Nuclear Capacities
Nuclear Capacities Today Sweden has 12 nuclear reactor
units based at four sites in the southern part of the country. There
is also a research/plutonium production reactor built underground at
gesta, a Stockholm suburb, initially constructed to support Sweden's
early nuclear weapons program. A further nuclear plant was built at
Marviken on the east coast, but after a change of policy in 1970 it
was converted to burn oil instead of uranium. The current capacity of
the 12 reactors - 2 units at Barsebäck, 4 at Ringhals all on the west
coast, and 3 each at Forsmark and Oskarshamn on the Baltic coast - is
about 10,440 MW. In 1998 the nuclear program generated a record 70.47
TWh, up 5.3 % over the previous year, providing 45.75 % of the country's
power output. Sweden exports electricity via the Nordic Nord Pool to
Finland and Norway, and also to Denmark and Germany.
Sweden
originally had plans to reprocess the spent fuel from its reactors,
but has generally favored alternative storage and direct disposal since
the middle of the 1980s. The first commercial scale reactor at Oskarshamn-1
was ordered in 1965, and commissioned in 1972. Five further reactors
were ordered in the 1960s: Ringhals-1 & 2 in 1968, and Forsmark-2, Oskarshamn-2
and Barsebäck-1 in 1969. The last reactors, Oskarshamn-3 and Forsmark-3,
came on line in 1985. The reactors are operated by a mixture of one
public utility, Vattenfall AB, and private companies Sydkraft AB (Sydsvenska
värmekraft AB), FKA (Forsmarks Kraftgrupp AB) and OKG (Oskarshamns Kraftgrupp
AB) (see box for details of ownership).
Nuclear regulation in Sweden is both multi-layered
and relatively open. The lead agency is SKI, with around 110 employees,
which is an authority within the Ministry of Environment. SKI's board
is appointed by the government and consists of politicians and experts,
and is chaired by its Director General, currently Lars Högberg.Fees
from the nuclear power industry finance SKI's operations. As with other
Swedish nuclear authorities, SKI may also request funds from the government
and parliament. SKI has three advisory committees, comprising: the Reactor
Safety Committee, the Safeguards Committee and the Research Committee.
The other important nuclear regulator is SSI - the State Radiation Protection
Institute (Statens Strlskyddsinstitut).
In an inter-political party agreement concluded in
December 1997 it was decided that the final date 2010 for closure of
all reactors - a deadline which was defined after a national referendum
in 1980 - would no longer be applied, in exchange for government starting
the phase-out immediately. This was then adopted in the form of the
Law on Nuclear Phase-Out (lafgen om kärnkraftsavveckling) by the Parliament
in 1998. Essentially, the government now considers that technical life
of a power reactor is 40 years, as opposed to the 25 years assumed at
the time of the original phase-out legislation. The Law also gives the
government the right to order an "early" shut-down of reactors if that
is necessary for energy restructuring (energiomställningen), and allows
the government to take into consideration the geographic location of
the reactors in question.
The Law on Nuclear Phase-Out, agreed in Parliament
on 10 June 1997, prepared the ground for the government order of 5 February
1998 to shut down Barsebäck-1, a decision which has not yet been fulfilled,
since the owners tied up the government in a complicated court case.
Sydkraft, owner of Barsebäck via BKG, filed a complaint against the
government decision and did win in the first instance. On 16 June 1999,
the Supreme Administrative Court pronounced its judgement concerning
the nuclear power station at Barsebäck. The Court ruling means, in the
words of the Ministry of Industry, that the government's shut-down decision
"stands firm". However, the reactor needs not to be closed before the
end of November 1999. Björn Rosengren, Minister for Industry, declared
in a press release: "It's gratifying that judicial clarity has now been
created concerning the correctness of the Government's decision to close
the first reactor at Barsebäck. This means that the conversion of the
energy system can now be further pursued in accordance with the ambition
of a majority of the Riksdag".
The Social Democrat Party, currently in government
in alliance with the Greens in Parliament following the election on
20 September 1998 - in which the party won its smallest ever percentage
of the popular vote (38 %) - has stuck with its pre-electoral promise
to move towards an early shut-down of the nuclear plant program.
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