The grandparent comment mentioned modern recycling. Perhaps Belgium is operating old types of reactors that aren't amenable to modern ways of dealing with waste? A quick search yielded that all of Belgium's reactors were built in the 70's and 80's.
A lot of news pieces about nuclear are unrealistically rosy. Waste reprocessing isn't really all that new and it doesn't really get rid of waste. It replaces much of the solid waste with even more liquid waste.
The problem with having any discussion of nuclear is agreeing upon the facts. It's crazy hard to find an unbiased source. If you asked a random bystander why we haven't built nuclear reactors in recent years, you might hear "environmentalists." However, the truth is dramatically different. No one will insure a nuclear power plant except the US government. Investors won't invest in nuclear, as there's no appetite for the risks to open a plant and spend over a decade building it when cost overruns are common and it may never actually open.
The reason wind and solar are growing much, much faster than nuclear today isn't because of "environmentalists." It's because nuclear involves far more subsidies and risk.
Mood has nothing to do with investing in nuclear. We are talking something you build that prints money at a guaranteed rate, there's no one to sell to that you need to influence one way or another to make them throw more of their money at you.
The only reason why nuclear power isn't widespread is that shareholders see a 30 year return on investment and run away to juicier returns.
Investors at large aren't phased by things like the environment. There's too many who would invest either way if the profit potential was clear. So far, all nuclear plants have required large subsides, taken over a decade to build and open, and have cost far more than originally anticipated. Investors often look to past performance as a predictor of likely returns. There's no appetite for this kind of investment nowadays.
And yet, for the same quantity of energy over the same timeframe, nuclear is cheaper. It's not so much that it loses because of economics, it's losing because of the perceived uncertainty of the economics.
Risk, not uncertainty. The long-term (or even medium-term) pricing situation for renewables is highly volatile right now. It makes investing in new nuclear extremely risky financially. What if you start building a plant now, expecting a certain energy price to pay for it over decades, and by the time you finish, solar power costs half as much as your target? That could well happen. That's how utility companies go bankrupt.
Does that factor in the upfront cost of building the reactor? IIRC it takes 30 years to get a return on investment for reactors, which is a non issue if the reactors are public but definitely a tough pill for the private sector to swallow.
We don't need to replace old reactors by new ones. Replacing the reactors with new ones is an option, but only an option, and almost certainly not the economically optimal one.
