Sweden is planning a new law to enable the construction of nuclear power plants
Sweden’s new center-right government wants to build new nuclear power plants to increase energy security amid a fierce debate about high electricity prices and the need to generate carbon-free energy to make industry greener.
Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said a new law would be proposed to lift current restrictions that limit the number of Swedish nuclear reactors to 10 at just three sites across the country.
“We should be able to build more reactors in more places than we have been able to do so far … We have an obvious need for more electricity production in Sweden,” Kristersson said at a press conference on Wednesday.
Sweden is the latest European country to look out for nuclear power to strengthen its production of renewable energy together with other sources of zero-emission energy such as wind power. Britain plans to start work on eight reactors by 2030, while Germany and Belgium recently extended the life of some reactors beyond their original shutdown dates after political U-turns.
The Scandinavian country has six reactors in operation, half the number it once had, after right-wing and left-wing governments shut them down in the wake of Japan’s 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster.
Massive projects manufacturing carbon-free steel, iron ore and batteries in northern Sweden means that the rich Scandinavian country needs to increase its electricity production – currently dependent on nuclear power, hydropower and wind power – significantly in the coming years.
LKAB, the state-owned iron ore miner, has said that making its production carbon-free would require electricity equivalent to one third of Sweden’s current electricity productionwith more energy needed elsewhere in the steelmaking process and in other industries.
Romina Pourmokhtari, Sweden’s environment minister, said the government is investigating whether two decommissioned reactors can be restarted as well as the possibility of building smaller nuclear power plants. “We see other countries building small reactors instead of a few large ones,” she added.
Any new reactors could be at least a decade away, judging by progress in other European countries such as neighboring Finland, because of the complexity of the technology at nuclear plants introduced after disasters such as Chernobyl in 1986 and that of Fukushima, and the need for any plant to withstand the impact of an airplane crashing into it.
Finland’s Olkiluoto-3 plant was supposed to open in 2009, but has been repeatedly delayed and has ended up more than three times over budget. The plant is expected to start full production in March, although that date was pushed back several times in 2022 because of problems, including with the water pumps that act as coolant for nuclear reactors.
Sweden’s government and centre-left opposition, in power for eight years until last November, have traded blows over who is to blame for high electricity prices, despite a surplus in the north of the country due to its extensive hydropower resources. Industries based in southern Sweden, where most of the country’s nuclear power plants are located, have long urged successive governments to build more power plants.