“You then end up in a scenario like in the difficult winter of 2018, when we really had to pull out all the stops when six of the seven nuclear power plants were shut down,” says Peeters.
A supply problem will also arise if no nuclear power plants become operational in the winters of 2025-2026 and 2026-2027. The government has been negotiating with the French energy company Engie for more than a year to keep the two youngest reactors, Doel 4 and Tihange 3, open for another ten years after 2025.
Engie was asked to see whether the two reactors could make a faster restart. By scheduling maintenance flexibly, the government hopes that both plants will still be available for the critical winters of 2025-2026 and 2026-2027.
There are other options, but those alternatives won’t be easy or cheap.
“There are other options, but those alternatives will not be easy and not cheap,” warns Peeters, who points out that the options are dwindling. It is now too late to have additional gas-fired power plants built by the end of 2025. “If the government had wanted to go down that route, it should have activated it before the Easter holidays,” said the Elia CEO. “People knew that. The fact that it did not happen means that people are confident of a good outcome.”
Without nuclear power plants, it cannot be ruled out that power boats will have to help keep the lights on. Another option is to restart Engie’s old gas-fired power station in Vilvoorde and the power station in Rodenhuize near Ghent as an emergency measure.
2023-05-13 02:43:09
#Grid #manager #warns #power #supply #absence #nuclear #deal
