Sweden opens for nuclear-power business
posted at 4:05 pm on February 5, 2009 by Ed Morrissey
Europe has apparently had a change of heart on nuclear power. First Germany began reconsidering its ban on nuclear power generation, and now Sweden has ended its ban on reactors. The path to green energy requires a few split atoms, it seems (via Instapundit):
The Swedish government agreed Thursday to scrap a three-decade ban on building new nuclear reactors, saying it needs to avoid producing more greenhouse gases.
Sweden is a leader on renewable energy but is struggling to develop alternative source like hydropower and wind to meet its growing energy demands. If parliament approves scrapping the ban, Sweden would join a growing list of countries rethinking nuclear power as a source of energy amid concerns over global warming and the reliability of energy suppliers such as Russia. Britain, France and Poland are planning new reactors and Finland is currently building Europe’s first new atomic plant in over a decade.
The agreement was made possible after a compromise by the Center Party, a junior coalition member which has long held a skeptical stance toward nuclear power.
“I’m doing this for the sake of my children and grandchildren,” said party leader Maud Olofsson. “I can live with the fact that nuclear power will be part of our electricity supply system in the foreseeable future.”
The Swedes have pursued green technology with a passion, but so far have found no answers in alternatives. Nuclear power accounts for half of their electricity, and with existing reactors aging, they will either have to start burning fossil fuels to replace the loss of generating power or replace the reactors. Their parliament wants to do just that, building no new sites but replacing existing reactors with newer, safer, more efficient systems to guarantee their standard of living for the foreseeable future.
This reflects popular sentiment in Sweden and elsewhere in Europe. The Swedes have exploited hydropower for all it’s worth, but still cannot generate enough to make up the loss of nuclear power. As the promise of alternatives looks more and more long-term rather than immediate, Europeans have reconsidered their opposition to nuclear power. It eliminates greenhouse gas emissions, and new systems such as pebble-bed reactors are significantly safer than even the reliable earlier models which continue to function almost 30 years after the referendum that demanded their closure.
Americans need to start acting on behalf of their children and grandchildren. We should invest in nuclear-power infrastructure now in order to ensure the stable electrical generation that allows us to enjoy an unparalleled standard of living. Waiting around for “alternatives” will eventually leave us in the dark and far behind our global competition.
Blowback
Note from Hot Air management: This section is for comments from Hot Air's community of registered readers. Please don't assume that Hot Air management agrees with or otherwise endorses any particular comment just because we let it stand. A reminder: Anyone who fails to comply with our terms of use may lose their posting privilege.
Trackbacks/Pings
Trackback URL
Comments
meanwhile, Paul Krugman and the left are pushing for us to Nationalize the banks the way Sweden did in 1992.
jp on February 5, 2009 at 4:07 PM
Great – even the socialist Swedes are ahead of us now.
Vashta.Nerada on February 5, 2009 at 4:07 PM
My grandkids will have electricity 4 days a week, that’s how it was when I visited in Brasil and it works great.
hanzblinx on February 5, 2009 at 4:09 PM
This is one area where I think we should emulate Europe.
rbj on February 5, 2009 at 4:10 PM
We’re trying here in Georgia…
Georgia Power wants early payment for nukes
Legislative battle possible over plan to charge customers $1.6B years before reactors finished
Brat on February 5, 2009 at 4:11 PM
If Al Gore wants Electric Cars for us all, we will need lots and lots of Nuke plants.
jp on February 5, 2009 at 4:13 PM
Oh lord!! I thought this was just an American phrase for passing legislation. Just say you screwed up, your changing your mind, and move on. Quit the “For the Kids” bullshit all the time.
MDWNJ on February 5, 2009 at 4:13 PM
Ja… Ja… Ja…
phreshone on February 5, 2009 at 4:14 PM
Our nuclear power proponents need to jump on this. America needs to take the lead in nuclear energy generation.
izoneguy on February 5, 2009 at 4:18 PM
@Brat
WTF are dollar years?!? Is this some new currency placed in the stimulus?!? I’m scared!
monotonousboy on February 5, 2009 at 4:20 PM
You doubt the porkulus bill?
the_nile on February 5, 2009 at 4:21 PM
Don’t you get it? There are people in the political Left who would rape your mother and burn down your house with the kids still inside it if they really believed that doing so was “for the children”…
It seems that every Leftist pile of political shiite presented has to have its requisite emotional justification attached, no matter how much they manage to twist logic into pretzel bends in the process. For example, see this season’s episodes of 24 and anything written by Aaron Sorkin.
