Qualla: Borssele Nuclear Power Station

Borssele Nuclear Power Station: Introduction

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bodoklecksel, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Dutch built Borssele to make cheap electricity for an aluminium smelter. In 1971, the French firm Pechiney opened a smelting facility on the Westerschelde estuary; in 1973, Siemens fired up a pressurised water reactor a short distance away to feed it. For years, two-thirds of Borssele's output went directly into the smelter's pot lines. The plant was supposed to be supplemental, almost industrial - a private deal between two pieces of heavy infrastructure on the salty edge of Zeeland. Half a century later, the smelter is gone, the political consensus around nuclear power has reversed three times, and Borssele is still running. It is, somewhat improbably, the only commercial nuclear reactor still generating electricity anywhere in the Netherlands.

Image: Bodoklecksel | CC BY-SA 3.0

Borssele Nuclear Power Station: An Industrial Marriage on the Westerschelde

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Taco Witte from Holland, CC BY 2.0. Borssele - both the village and the power plant named for it - sits on a thumb of Zuid-Beveland that pokes south into the Westerschelde, the deep tidal channel that connects Antwerp to the North Sea. The location was chosen for practical reasons: estuarine water for cooling, deep...

Image: Taco Witte from Holland | CC BY 2.0

Borssele Nuclear Power Station: The Forty-Year Argument

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bodoklecksel; crops and changes by user:JD, CC BY-SA 3.0. Nuclear power has been one of the most divisive topics in modern Dutch politics, and Borssele has been at the centre of every round. The country's first commercial reactor, Dodewaard, came online in 1969 and was decommissioned in 1997 after only twenty-eight years of service - sh...

Image: Bodoklecksel; crops and changes by user:JD | CC BY-SA 3.0

Borssele Nuclear Power Station: The Waste Question

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit A.Nagel, CC BY-SA 4.0. Every nuclear plant lives or dies on its answer to one question: what do you do with the used fuel? Borssele produces about twelve tonnes of high-level waste per year. For decades it shipped its spent fuel to La Hague in northern France for reprocessing by Areva NC, under a contr...

Image: A.Nagel | CC BY-SA 4.0

Borssele Nuclear Power Station: What Comes Next

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Borssele_2008-2.jpg: *Borssele_2008.jpg: Taco Witte from Holland derivative work: Parzi (talk) Borssele_2008-2011-08-07.jpg: *Borssele_2008.jpg: Taco Witte from Holland derivative work: pro2 derivative work: Parzi (talk), CC BY-SA 3.0. In December 2021, a new Dutch coalition government announced plans to build two new nuclear power plants somewhere in the Netherlands - the first such announcement in a generation. The site has not been chosen, but Borssele is the favourite. Rotterdam has staked its energy future...

Image: Borssele_2008-2.jpg: *Borssele_2008.jpg: Taco Witte from Holland derivative work: Parzi (talk) Borssele_2008-2011-08-07.jpg: *Borssele_2008.jpg: Taco Witte from Holland derivative work: pro2 derivative work: Parzi (talk) | CC BY-SA 3.0

Borssele Nuclear Power Station: The View from the Dyke

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Gerard Dukker, CC BY-SA 4.0. From the dyke road that runs along the Westerschelde, Borssele's containment building is a low concrete cylinder topped by a small dome - not the dramatic cooling towers of the public imagination, because PWRs of this design dissipate heat directly into the estuary. To the east, ...

Image: Gerard Dukker | CC BY-SA 4.0