“The situation must already be very serious”: In Belgium, Boeing reactors used to provide emergency electricity

They can provide emergency electricity in a short time, but they are expensive and very polluting. Boeing 707 reactors, fueled by kerosene, were operated to produce electricity in Belgium for “several consecutive quarter hours in 2025”, declared Monday Mattias Detremmerie, co-founder of the energy supplier Elindus, to the RTBF. For what reasons? The demand for electricity is too high and the supply in the country is not keeping up. Especially since on Monday, the shutdown of the Tihange 1 nuclear reactor (which would have lasted until Wednesday), due to a technical anomaly, did not help anything… “The situation must already be very serious, with imbalance price of the order of 1,000 euros per megawatt hour, or even more expensive.

Gas power plants and renewables are struggling

The turbojets were therefore restarted, due to lack of sufficient production of renewable energy during this winter period. “Prices on day-ahead trading are already high. And when an event occurs such as weather conditions that are worse than expected or, for example, the failure of Tihange 1, the remaining reserves are very expensive, explained Mattias Detremmerie. Normal capacity, like gas plants, is already running at full capacity.” As a reminder, nuclear energy (42.2%), gas (17.6%), wind (18.7%), solar (11.9%) are at the origin of the majority of the production in Belgium. In 2024, noted RTBF, Belgium will however import even more of its electricity, particularly from France.