the opportunity to accuse the Minister of Energy, Tinne Van der Straeten (Groen), of sabotaging negotiations with the French energy company in order to promote gas.
However, the extension of the five reactors did not seem to be considered in the past and Deputy Prime Minister Georges Gilkinet (Ecolo) himself recalled in an interview with Le Soir this Saturday that it would be dangerous to extend more than two reactors.
Engie buries the idea of a mini-extension of the three old Belgian nuclear reactors
The president of Défi François De Smet for his part regretted the promises of the Vivaldi which it cannot keep (”The Vivaldi promises anything”) and the fact that the members of the coalition clearly cannot agree on the subject. To which the liberal president replied “it will be 5 reactors, that’s all”.
This announcement from the management of Engie is not a surprise. According to our analysis, current nuclear safety rules do not allow for a mini-extension. Indeed, it would not be enough to modify the 2003 law on the exit from nuclear power to allow Doel 1, Doel 2 and Tihange 1 to produce beyond their fiftieth anniversary, which will be celebrated in 2025. Indeed, the most big obstacle to this mini-extension remains the rules of nuclear safety. These rules provide that a nuclear reactor must comply, on each ten-year anniversary, with the latest safety standards. However, new European safety standards were transposed into Belgian law in 2020 by the Wilmès government. Standards that do not fully meet the three reactors mentioned above.