OPEN LETTER
Excluding technologies is a flawed approach: cancel the law on nuclear phase-out.
Dear voter, dear future government,
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During the past few years, news on nuclear power was omnipresent. From insisting on the continuation of the full nuclear phase-out (i), to agreeing on long-term operation of 2 reactors (ii) and recently at COP28 the pledge to triple the global output of nuclear power by 2050 (iii).
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Although the international community and several scientific organizations, including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the International Energy Agency, are quite positive about nuclear power’s role in combating climate change, Belgium seems to take a more surreal stance on the matter.
We are pioneering research towards geological disposal in clay layers, however politicians refuse to accept it as a solution (iv).
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We want to meet our climate goals, but we’re still constructing fossil-fueled power plants.
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We’re organizing the first international summit on expanding global nuclear power in Brussels this spring, but we are continuing the closure of operational nuclear power plants while the law does not allow the construction of new reactors.
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This is where we want to make a public stand and we call to end this counterproductive political attitude.
Nuclear power is just as safe as renewable energy sources (1), nuclear power is just as cheap as renewable energy sources (2), there is a global scientific consensus on geological disposal of high-level nuclear waste (3), and elsewhere in the world construction is starting on Small Modular Reactors (SMR’s) to be in service before 2030 or in the early ‘30s (4), contrary to the claim that they won’t serve a purpose until 2045.
On the author:
Vincent Van der Heyden is WePlanet Belgium's nuclear expert. As an industrial engineer, he is a former employee of the Doel nuclear powerplant. At present, he studies bio-engineering and is a part time science youtuber.
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Footnotes:
Footnotes in this letter refer to a factsheet with background info and scources (in Dutch). You can download it here:
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