The Government of Belgium and the French utility Engie have reached an agreement to extend by ten years the life of the Doel 4 and Tihange 3 nuclear reactors (1 GW each), which were originally supposed to be shut down in 2025. Instead of closing for good, the two reactors will undergo maintenance work starting in 2025 and will be able to restart in November 2026. They will then be able to continue to operate for another ten years.
In December 2021, the Belgian government pledged to close all nuclear power plants by 2025, i.e. Doel (2.9 GW) near Antwerp and Tihange (3 GW) near Liège. However, it had reserved itself the right to extend operations on the Tihange 3 and Doel 4 reactors depending on the security level of supply. The sharp decrease in supplies from Russia has brought the Belgian government to rethink its original plan to rely more on natural gas and less on nuclear. In January 2022, the Belgian Federal Agency for Nuclear Control (AFCN) also authorised the extension of the operating life of these nuclear reactors, but only if installations were updated.
At the end of 2021, nuclear accounted for 22% of Belgium’s installed capacity with 5.9 GW and 51% of its power generation with 50.6 TWh. The country has a total of 7 reactors (4 in Doel and 3 in Tihange), one of which was permanently shut down in September 2022 (Doel 3).
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