A legislation will be introduced in the country’s parliament for the same. About half of the country’s electricity comes from 10 nuclear stations strung along the southern coast.
“You have to get energy use in focus — to decrease energy dependence as much as possible and increase energy efficiency,” said Per Bolund, a Green Party member of the parliament. The Swedish government has opted instead to “think of nuclear as the easy answer.”
Deputy Energy Minister Ola Altera said that the goal of the about-face isn’t to increase that proportion but rather to keep nuclear power in the mix as alternative energy sources come online.
“The idea is not to get more dependent on nuclear,” said Altera. “To the contrary: It’s to make us more diversified.”
“I’m doing this for the sake of my children and grandchildren,” the Center Party leader, Maud Olofsson, said. “I can live with the fact that nuclear power will be part of our electricity supply system for the foreseeable future.”
Altera said that polls have shown that a majority of Swedes now accept nuclear power as a fact of their country’s energy supply.
Ludvig Tillman, a researcher on nuclear issues with Greenpeace, doesn’t dispute that. But such a statement tells only part of the story, he said. When people are asked which energy sources they prefer, the vast majority pick renewable sources such as wind, solar and biofuels; the nuclear option scores extremely low.
“It’s basically luck that we did not have a very serious accident,” Tillman said. “I don’t think anyone sees nuclear as a true sustainable power source. It’s just something we need to have in between.”
Environmentalists are of the view that if any country should be exploiting the potential of renewable energy, it’s Sweden.
“We have potential for producing large amounts of renewable energy which can’t be produced anywhere else,” said Bolund, the member of parliament. “Right now, we have to decide what energy future we want in Sweden, whether we want to be dependent on nuclear power or use the fantastic potential for renewable power we have.”
