Here's more evidence that Sweden is reconsidering its nuclear phase-out:
Technorati tags: Nuclear Energy, Environment, Energy, Politics, Sweden, Electricity
A survey into attitudes to nuclear power conducted annually by the SOM Institute and published by Svenska Dagbladet shows that 50 percent of Swedes want to keep atomic energy in the long term. According to the report, 33 percent of people questioned wanted to keep using the country'’s ten remaining reactors or to extend their active life.For the results of another poll from last November, click here.
Some 17 percent of Swedes want nuclear power to be expanded in the future.
The survey represents a shift in attitudes. In 1999 a majority wanted to get rid of nuclear power. Now only one in three Swedes favours this. This puts opposition to nuclear power at its weakest since opinions on the issue were first polled.
Technorati tags: Nuclear Energy, Environment, Energy, Politics, Sweden, Electricity
Comments
Even the supporters of the government oppose the government nuclear phase-out policy.
Can a more profoundly anti-democratic policy be found anywhere in the world?
An interesting graph showing attitudes on nuclear energy split according to party lines can be found here: http://www.analys.se/opinion/op-bilder/opinion0511_3.gif
Purple means "build new additional reactors".
Green-blue means "replace the current reactors with new ones when they are to be scrapped due to old age, but don't build new reactors except for replacing the old ones".
Yellow means "use the current reactors for their full life time, but don't build any new".
Red means "decomission the current reactors by political edict before they are to be scrapped because of economical or safety factors".
The parties are, from left to right:
M: liberal-conservative
Fp: liberal
C: centrist/farmers a bit neoliberal
Kd: christian democrats
The above four parties constitue the center/right-wing opposition.
S: social democrats. Leads minority government.
V: more or less reformed communists.
Mp: "greens".
These two parties are not a part of the government but support it in parliament.
Sweden uses about 140 TWh of electricity every year. Our wind power potential is 10 TWh.
Go figure.
It has certain uses, especially if the grid has acess to easily adjustable power (like gas, hydro or pumped storage).
Some places have great wind potential. Denmark gets 20 % of their power from wind while other places might not be able to reach even 5 % of power demand.
Wind is a good complement but can never be the baseload power.
Ban coal, gas and oil and then let nuclear and renewables compete for electricity market share.
For the case of Sweden specially, it seems a questionable public policy to throw away a zero-emissions, reliable, economic energy source and dream about replacing it with ones we know up front won't be able to carry the load. That means either importing energy, or falling back on ancient technology like coal and oil burning, which isn't going to get you any credits on the global warming issue.