No one has ever died because of Swedish
nuclear power. Until recently, nuclear power provided about 40% of that country’s electricity, similar to
hydro.
Fossil fuels only generated about 1% of Sweden’s electricity.
But that’s about to change for the worse.
As Sama Bilbao y Léon and John Lindberg
at World Nuclear Association write, “[Starting in 1980] Sweden had proved to the world that it was possible to free itself from fossil fuels for
electricity production in less than a decade. One of the world's cheapest and cleanest electricity systems was delivered, at the same time as Swedish life improved without sacrificing the environment.”
For almost ten years, Sweden has been a net exporter of low-carbon electricity to other parts of Europe. Sweden is
farther along in its commercial nuclear waste disposal program than most countries and is building two deep geologic nuclear waste repositories at Forsmark.
So, with their nuclear reactors only about half-way through their life-spans, and the whole program running really well, who in Sweden would want to completely shut them down?
Um…members of the Swedish coalition-government, led by Sweden’s Green Party, people who get a Pavlovian gag reflex just thinking of nuclear. They want to prematurely close their entire nuclear fleet, and replace the 2 trillion kWhs with renewables and natural gas.
Their almost complete lack of the technical, environmental and operational knowledge of each of these energy sources might be understandable if it weren’t Sweden. This country has an extremely good grasp of all these issues, so it must be willful ignorance, for which we should be less forgiving.