In all seriousness, though, nuclear power is by many orders of magnitude the most efficient means to generate electricity. Yes, fusion would be better in principle, but as long as governments are funding its development, don’t hold your breath on fusion ever becoming an operational reality. There’s too much $$$ to be had while claiming its development must go on just that much longer.
I recall a statistic that the marketing guys at Rio Tinto used to dish out a few years back (RT has both coal and uranium mining operations in its minerals portfolio): pound for pound, uranium is 26,000 times more efficient than coal.
Let that one sink in.
Wanderlust on February 5, 2009 at 4:28 PM
Too bad we’re not considering a gov’t stimulus plan. This would be a perfect way to provide jobs, stimulate technology and the markets, and reduce our foreign oil dependence. It’s a no-lose situation, except if you’re looking to foment fear and redistribute income through class warfare.
JiangxiDad on February 5, 2009 at 4:32 PM
Yeah with the lefties, “I wanna walk like you; talk like you,” thing going on, I say we go for it.
- The Cat
MirCat on February 5, 2009 at 4:32 PM
But the mining of Uranium is a bit trickier.
the_nile on February 5, 2009 at 4:33 PM
Sweden has a large and growing discontented Muslim pop. Malmo is arguably Europe’s largest Muslim city. Hate to have them so near to nuclear technology.
JiangxiDad on February 5, 2009 at 4:35 PM
Sweden? Is that one of the other 57 states that I missed in Geography?
kirkill on February 5, 2009 at 4:36 PM
Bad news travels fast..
the_nile on February 5, 2009 at 4:38 PM
And Al Gore wept…
With instrumentation and control technology as advanced as it is these days, there should be no reason to fear nuke power anymore.
Not really…mining, milling, and concentration of uranium ore is very basic and straight forward in the mineral processing world. Everybody needs to realize that absolutely everything they touch, consume, utilize in their day to day existence has to be mined, milled, drilled, extracted, refined, processed, or otherwise ripped from mother earth in some fashion.
Wyznowski on February 5, 2009 at 4:41 PM
discontented Muslim pop.
Aren’t they all?
kirkill on February 5, 2009 at 4:43 PM
“But I repeat myself.” Mark Twain.
the_nile on February 5, 2009 at 4:46 PM
Here’s a question. I believe I heard that the nuclear power plant ,the A4W ,on the Nimitz class super-carrier like the Reagan, can supply enough electricity to power a city of over a 100,000. Why do we not use this model to run some of our power grids? I don’t know much about nuclear energy, but it wouldn’t seem that hard to take that capability and a apply it to a land based version.
MDWNJ on February 5, 2009 at 4:46 PM
Compared to coal mining , it’s a bit trickier.
But maybe you’ll regain that difference in reduced transport volume.
the_nile on February 5, 2009 at 4:48 PM
Yeah, but the government employees, government retirees, and the elite will have all they want. That’s socialism taken to it’s logical end.
jukin on February 5, 2009 at 5:00 PM
It would be sweet justice indeed if the end result of all the global warming hysteria was that governments were forced to reconsider their knee-jerk bans on nuclear power.
JadeNYU on February 5, 2009 at 5:13 PM
so can we get it yet or what?
Drunk Report on February 5, 2009 at 5:27 PM
A battery powered car in every garage and a nuclear power plant in every county.
MB4 on February 5, 2009 at 6:07 PM
I wish that all we were doing was waiting around for alternatives instead of wasting gazillions of taxpayer dollars pursuing a utopian pipe dream.
Buy Danish on February 5, 2009 at 6:19 PM
All the liberals point to Sweden as being so advanced politically, socialized medicine, socialized heath care, socialized work force, every argument: “Well it works in Sweden, it can work here”.
So now let’s hear them say the same about nuclear energy…crickets.
right2bright on February 5, 2009 at 6:31 PM
The reactor on a nuclear carrier has different design goals from a civilian power reactor. For one thing, the carrier’s reactor has to go decades without refueling, so it has lots of extra fuel, so arranged with other materials that there will be a limited amount available to fission at any given time.
