The site is located on the bank of the Scheldt river, near the village of Doel in the Flemish province of East Flanders, on the outskirts of the city of Antwerp.

The station is operated and majority-owned by vertically-integrated French energy corporation Engie SA through its 100%-owned Belgian subsidiary Electrabel.

[2] Nuclear energy typically provides half of Belgium's domestically-generated electricity and is the country's lowest-cost source of power.

[4][5][6] The power station was built by public utility EBES (Sociétés Réunies d'Energie du Bassin de l'Escaut), which in 1990 merged with Intercom and Unerg to become Electrabel.

[11] Various weather conditions have been analysed including rain, seiches, tsunamis, floods, earthquakes, wind, tornados, lightning, snow, hail, extreme temperatures, cyclones, sandstorms and waterspouts.

[12]: 48 The Doel plant was originally designed for a 10,000 year flood of 9.13 m TAW (Tweede Algemene Waterpassing).

[12]: 91  The highest possible tsunami is lower than 0.5 m.[12]: 77  During post-Fukushima stress tests a dyke failure with a water level of 10.2 m was simulated.

[12]: 33 Nuclear plants are designed with multiple physical barriers to prevent fission products escaping into the environment.

The non-condensible gases that cause pressure within containment to rise are released through a stack (or chimney) via a filtration system that removes large quantities of fission products from the effluent.

[14][15] As part of the stress tests following the Fukushima incident, this issue had already been identified to be included in the stress-test action plan (BEST).

[12]: 147  In a boiling water reactor, like those in Fukushima, the heat removal capacity of the pumps is limited as the steam that drives the turbines is radioactive and thus has to be stored.

[20] Category A waste with half lives of less than 30 years is transported to Belgoprocess in Dessel for surface disposal.

[22] Pending further decisions regarding the moratorium, spent fuel was stored on site in dry cask storage.

Ultrasound inspections revealed a number of cracks in the lowest forged ring of the reactor pressure vessel.

Eventually the nuclear regulator judged short-term safety concerns initially raised had been solved in a satisfactory manner and that the reactor could operate safely, and it was restarted in June 2013.

A valve had been deliberately opened, which rapidly evacuated 65,000 litres of oil to an underground storage tank.

[35] In December 2016, Electrabel requested that the justice department in Brussels prolong the search for the perpetrator of the turbine sabotage.

Due to their proximity to the Dutch-Belgian border, the towers and the accompanying wet steam can be seen over large areas of the Dutch provinces of Zeeland and western North Brabant.

[39] On 15 March 2016, the federal government of Belgium decided 140 soldiers would guard the nuclear sites and that Electrabel should cover the costs.

[40] In late 2015 it had already been decided that a specially trained department of the federal police would guard the nuclear sites.