Swedes rethink nuclear power

STOCKHOLM

Swedish support for nuclear power is on the rise for the first time since 1980, when Swedes voted in favor of phasing out the country's 12 nuclear reactors, a new study shows.
Four Swedes in 10 want to continue using the country's 11 remaining nuclear reactors, while just as many want to shut them down, according to a SOM poll of 3,600 people by Gothenburg University.
"It has been a long time since Chernobyl and even longer since Harrisburg," said Gothenburg University political science professor Soeren Holmberg, referring to nuclear power station accidents in Ukraine in 1986 and at Three Mile Island in the United States in 1979.
"No major catastrophes have happened since then, and as more time passes, people downgrade the risks," he explained.
After the 1986 Chernobyl disaster in Ukraine, 75 percent of Swedes were in favor of abolishing nuclear power and only 12 percent wanted to keep it.
Wind and solar power are now the two energy sources Swedes would most like to develop, though support is beginning to decline, Holmberg said. The strongest opponents are those who do not want wind generators raised near their homes, while solar power is seen as having limitations.
Sweden voted in a 1980 non-binding referendum to phase out all the country's 12 nuclear reactors by 2010, but that target was abandoned in 1997 after officials acknowledged that there would not be sufficient alternative energy sources to replace the output from the nuclear plants.
The reactors account for nearly half of the nation's electricity supply.
The first nuclear reactor was shut down in 1999 and a second was due for closure some time this year, but the government has proposed delaying the closure by at least two years while it looks for alternatives.
In June last year, Sweden's Parliament endorsed a government plan to phase out nuclear power in the Nordic country over the next 30 to 40 years.
Modeled on Germany's plans to phase out nuclear energy, the program says existing plants should continue running as long as they "contribute economically," which means, in effect, until the end of their normal operating lives.