Belgium’s parliament on Thursday voted to drop the country’s planned nuclear phaseout.
The motion was passed with 102 votes in favor, eight against and 31 abstentions.
“The Federal Parliament has just turned the page on two decades of blockages and hesitation to pave the way for a realistic and resilient energy model,” Energy Minister Mathieu Bihet of the center-right Reformist Movement party was cited by the AFP news agency as saying.
“This is not just an energy reform; it is a decisive step for the economic, environmental, and strategic future of our country,” he said.
What was Belgium’s nuclear phaseout?
In 2003, Belgium passed a law for the gradual phaseout of nuclear energy.
The law stipulated that nuclear power plants were to be closed by 2025 at the latest, while prohibiting the construction of new reactors.
In 2022, Belgium delayed the phaseout by 10 years, with plans to run one reactor in each of its two plants as a backup due to energy uncertainty triggered by Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Belgium’s conservative-led coalition government under Prime Minister Bart De Wever took office in February.
The previous coalition government included the environmentalist Ecolo and Groen parties, both of which opposed scrapping the phaseout.
Belgium currently has two nuclear power plants, both run by the French energy firm Engie.
Nuclear energy makes up around 40% of Belgium’s power generation, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).
Other European countries mull nuclear policy shift
The Netherlands and Sweden are planning to build new nuclear plants and Italy’s government opened the door to a return to nuclear energy earlier this year.
Meanwhile, Germany made a similar nuclear phaseout pledge in 2011 following the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan.
According to the results of a poll released in April of this year, 55% of Germans favor a reversal of nuclear policy.
The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Rafael Grossi, said late in 2024 that a German return to nuclear power would be “logical.”
Edited by: Jon Shelton
