COVER STORY | BELGIUM’S NUCLEAR PIVOT


Above: The Belgian government had decided in 2003 to close its seven nuclear reactors by 2025 Photo credit: agsaz/Shutterstock.com


Casale and Claes say, “The first reaction was one of


the reasons we wanted to secure the group over 45 years old – we saw that the young guys did not feel so interested in decommissioning. In the beginning you don’t know yourself how you are going to do it and it takes time before you have a story to tell.” However, they were encouraged by the operations team that performed the chemical decontamination at Doel 3, who “were so enthusiastic about the results and doing better in the second run. You could see that they were practical and had an objective”. They say, “To make a success of decommissioning we


had a cultural challenge. The staff need to understand that dismantling is part of the nuclear life cycle and we need to be professional until the end of the life cycle of the unit. It’s not so easy because they fall in love with their machine and you ask them to take a hammer to break it down. It’s very sentimental.” The department had to get the message across that it is part of the job to demonstrate that closing a unit well and safely is part of being a nuclear professional. But after the huge effort to change the staff’s mindset


to the decommissioning story – which they compare changing the course of an ocean liner – the June decision means the mindset has to change course again, and fast, to accommodate the restart and life extension. Casale says that the restart decision “did not come out of the sky”, because last year everybody could see that their gas bills were going up three or four times. In 2020 the company decided to focus on the decommissioning operation, rather than life extension, and that raised questions. But the discussion of life extension was one for the government and it became a political question. “They presented it as an enormous opportunity and asked why a company would not jump at the opportunity – but of course the legal framework was much more complex and there was very little time left to do it all.” Both Casale and Claes stress


28 | August 2023 | www.neimagazine.com


the close co-operation between the human resources and internal communications departments during this period, which meant staff questions were answered in a consistent way. “We discussed in total transparency where we were on technical and political issues. We gave information when we could and it was really appreciated.”


Changing again Casale admits that if the company had known five years or even three years ago that it needed to continue to operate it might not have taken the big step it did in guaranteeing job security for everyone until 2027. Nevertheless, Casale is spending the summer recruiting. He says the company had maintained critical staff


on operation and maintenance and for the other key people it decided to constitute a dismantling structure in its workforce. Now it has two programmes – decommissioning and life extension. At this stage there is a single organisation that mixes staff working on the decommissioning and restart functions, although that may change in future. Now, alongside recruitment, the main job is to see what


the impact is of one programme onto the other and what are the risks for operations. The team is identifying all these transverse risks, “because when you take a decision for one programme you have to ask what is the impact in terms of staffing and planning for the other.” Casale says, “We have two months to do it and then we have to go back to the unions in order to communicate where we need to go together.” The team is proud of pushing the shutdown buttons at Doel 3 and Tihange 2 last winter “because it is about nuclear safety… and we knew that we had enough people to do the job”. The challenge for this summer is to lay the groundwork to have equal success in the future, both in decommissioning and in restarting. ■


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