German Environment Minister, Barbara Hendricks, on Wednesday asked the Belgian Government to temporarily shut down two defect-prone nuclear reactors until questions could be answered about their safety.
Technical problems with Belgium’s ageing nuclear plants have created tensions with neighbouring Germany.
Meanwhile, Germany has moved toward clean and sustainable energy sources and has passed legislation that required the closure of all its commercial nuclear reactors by 2022.
The two Belgian reactors, Doel 3 and Tihange 2, were taken offline in 2012 after service checks indicated defects in the reactor pressure vessels.
These were later found to be hydrogen flakes, formed when hydrogen bubbles became trapped during the manufacturing of the tank’s steel rings.
Belgium’s Federal Agency for Nuclear Control conducted analysis and consultations with international experts before announcing in November that the reactors could be relaunched.
However, Hendricks said that further tests should be carried out, noting that Germany’s independent Reactor Safety Commission (RSK) had been unable to confirm that the reactors had sufficient security reserves in the case of a breakdown.
“Therefore, I think it is right to take the sites off the grid, at least until the further investigations are concluded,’’ Hendricks said in a statement issued during a visit to the eastern Chinese city of Nanjing, where she was attending a German-Chinese environment forum.
“Doing so would show that Belgium takes the concerns of its German neighbours seriously,’’ Hendricks added.
She said that the reactors’ load-bearing walls should withstand regular operations, but said there was not enough evidence that they would remain safe in the event of a fault.
Earlier this month, experts from Germany and Belgium discussed the findings at Tihange 2 and Doel 3 under the umbrella of a newly-formed working group on nuclear security.
“Both sides were in favour of more analysis to back up indications that the sites are safe,’’ Hendricks’ office said.
Report says more than half of Belgium’s electricity is generated by the four-reactor Doel plant in the north of the country, close to the Netherlands, and a three-reactor plant at Tihange in the east, near the German border.
Although all of Belgium’s reactors were built not less than 30 years ago, they were not among the oldest in operation in Europe.
