EUROPE : Sweden Reluctant to Keep Vow to Dismantle Nuclear Industry

It seemed clear enough 16 years ago. The United States had been shaken a year earlier by a nuclear near-miss at Three Mile Island, and Swedes did not want any such thing happening in their country. In a referendum, they voted to make Sweden the first nation in history to shut down a highly developed nuclear industry.

The national resolve intensified after the 1986 accident at Chernobyl, which killed 31 people outright and exposed 5 million more to radioactive fallout. The Swedish Parliament set a final deadline of 2010 to go nuclear-free and said that the first two reactors would be dismantled between 1993 and 1995.

Today, the clock is still ticking. Sweden has yet to close any of its 12 nuclear power plants or even name the first to go. The country still gets about half its power from nuclear sources, and many politicians are ruing the day they let voters go anywhere near the nuclear control panel.

The problem is a fundamental conflict between Sweden’s passion for the environment and its need to exercise economic restraint.

On the one hand, this is a country so environmentally minded that when the public utility recently offered urban customers a choice between nuclear and nonnuclear electricity, 40% of apartment dwellers chose nonnuclear--even though it costs 10% more.

On the other hand, Sweden is a country that went through economic agony in the early 1990s: The economy shrank and unemployment jumped from 2% to about 13% in three years.

Economic growth has resumed, but total unemployment remains stuck between 12% and 13%--making many Swedes reluctant to do anything that would further reduce job possibilities in such energy-intensive industries as metalworking, mining or pulp and paper.

“This question is discussed every day,” said Sigfrid Leijonhufvud, the Stockholm author of “A History of Nuclear Power.”

“It goes right to the heart of our prime minister’s promise to cut unemployment in half by the year 2000.”

Part of Sweden’s problem is the sheer cost of dismantling its nuclear reactors, all of which are still in good working condition. Cost estimates go as high as $52 billion, depending on how the power is replaced and other factors.

Another problem has been the discovery that virtually any replacement energy source will either cost more or pose new environmental problems.

Since 1991, the government has funneled 4 billion kronor--about $600 million at today’s exchange rate--into research on environmentally friendly power sources.

While scientists have made impressive advances in power conservation, they have not turned up any large-scale solutions to the production question. Among the problems:

* Solar power doesn’t work well in northerly Sweden, where the sun shines only briefly in the winter, when electricity requirements are greatest.

* Although scientists have developed a new fast-growing tree that could be burned for power, its use would contravene Sweden’s international commitments against energy forms that increase the emissions of greenhouse gases.

* Large windmills are proving unpopular with the people who live near them. “They make constant noise,” said Ulf Baeverstam, head of research and development at the Swedish Radiation Protection Institute.

* Sweden has four commercially viable rivers that have not been dammed, but the public insists on keeping them in a natural state.

In the face of all these roadblocks, some pragmatists have proposed a new approach: They say that if Sweden’s goal is really to prevent a nuclear accident, then it should be putting money into scrapping one of the dangerous old clunkers in Russia or the Baltic states--not one of its own, far safer plants.

But most politicians say they still feel morally bound to fulfill the public’s 1980 mandate. All the major political parties are working on a new dismantling schedule, and a bill is expected to be introduced in Parliament this fall.

“They want to show the people that they mean business,” Leijonhufvud said. “People understand that all the power plants can’t be scrapped by 2010. They just want to see that the process is starting and we aren’t just investigating and investigating and delaying it.”