Belgium is doubling its stock of iodine pills, by buying 46 million
supplementary units to be distributed to the population in case of a
nuclear accident or attack, interior minister Jan Jambon has announced.
The cost was not revealed, but six years ago Belgium bought 40
million iodine pills in boxes of 10 units, for a total of 1,6 million
euros.
After the Paris terror attacks in November it was revealed that the
terrorists were initially planning to try to damage nuclear plants in
Belgium.
In one of the hide-outs in Brussels, investigators have found more
than ten hours of video footage of the house of the chief of the Belgian
nuclear researches in Flanders. The official had been tracked and
followed for a long time by the terrorists who finally committed the
massacres in Paris, which already constitutes a serious breach in
security and a serious embarrassment for the Belgian security services.
Belgium has seven nuclear reactors generating about half of its
electricity. The state of the Belgian nuclear plants, especially the
faltering Doel and Tihange reactors, in Wallonia, is regularly denounced
by Belgium’s neighbours France and Germany.
A nuclear reactor at Tihange power station was turned off on 18
December 2015 evening due to a fire in the plant. There were loud
protests in Germany’s western border region of Aachen against the state
of Belgium’s nuclear plants across the border. Belgium intends to keep
the reactors in function until the phasing out of its nuclear sector by
2025.
The last time the eventuality of terrorists resorting to a nuclear
attack through proxy was invoked was in 2003, when the Belgian-Tunisian
former professional footballer Nizar Trabelsi was sentenced to 10 years’
imprisonment for plotting to attack the American airbase of Kleine
Brogel in Flanders, Belgium, where nuclear missiles are known to be
stored. In October 2013, after having fully served his sentence,
Trabelsi was extradited to the United States, but for a long time at the
end of 2007 and the start of 2008, there was maximum alert in Brussels
when authorities intercepted a plot to free Trabelsi from jail.
Belgium has one of the highest per capita rates of participation in militant groups such as Islamic State in Syria and Iraq.
According to figures from the International Centre for the Study of
Radicalisation, Belgium has supplied 40 fighters per million inhabitants
to fighting in Syria and Iraq – more than any other European country.
Denmark comes a distant second place, with 27 fighters per million.
More than one quarter of the population of Brussels, the “EU’s
capital”, is Muslim, mostly first and second generation Moroccans and
Turks.
https://www.neweurope.eu/article/belgium-double-stock-iodine-pills-case-nuclear-disaster/
(neweurope.eu, January 23, 2017)