Sweden Looks to Scrap Ban and Build Nuclear Reactors

Because it can’t find adequate alternatives, Sweden’s government has proposed a plan to get rid of a ban on new nuclear reactors and start building more of them.

The ban would reverse a 1980 law that called for Sweden to close its twelve nuclear reactors. Two were actually closed but no new ones were built. The plan has to be approved by Parliament first.

Global warming and carbon emissions are raising the profile of nuclear. Russia, the U.S. Finland, India, England and France all are building or considering new reactors. (France has long been an advocate.) In Ireland, policy makers have talked about ways of getting around that country’s ban. It could build a transmission line to the continent and bring in nuclear-generated power that way.

No word from Germany. So those “Nuclear, Nein Danke” stickers aren’t collectors’ items yet.

Nuclear’s two big drawing cards are that nuclear power plants don’t generate carbon emissions—that smoke you see rising out of them is steam—and they can provide consistent baseline power. Solar and wind are intermittent. Solar in particular is also a tough call for countries like Sweden. Another added bonus: the waste heat inside of nuclear plants can be captured and exploited as heat, or be used to run desalination plants.

The downside: safety risks, nuclear proliferation, nuclear waste and cost-overruns. Some studies have shown nuclear could be more costly than advocates claim.

Although the field has long been dominated by giants like Toshiba, nuclear start-ups are forming. Intellectual Ventures, the think tank/intellectual property outfit co-founded by former Microsoft chief scientist Nathan Myhrvold, is prepping a company called TerraPower that will specialize in sealed reactors that run on depleted and/or natural uranium.

Then there is also small nuclear specialist Hyperion Power Generation that spun out of the Los Alamos National Labs.

It’s going to be a big, ugly and ultimately serious debate.