Sweden Lightens Up on Nuclear Phaseout Plan

When Swedes voted in 1980 to shutter their nuclear power plants, their decision helped set the pace for judgments across Europe that the energy source, though limitless and affordable, posed too great a risk for the densely populated Continent.

But the environmental trailblazers have lost their way. Eighteen years after the referendum that condemned this country’s 12 reactors to the ash heap of industrial history, the full dozen are up and running past one closure deadline after another.

The emergence of a more leftist leadership from September’s parliamentary elections may step up the pressure for fulfilling the voters’ moldy mandate. However, even the most staunch environmentalists see no chance for meeting the original 2010 objective for living nuclear-free.

Worse, say those who remain committed to the shutdowns, is that the phaseout plan once held up as a European model now stands as a can’t-do precedent, shackling anti-nuclear campaigns elsewhere--most notably in Germany, where the environmentalist Greens in September won a historic chance to share power.

“Even the [Swedish] Greens realize that a phaseout in the remaining 12 years is not feasible,” Kjell Andersson, spokesman for the moderate but anti-nuclear Center Party, says of the elusive deadline. “But it’s important that the phaseout gets started. Sweden once sought to lead the way, and it has an obligation to those who want to follow.”

Swedes Voted in 1980 for Nuclear Phaseout

After fiery public debate about how to dispose of nuclear wastes, Sweden in 1980 asked voters whether to simply cease building reactors or to also shut down those in operation. Amid the fearful aftermath of the 1979 nuclear accident at Pennsylvania’s Three Mile Island, the majority opted for a complete phaseout of the source supplying, then and now, 50% of Sweden’s electricity.

Neighboring Denmark has never had nuclear reactors, and Norway has only scientific research units. Finland has four reactors, but plans for a fifth were shelved. Austria has followed Sweden in renouncing nuclear energy on principle and never started up the one nuclear plant it was building. Only Italy has actually shut down a functioning nuclear power station, but Swedes note haughtily that Rome simply passed along the risks to other countries because it still imports nuclear-generated power.

The anti-nuclear issue is now burning hottest in Germany, where a coalition of Social Democrats and Greens emerged from the Sept. 27 election that ended the 16-year reign of Chancellor Helmut Kohl and his nuclear-friendly conservative government.

Germany Promises Shutdown Talks

German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder agreed last month to push the Greens’ anti-nuclear agenda, with a promise to open talks within the next year on a phaseout timetable with the private operators of Germany’s 19 nuclear plants.

However, Schroeder hinted that some reactors will be allowed to operate through their normal life span--a caveat that could keep nuclear plants running in Germany for 45 years.

The Greens wanted an eight-year phaseout of nuclear energy, which supplies 30% of Germany’s power. Schroeder and the Social Democrats have argued that a minimum of 20 years is needed.

As the subject was bandied about last month during negotiations to seat a new Cabinet, Germany’s nuclear industry warned of dire economic consequences from any swift renunciation of nuclear power. Shuttering Germany’s nuclear plants and replacing their output will cost hundreds of billions of dollars and eliminate 40,000 jobs, Munich-based conglomerate Viag warned, striking at German fears of anything that would worsen an unemployment rate already at 10.6%.

In Sweden, arguments for delaying the shutdown are similarly related to concerns about who will pay the tens of billions of dollars needed to go nuclear-free.

“We aren’t against closing nuclear plants for security reasons, if there are concerns [about plant safety], but the energy companies that operate them should pay for their closure if they don’t live up to security standards,” says Goran Johnsson, president of the powerful Metall trade union council that represents nuclear-plant workers and those in many of Sweden’s most energy-intensive industries. “We think it’s wrong to make taxpayers pay billions in closure costs.”

Ceasing production of nuclear energy, Johnsson notes, would force Sweden to import costly wind-generated power from Denmark, polluting fossil-fuel energy from Russia and Eastern Europe, or, most hypocritically, nuclear-generated power from countries with often less-reliable plants.

To be competitive with other European manufacturing centers, Sweden must offer its industries cheaper electricity to counterbalance the higher transport and overhead costs of operating farther from major markets, Johnsson says.

Sweden’s environmentalist Greens Party begs to differ.

“We have a plan to shut down all nuclear plants and put in alternative forms of energy by 2010, but first we have to get energy-efficient industries,” says Marianne Samuelson, co-leader of the Greens, which shares power in Sweden’s three-way governing coalition. “It’s currently very inefficient because energy prices are too low in Sweden. It takes twice as much energy to produce a car here as in Holland.”

The Greens Party wants more investment in bio-energy, such as tree farms that supply fireplace wood, along with solar and wind sources.

Disposal of Nuclear Waste Is the Issue

Sweden’s parliament, the Riksdag, last year set July 1, 1998, as the deadline for closing the first of two reactors at the Barseback station on the southwest coast. The government selected Barseback in response to complaints from nonnuclear Denmark that the station’s reactors stand only about 15 miles from populous Copenhagen across a narrow sound.

Sweden remains intellectually committed to getting rid of nuclear energy because of the irresolvable dilemma of disposing nuclear wastes, says Sigfrid Leijonhufvud, a journalist with the daily Svenska Dagbladet in Stockholm and author of a book on the history of Sweden’s nuclear industry.

“It has never been an issue about safety, just about how to deal with the wastes,” says the writer, noting that Swedes’ social conscience doesn’t allow them to simply ship the hazardous waste out of the country for disposal.

Now the issue is ownership rights, as Barseback is one of only two Swedish nuclear plants under private ownership. The plant remains in operation as its owners have taken the issue to court, demanding either freedom to forge ahead with power generation or shutdown of both Barseback reactors at once, with full compensation from the Swedish government.

The Swedish owner, Sydkraft, argues that it would be too expensive to run the power station with only one reactor in use.

If the Swedish high court rejects the case, Sydkraft and its German parent, PreussenElektra, have indicated that they will pursue their rights in the European Court, which adjudicates disputes involving more than one country.

While the government of Prime Minister Goran Persson clearly favors a more protracted time frame for a nuclear shutdown, the coalition that has come together since Sweden’s Sept. 20 election promises to reinvigorate the drive for making Sweden nuclear-free.

Persson’s Social Democratic Labor Party had its worst electoral showing in decades, leaving it dependent on the staunchly environmentalist Greens and leftist parties to form a government.

The Social Democrats’ strategy has been to buy time by allowing the issue to crawl through the court system, an approach that probably will work as long as the world’s nuclear industry is spared any new disasters.

“If there’s an accident anyplace in the world, this will blow up in everyone’s face,” journalist Leijonhufvud says of the leadership’s languid view of the voters’ referendum. “But if no accident occurs, people may come around to the idea that there’s no rush to get rid of it. No one wants to spend a lot of money to close a power plant that is working effectively.”