What we should hope is that Sweden is looking at breeders (just as the USA should be). If we get the fuel cycle right, we’ll get something over 20 times as much energy from each pound of uranium we mine, we’ll reduce the lifetime nuclear waste for one person to a mass the size of a teacup, and the waste will lose radioactivity much faster because the high-energy species that can produce strong radiation for millenia will all have been consumed. The waste will drop to near background emission in only a few hundred years.
njcommuter on February 5, 2009 at 6:33 PM
McCain brought that up, here we have a movevable nuclear plant, one that can’t have nearly the safe guards, and we virtually have not problems.
I am not sure we have ever had any major, or even minor problem…but I am sure if you went to a anti-nuclear website they would have found one foolish very minor incident.
Here is an example: When they were building San Onofre in Ca. a valve was put int backwards, that is the flow was going the wrong way.
They were months from finishing the plant, and upon double checking they caught the valve and reversed it, a valve that was a minor to the operation…for weeks the headlines were about this valve and the potential damage it could have caused, if it was in another location.
right2bright on February 5, 2009 at 6:36 PM
That’s what I understood, the new technology is so much more sophisticated and efficient.
right2bright on February 5, 2009 at 6:38 PM
Now can we up the ante and discover easy-to-reach oil shale in the Rockies? It’d be interesting to see how many of those resort towns battle environmentalism over pure revenue.
sethstorm on February 5, 2009 at 6:39 PM
Ah yes, Sweden, (home of the formerly brave Vikings — what do you expect me to say? I’m Irish, and I want my restitutions for violence done to my ancestors — got mine back already from England – they have Charles.) Anyways, Sweden gets nuclear and we get pinwheels lethargically spinning in the air on windless days and a bunch of ugly flat mirrors reflecting the glories of the sun on overcast days, all on vast expanses of public lands, just for a teaspoon full of energy. Yup, makes sense to me. Now, let’s all sing: ‘Save the Planet’ in the Song Circle with the rest of hippies.
Little Nell on February 5, 2009 at 6:44 PM
Why do you say that? Europe generates plenty of power through nuclear energy. France leads the world. Hardly a ‘change of heart’ in Europe.
No it doesn’t. The highest estimates of Muslims in Sweden are around 250k and that is out of a population over 9M. Malmo does not even come close to other cities. Spare us your alarmist BS.
lexhamfox on February 5, 2009 at 7:46 PM
Producing power is one thing, producing affordable power is something else. If you got your electricity from a navy plant your electric bill would be significantly higher. I’m not sure what Nimitz’s plant are rated but it would be in the hundreds of megawatt thermal range, the plants from my era were less than 200 MwTh. A typical civilian nuke with an output of around 1000 megawatts electrical will have a thermal output of about 3200 megawatts. A lot bigger power plant, requiring a more delicate hand at the controls. a large portion of civilian nuclear operators are ex navy nukes. One of the first lessons is how much bigger everything is. Another hurdle is the fuel used for naval reactors. Civilian plants cannot, by law, use fuel of that type, for good reason. Typically the enrichment of civilian fuel is less than 5% U-235. comparing navy nukes to civilian plants is like comparing a Ferarri to a greyhound bus. They’re designed to do different things best to leave it that way. Let the navy plants bore holes in the water let the civilian plants light up your life.
Oldnuke on February 5, 2009 at 7:54 PM
There is a relatively new reactor design out there that uses Thorium, which is many times more plentiful than Uranium or Plutonium and not as radioactive. It has the possibility to be downward scalable such that you could someday buy a house with the power unit under your back lawn, with enough power to last 20-30 years. No grid, and no monthly power bill. Thorium’s critical mass was calculated to be so large that a bomb would not be practical. That is the way to go! No worries about a Nuke accident either. This from an article in Pop Sci I think. I passed my copy on, so I can’t cite chapter and verse.
marcboyd on February 5, 2009 at 8:14 PM
There is a lot of potential hydropower in the future; when the next ice age ends and all that ice recedes, there will be megarivers where presently there isn’t even a creek. Will the greenies wait that long? Are greenies from mars? Do any greenies actually like trees. I have a few fifty foot oaks and one black walnut I planted from seed. My greeny neighbor complains about leaves.
