According to Harald Ebner (Greens), Chairman of the Bundestag Committee for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety, Tihange 2 was “one of the most dangerous nuclear facilities in the world”. Experts had already found thousands of small cracks in the reactor pressure vessel in 2012.
After the shutdown, Belgium still has five nuclear reactors in operation. Three of them are scheduled to go offline in 2025. For the two youngest reactors, on the other hand, an extension of the service life to 2035 is planned. The government justifies this with the Ukraine war and the energy crisis. With this decision, Belgium overturned its original plans, according to which the country actually wanted to phase out nuclear power completely by 2025.
