The Greens are not the only ones to worry about the state of the Belgian nuclear park, due to the controversial commissioning of two reactors, a few weeks ago, and the extension for 10 years, decided at the end of 2014 by the Government, of 2 units, the oldest, the Purpose 1 y Doel 2, dating from 1975.
The Belgian saga, punctuated by a series of recent incidents, generally downplayed by the authorities and the operator, Electrabel, also causes doubts in the residents of Belgium. At the beginning of January, several Dutch opposition parties asked the Government to intervene with the Belgian authorities after the stoppage, due to technical difficulties, of the Purpose 1, located a few kilometers from the border with the Netherlands.
A problem of Alternator It caused on January 2, the automatic shutdown of the reactor that had been restarted less than a week earlier, after 20 years and a month of inactivity. Another reactor, the Purpose 3, It was also stopped on December 25, 2015, 4 days after being started, due to a loss of water in a generator of the non-nuclear part of the central.
"There is no problem of fullfilment of security requirements”Explained the Minister of the Interior, while the ecological party was concerned about Electrabel's apparent lack of dominance and the unbridled pace that seemed to preside over the launch of the facilities.
Distrust also settled in Germany, after this incident that is not the first of its kind. On Luxembourg, the Secretary of State for Sustainable Development, also expressed his concern and demanded clarification regarding the situation of the reactor Tihange. German officials previously called for the closure of this unit, located 70 km from the city Aix-la-Chapelle, after some microcracks were discovered in the steel tanks of several Belgian reactors.
Thousands of microalveoli would have been found since 2012 in Purpose 3 y Tihange 2. The reactors had to stop and the tanks were subjected to various endurance tests. The operator finally authorized their restart in November 2015. An anti-nuclear association, which brings together more than 200.000 members in Belgium, in the Countries Low and in Germany, you are now trying to oppose this decision. The environmental opposition maintains that the Belgian plants are among the less reliable in the world.