Aletho News

ΑΛΗΘΩΣ

Swedes embrace nuclear waste land

By John Tagliabue | Scotsman | 11 April 2010

INGER Nordholm quit her job as a hairdresser in the Swedish seaside town of Osthammar 12 years ago, fearing the chemical treatments she had to use were bad for her health. Now, the town is competing for the right to become Sweden’s permanent storage site for radioactive waste and Nordholm works for the company that wants to build it. She guides visitors through a temporary warehouse for nuclear waste, hoping to reassure them that it poses no danger to their health.

Eighty per cent of the town’s 21,000 inhabitants are in favour of the facility and Osthammar is one of two finalists among Swedish communities vying for the right to host the nuclear waste dump.

Sweden would seem an unlikely setting for such a competition as the country turned its back on nuclear power in the 1980s after less than 20 per cent approved of it in a referendum. But it has reversed course recently and is now planning to begin building new nuclear reactors, adding to the ten it already operates.

Legislation requires that before any new plants are built, the Swedish Nuclear Fuel and Waste Management Company, SKB, must create permanent storage space for the radioactive waste the reactors produce.

SKB found 18 of 20 possible towns near proposed sites intrigued by their proposition. Then it had to whittle the list down to two, Osthammar and Oskarshamn, both already the sites of nuclear plants.

The company has now said it will ask the Swedish government later this year for permission to build the storage depot in Osthammar. If the government gives the green light, construction could begin some time after 2015.

Nuclear physicist and SKB chief executive Claes Thegerstrom attributed Swedes’ new attitude towards nuclear energy to fears over global warming caused by carbon dioxide emissions. Nuclear power plants do not produce carbon dioxide. […]

The dump’s opponents, Osthammar residents such as Mats Tornqvist, a retired chemist who returned to his native Osthammar from Stockholm, have conceded the fight, if not the argument.

“I’m a chemical engineer, I’ve worked with waste problems since 1985, I’ve read all the papers,” he said. “They can say all they want, they have no solution.”

He agreed with Jansson that the prospect of jobs brought people around. “We have a community here that is very dependent on this industry.” – Full article

April 11, 2010 - Posted by | Nuclear Power

No comments yet.

Leave a comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

« Previous | Next »