This isn't often seen: environmental activists halted the demolition of the Tianž 1 towers.

Legal challenge (legal challenge) filed by six parties temporarily froze the permit granted to Electrabel (Engie) to demolish two cooling towers at the Tihange nuclear power plant. This decision has reopened the question of the possible restart of Tianž 1 (Tihange 1), the oldest reactor at this facility, whose shutdown was planned as final

The lawsuit was filed by pro-nuclear environmental organization WePlanet Belgium, the civic group 100TWh, the municipality of Huy (where the reactor is located), as well as several individuals. Their argument is that the possible demolition of the towers is a "point of no return" that would irreversibly undermine Belgium's energy security and, consequently, lead to an increase in carbon dioxide emissions.

And this is happening in a very interesting political context: Prime Minister Bart De Wever and Energy Minister Mathieu Bihet openly advocate restarting Tianž 1, which was shut down in October, deeming it necessary for grid stability.

The decision now rests with the Minister of Spatial Planning of Wallonia, Fransoa Dekenu who has 45 days for a technical report and an additional 50 days for a final decision, which means that we will learn the final fate of Belgium's nuclear giant before summer.

We highlight the news because it reflects something we rarely see: usually we are used to environmental groups opposing nuclear energy, although nuclear energy is energy with the smallest environmental footprint and one of the safest. But this time we highlight WePlanet, one of the thankfully increasing number of environmental organizations that support nuclear energy. This time they really succeeded in a very well organized activity. What will ultimately happen to Tianž 1 remains to be seen, but it is certainly commendable that there are environmental organizations that support nuclear energy, that they are all better organized, that there are more of them, and that slowly but surely they are appearing more often in public.