Baking on the Beligian Border

When the Martians arrived above New Jersey in 1938, panic spread among the credulous [1]. People couldn’t flee far enough, partly because they were left breathless from all the screaming, but mostly because there was no way to outpace a threat so fast moving as to be near-omnipresent. A potentially hostile force had crossed the American border.

Which border? The Martians hadn’t come by land or sea, so it was a z-axis incursion: outer space, followed by the atmosphere. But how high above the plains, lakes, and skyscrapers does America’s sovereign airspace extend? There’s no internationally agreed upon limit, but within interception range seems reasonable. Beyond that, all you can launch are harsh words.

A more recent, and more real, border crossing was made by the Russians in 2014 to take Crimea from Ukraine, sixty years after Nikita Khrushchev transferred its ownership away [2]. The EU and NATO were alarmed, despite Ukraine not being a member of either: the red knights were leaping near the blue king’s open flank.

A red star falling in the South China Sea cast light on the Spratly Island chain at around the same time. Reef building, port dredging, and airstrip laying by the Chinese in waters contested by several nations caused concern. Construction was in the service of benevolence: “China is aiming to provide shelter, aid in navigation, weather forecasts and fishery assistance to ships of various countries passing through the sea”, with the added benefit of “meeting the needs of military defense” [3]. An integral part of the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road, the islands would facilitate the transformation of the South China Sea into “a platform for cooperation.” [3] The arrival of military jets [4], the deepening of the ports for naval vessels, and the erection of military facilities [5] all helped chop off the “co”, leaving a platform for operation.

All of the above are examples of military installations, apparatuses, and personnel generating threat through their proximity to national borders. But you don’t need a soldier or a sailor with a vessel: threat can come dressed in civvies. When refugees fled Syria for Europe in their millions in 2015, Bulgaria, Hungary, Slovenia, and Austria hastily erected barricades to stop or redirect the desperate. The humanitarian union eroded fast in a storm of security and economic fears which, to date, has not abated.

Those on the right of politics will often claim that threats exist and endure across the entire geopolitical landscape; those on the left often concur whilst disagreeing on the causes and solutions. But what if a solution becomes a cause? One persistent threat that countries face is energy poverty, either through insufficient infrastructure or insufficient natural resources, the latter often due to insecure imports. The threat is compounded because the best deals on fuel are often sought within a global market, a place of abstract borders permeable to finance but also to the volatility of political power in the countries to which they’re aligned. Ownership of resources is subject to regime and rule change, and if the importing country isn’t prepared to renegotiate, they must retaliate, re-source, or be relegated. One solution is energy independence achieved through renewable local sources such as wind, solar, geothermal, and biofuel. Belgium, however, went nuclear.

Perhaps nuclear power could be seen as affording a modicum of energy security, if not independence, because of the relative stability of the biggest uranium exporters: Kazakhstan, Canada and Australia. Belgium itself has a history of uranium extraction thanks to its former colony in the Congo, a principle supplier to the US during the second world war [6], whose thanks was expressed in the form of nuclear reactor designs: Belgium was one of the first European countries to build nuclear power stations [7]. But nuclear power is vulnerable to other security issues, such as the theft of spent fuel to create dirty bombs or the targeting of the reactors themselves (e.g. Stuxnet [8]), or their staff. Belgium has already experienced such threats [9]. Nuclear power is also vulnerable to catastrophic failures, such as those experienced in Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima, and here is where Belgium’s energy security solution becomes a cause of threat: its reactors are decrepit but still running hot.

Nuclear incidents are seldom regional: radioactive material can be propelled into the atmosphere (Chernobyl) or dumped into the sea (Fukushima), travelling the planet. Belgium’s reactors compound the danger by being situated in one of the most densely populated areas of Europe, at or near the borders of three neighbouring countries: Germany, Netherlands, and Luxembourg. The reactors have had to be shut down multiple times due to faults. Many of them, having been built in the 1970s, have reached the end of their forty year lifespans, but have had their operations extended for a further decade.

How should neighbouring countries respond when an ally refuses to remove a threat from its borders? This is a question the Dutch, Luxembourgian, and German governments have been pondering [10] since Belgium restarted its ailing Tihange 2 nuclear reactor in December 2015 [11], along with the equally creaky Doel 3. (Despite an extensive repair period of nearly two years, the latter had to be shut down one week after restarting due to a water leak [12]). An alliance of thirty districts from the three countries co-funded a lawsuit to close Tihange 2 and appealed to the European commission to prepare a case for presentation at the European court of justice [10]. The regional governments in the German states of North Rhine Westphalia (NRW) and Rhineland Palatinate planned additional legal action in the form of petitioning the European commission and the UN [13]. Johannes Remmel, the Minister for the Environment in NRW, said that the legal action was a clear political signal that foreign nuclear threats would not be accepted without consequence [14]. Local groups have even gone so far as to install networks of radiation monitors [15].

The Belgium government refuses to budge. Given the available information, it’s questionable that they consider the power stations benign, but can their continued use be seen as an act of provocation? Around fifty per cent of Belgium’s electricity comes from the Tihange and Doel plants, and the country’s energy security might be compromised if the reactors were forced to close. The extension of the decommissioning deadline from 2015 to 2025 is contentious, but what is the alternative? Have new Generation III plants been built, or has a renewable energy infrastructure been put in place? Should the country return to coal burning, drastically increasing greenhouse gas emissions?

The country has had four decades to plan for a transition; we could assume the current policy is a result of that planning and treat the government as fully cognisant of the implications were it not for the IEA’s Energy Policy Belgium 2016 report [16] which states that “Belgium does not have a national energy strategy”, and so should “increase the use of models to assess the impacts of possible policy options on security of supply, prices, the economy and the environment in order to…further diversify energy supply and limit energy demand, in particular through energy efficiency, renewable energy and intensified collaboration and trade with neighbouring countries.” [16, p.9]. The lawsuits and protests seem to speak to the failure of any “collaboration…with neighbouring countries”, but the question still remains: does Belgium consider its ongoing use of the nuclear power stations as a provocation? And who is “Belgium”, anyway?

