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A comment on Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants. Parent comment

Re:Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants by seszett on Thursday April 30, 2026 @10:25AM (#47963003)
Well... there are worse places than Belgium for sure, and as a foreign citizen who has been living in Belgium for about a decade I think it's a reasonably well functioning country for west European standards, but I wouldn't use either SNCB/NMBS as an acceptable example as I'm not sure I have even had a single train be on time in the last few years (well I don't take the train much anymore for obvious reasons, but I still have to do it a few times a year) and cell service is absolutely not as good as it should be for such a small and dense country.

And my experience is only with Flanders which is basically one large city, I can only imagine how it is in the less populated areas of Wallonia or Limburg.

But I absolutely think that nuclear is a good option for such a small and dense country. Taking over the plants as they are nearly decommissioned is a stupid move though, but you can't expect anything sensible from this government.

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Re:Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants by NeutralForest on Thursday April 30, 2026 @10:34AM (#47963171)
That's fair, I have plenty of international coworkers and I think (and from what I hear from them), that Belgium is decently welcoming, at least in large cities.

I do take the train quite often as I said, anything on large axes is usually fine (Brussels - Charleroi, Brussels - Antwerp, etc) but yeah smaller lines are usually struggling some more.

I wish we had more ambitious governments in general, not only in terms of energy but also in the (bio)tech scene, which used to be touted as our great strength (we do have a lot of pharma companies though).

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Re:Belgium stops decommissioning nuclear power plants by elric on Thursday April 30, 2026 @10:37AM (#47963223)
Agreed.

Running ancient nuclear power plants in one of the most densely populated countries does not seem wise.

These plants have been running with phase-out in mind for the last 20 years.

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