Heed the Swede lead?

Scandinavians divided on nuclear future as Swedish plant closes The Swedes have finally closed the Barseback 2 nuclear reactor. That’s two down and 10 to go - they decided by referendum in 1980 to phase out all 12 of the country’s nuclear power plants. And, in a development that should warm the hearts of renewable energy enthusiasts, state-owned power company Vattenfall plans to replace at least half its output by building northern Europe’s biggest wind farm. They’ll be investing over one billion dollars in it, with a target of generating 2,000MWh annually from 2009. Just across the Baltic Sea, the shutdown of Barseback is a cause for celebration in Copenhagen, the capital of nuclear-free Denmark. Not everyone is so happy in Sweden, however. Many are getting cold feet about the closure programme. Nuclear provides half their electricity; opinion polls reveal widespread alarm over threats of rising prices and energy shortages; and few like the idea of importing electricity generated by carbon-emitting coal and gas-fired power stations elsewhere in Europe. Finland, meanwhile, is one of the few countries actually expanding its nuclear programme, building a fifth reactor which is scheduled to be operational by 2009. Barseback II won’t actually be dismantled until 2020 at the earliest. And closing down a reactor does not solve that thorny question of what to do with all the spent fuel. Currently it’s kept in temporary storage in southern Sweden, and - in the absence of new ideas - the industry is basically still pushing the deep burial ‘solution’. It wants, but has not yet got, approval to put nuclear waste in anti-corrosive copper canisters and to enclose those in bentonite clay 500 metres underground, just out to sea near the Forsmark nuclear power plant north of Stockholm. For 100,000 years or so - until it’s no longer radioactive. - Roger East

22 July 2005

Roger East