Belgium, like all countries, is a stage upon which many plays are performed. The Narrative of Nuclear Power, currently in its fifth decade, has seen a number of notable players tread the boards, but it’s worth spending a little time getting acquainted with the producers. Electrabel, a subsidiary of the French multinational Engie, is the biggest operator of Belgian nuclear power, and bringing the show to a close would mean flipping the the bird to the backers. Time to have a sit down in the Palace of the Nation. In 2007, the Belgian government and GDF Suez (now Engie) came to an understanding. Two reports had been commissioned into the energy demands of the country, the available supply, the cost, and the environmental impact. The Europe-wide shock of Chernobyl was subsiding, and the decision to decommission Belgium’s nuclear reactors seemed premature: there were too few renewable sources in place, and a reversion to coal would make carbon reduction targets unattainable. If the operational lives of the nuclear power plants were extended for another decade, Belgians would have continued access to cheap, clean power and Electrabel would continue to profit. The upgrade costs were estimated by GDF Suez to be around €800 million. To make the deal more palatable to environmentalists and wary constituents, not to mention cross-border observers, the government insisted on a special nuclear tax in the range of €215-245 million per year, as well as a commitment from GDF Suez that they would subsidise renewables and commit to maintaining 13,000 jobs in energy efficiency and recycling. They agreed. [17]

Democracy dropped a spanner in the turbine, and 2010 saw the election of a new parliament before the energy agreements could be ratified. The old nuclear phase-out laws remained in place, with Doel 1 and 2 to close in 2015, by which time they would have reached forty years of service. Tihange 1 was granted a stay and allowed to operate for a further decade to cover any power shortfalls, and the government looked forward to a new wave of investment in renewables. Electrabel saw things differently. They had a memorandum of understanding which the government had just betrayed. Not only that, the nuclear tax was set to rise to €550 million per year, and Tihange, the sole source of revenue, would require a €500 million investment to satisfy the safety regulators. Without a guarantee of revenue, they were unwilling to cooperate. Belgium was stuck between a rock and a fuel rod.

A government that must supply without means must acquiesce. On 1st December, 2015, Engie released a statement saying they had arrived at an agreement with the Belgian government to operate the Doel 1 and 2 plants for a further ten years [17]. The nuclear tax was deemed to be too high (€479 million in 2014), exceeding the revenue generated by all the plants and therefore confiscatory. 2015 saw the amount drop to €200 million; 2016, to €130 million. The amount for Doel 1 and 2 would be fixed for life at €20 million.

As if echoing Engie, the Executive Director of the International Energy Agency’s comprehensive 2016 report, Fatih Birol, stated, “Our review rings alarm bells due to the lack of private-sector investment in the electricity sector. Government efforts to mobilise investment should include an electricity market design that ensures a viable business model for power generation. And to avoid a lack of generation capacity in the medium term, Belgium could consider operating their nuclear power plants as long as they are certified to be safe by the regulator.” [18] Behind Belgium’s border provocations lies a series of private sector “recommendations”.

Perhaps the most important question to as is: is it safe? The German, Dutch, and Luxembourgian governments think not; the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the Belgian regulator, the Federal Agency for Nuclear Control (FANC), think so. The IAEA conducted an International Physical Protection Advisory Service (IPPAS) mission to review Belgium’s nuclear security in November / December 2014, which included a visit to the Tihange plant. The visit was at the behest of the Belgian government, and was no doubt meant to offer assurances as to the safety and security of the country’s nuclear operations in light of their soon-to-be-extended operation. As reported on the FANC website, “This peer review will culminate in the drafting of a report listing the good practices identified by the expert team in our country and providing recommendations and suggestions for improvements on the regulation (legislation, interaction between authorities…) and operational level (implementation of the regulation). […] This IPPAS mission is for the FANC and for every stakeholders [sic] an excellent opportunity to have their practices reviewed and to discuss experiences with foreign colleagues.” [19]

The report was never published — transparency is not obligatory — but FANC provided a brief summary stating that the IPPAS’s mission identified the “physical protection system in Belgium” as “robust”, whilst also making “a number of recommendations and suggestions to further improve nuclear security.” Jan Bens, the Director-General of FANC, concluded, “we already look forward to the follow-up mission in a couple of years” [20]. Since the report, Belgium’s nuclear power plants have suffered numerous incidents, the last as recently as June, 2016 [21]. No follow-up mission has taken place.

If the worst happens, and the north west of Europe gets a fine dusting of radioactive isotopes from a patched up, melted down reactor, who will be responsible? Not Electrabel or its parent Engie. The IPPAS guidelines place the burden of nuclear security firmly upon the state. Belgium must adequately staff and finance its independent regulatory body (FANC) and ensure it cannot be influenced by private parties: “The State should establish or designate a competent authority which is responsible for the implementation of the legislative and regulatory framework, and is provided with adequate authority, competence and financial and human resources to fulfil its assigned responsibilities. The State should take steps to ensure en [sic] effective independence between the functions of the State’s competent authority and those of any other body in charge of the promotion or utilization of nuclear energy” [22].

As things stand, the Belgian government cannot address the concerns of neighbouring countries: it can neither compel Engie et al to invest more money than the bare minimum required to keep the plants active, nor can it shut down the reactors and switch to renewables. Its only recourse is to gather reassurances from independent bodies that its reactors are safe and secure. Considering how many people live close enough to be affected, such statements ring hollow, if they ring at all.

References: