Sweden: 10 more nuclear reactors will be needed to meet energy needs
Sweden has said it will need to triple its nuclear power capacity over the next two decades to meet rising electricity demand, and this claim was confirmed during a recent visit by IAEA Director General Grossi.
At least 10 new conventional reactors will need to be built by 2045, Romina Pourmokhtari, the country's climate and energy minister, said in a statement on Wednesday. The largest Nordic nation now has six reactors in operation.
In reality, Sweden in the past had a strong nuclear production and operated 12 reactors. Currently these have been reduced to six, but the experience is there, it's just a matter of resuming a path that has already been undertaken in the past.
Sweden is one of the few European countries that has the possibility of achieving complete satisfaction with its electricity production only from sources without carbon emissions and in a relatively short time, accompanying the increase from nuclear to hydroelectric production. Furthermore, the low population density helps to achieve these objectives.
Sweden needs all the new energy capacity it can get as demand is set to double in the coming decades due to the electrification of industries and transport, with neighboring Norway having a real record in private electric mobility. New nuclear power plants are at the heart of the government's strategy to expand energy production.
Vattenfall AB and Finland's Fortum Oyj are studying the construction of small modular reactors that could come into operation in the first half of the next decade. In March, interest was expressed in Rolls Royce's modular nuclear reactors, which are being developed in the UK.
The problem in this case is posed by the German Uniper, which manages the largest Swedish nuclear plant and which has no intention of investing further in the sector. Moreover, we know that Berlin has renounced nuclear power and for a German commodity there are, at least at the moment, no possibility of creating international synergies.
However, this is not an insurmountable problem, indeed it could pave the way for new energy collaborations for Sweden with companies that are already active in the energy sector. The fact that Germany has nuclearly castrated itself should not concern other countries.
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The article Sweden: 10 more nuclear reactors will be needed to meet energy needs comes from Economic Scenarios .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/svezia-per-soddisfare-il-fabbisogno-energetico-ci-vorranno-altri-10-reattori-nucleari/ on Fri, 08 Sep 2023 16:13:14 +0000.