In the comments to the previous thread, reader Wellers points us to a story from Belgium that looks very much as if it will presage the situation in the UK over the next year or two.
Belgian energy company Electrabel said its Doel 4 nuclear reactor would stay offline at least until the end of this year after major damage to its turbine, with the cause confirmed as sabotage.
Unfortunately, several other Belgian reactors have been shut down for maintenance in recent months due to what may be a generic flaw in the design - this seems to be the same issue that affected nuclear plant in the UK last week. The loss of Doel 4 therefore means that fully half of the country's nuclear capacity is offline. Doel 4 could be out for months, so guess what is going to happen.
Energy experts have raised the spectre of possible blackouts this winter and say Belgium will have to boost interconnection capacity with neighbouring countries to prevent power shortages.
The problem is that if there is a generic flaw in a common design of this kind of nuclear power plant, it is likely that neighbouring countries are going to have nuclear plant offline too. Whether anyone has much capacity to trade is therefore something of a moot point. One assumes that we may well be heading for a bidding war for electricity and that prices will go skywards.