Ever since Al descended from the mountain to explain to us common folk about CO 2, I have been telling greenies that if they don’t want CO 2 they will have to accept nuclear power. They always exhibited total disgust at the suggestion.
burt on February 5, 2009 at 8:46 PM
The reasons were thought to be good, and perhaps they were. They are no longer.
Here’s the story: a naval reactor is also a breeder, though it breeds far more slowly than a reactor designed as one. The plutonium intentionally created extends the lifetime of the fuel load.
The reason we decided not to do breeders was the fear that separating the plutonium out would make it possible for someone to steal it. We were thinking of other governments then; our model was that the USA would be providing nuclear fuel for the world and keeping the technology to ourselves. Considerations of technology are no longer reasonable constraints; most of the basic secrets are out. Not that we WANT reprocessing plants all over the place; the fuel can be diverted to bombs and a less-than-scrupulous operator can easily create an environmental disaster.
But in the newest breeder designs the plutonium is never actually separated from the other radioactive fuel metals; they together are separated from the ‘ash’ elements that result. (Most of the fuel elements are actinides, which are all chemically very similar.)
Here are links on the subject:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_fuel_cycle#Fuel_cycles
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Integral_Fast_Reactor
njcommuter on February 6, 2009 at 1:27 AM
Here’s the article on the thorium fuel cycle:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium_fuel_cycle
njcommuter on February 6, 2009 at 1:31 AM
Maybe, because, like, they’ve had a change of heart?
Yeah, but Europe also includes:
Germany (nuclear phase-out in progress, anti-nuke protests in the 80′s, climate of fear surrounding nuclear power – and events such as the accident in Chernobyl didn’t help)
Belgium (nuclear phase-out in progress, has old plants that supply half their power but that’s old news)
Austria (nuclear-free zone – even built an entire nuclear plant from scratch then wouldn’t turn it on / all but dismantled it)
Italy (nuclear-free zone)
Denmark (nuclear-free zone)
Ireland (nuclear-free zone)
Sweden (frozen – restrictions preventing new development)
UK (frozen – hemming and hawing, at least until recently, about whether even one new plant can be built)
…
So, a change of heart truly means a change of heart. Because to turn this disaster in Europe around, it would take a change of heart. Or do you disagree?
Remember, the fact that France, Belgium or Sweden has X% of nuclear power NOW doesn’t mean that they’ll have it in 10 years’ time, if that change of heart doesn’t happen and happen soon. Because as you may have heard, nuclear plants have FINITE LIFETIMES and must be shut down or rebuilt. How would you expect this to happen in, say, Belgium, given their recent emotional (and legal) state?
Lastly: Whoever the —- you are, also be aware that many of us recognize the excellent work done by Areva, ABB and the rest of the European nuclear establishment.
Yes, and Peace In Our Time as well, no doubt.
Once again you are clueless. The Muslim population of Malmo – whatever its size – has already begun to control the city. That does not take an absolute majority to accomplish. Especially wherever Muslims meet meek, dhimmified, modern western Europeans. So your quotation of numeric figures does nothing to refute his point.
And unlike Muslims in France, who are housed in zones that ring the urban areas, the Muslims of Malmo live deep in the city center. In so doing they are well on their way to expelling the native Swedes. Thus the suggestion that Malmo might qualify as the largest Muslim CITY in Europe.
RD on February 6, 2009 at 2:36 AM
P.S. As always, I’m grateful to anyone *qualified* who corrects any details I’ve gotten wrong!
RD on February 6, 2009 at 2:41 AM
Yes – reminds me of the potential damage I could have caused, if I’d filled my car’s radiator with fuel and my gas tank with water.
RD on February 6, 2009 at 2:50 AM
Just curious. What are the reasons that naval type fuel cannot be legally used in civilian plants and why are they no longer valid? Also exactly what is the makeup of naval reactor fuel and what makes it a breeder? I’d also be curious as to your take on the civilian fuel cycle. Do they use U-235, Pu-239, Pu-240 or Pu-241 for power production? If naval reactors are breeders, as you state, then how would you classify civilian reactors? Do civilian reactors produce plutonium in any significant amount? If so what happens to it?
Oldnuke on February 6, 2009 at 7:57 AM