Belgium Evacuates Nuclear Power Plant As Panic Spreads After Attacks
22
March, 2015
Energy
utility Electrabel is evacuating Belgium's two nuclear power plants
in the wake of Tuesday's terrorist attacks in Brussels.
Doel,
made up of four reactors, and Tihange, with three are closed and all
vehicles coming and going are subject to checks. "Employees
who are not needed to run the two power plants are now leaving the
sites," Politico
EU reports,
adding that the "military arrived at the Tihange plant on
Friday."
"Surveillance
is stepped up with added security measures at nuclear plants,"
Belga says. "Vehicles are being checked with police and
army on site."
As AFP
reminds us,
"in February, investigators probing the Paris attacks found
video footage of a senior
Belgian nuclear official at the property of a key suspect." That
footage was discovered “as part of seizures made following the
Paris attacks”, Belgian prosecutors said last month, while
declining to divulge the individual’s identity “for obvious
security reasons”.
(Tihange)
The
plant is around 50 miles from Brussels Airport.
As
France 24 reported
in January,
there are significant safety concerns surrounding both Tihange and
Doel: "In summer 2012, Belgian authorities found
small cracks in the pressure vessel of Doel 3 during a scheduled
outage and safety check, opting to keep it offline until more tests
were conducted [and] in September of the same year, the same flaws
were discovered in the Tihange 3 reactor."
"With
regard to the reactors Doel 3 and Tihange 2, many
scientists are saying that there is a risk of a nuclear accident -
with all the consequences that would entail for the population -
because of the cracks found in the pressure vessels. So we are asking
the court to stop operations of these reactors or alternatively to
appoint a panel of experts to re-examine the scientific evidence,"
lawyers for the NGO Nucleaire Stop Kernenergie argued
previously,
in a bid to shut down the reactors.
New York Post
BREAKING: Belgium's Tihange nuclear plant is being evacuated (via @Reuters) http://nyp.st/1PoP0Cl
2:12 AM - 23 Mar 2016
Reuters Top News
BREAKING: Belgium's Tihange nuclear plant evacuated: VTM http://reut.rs/1RgrMCN
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