Yay, short term power and profits!!! Who cares about future generations?
On the contrary it will be very expensive for the tax payers and only pay off if the energy price is above some certain price, which it probably wont since renewable energy has given Sweden negative energy prices recently, and most certainly will continue to do. And if that’s the case, the state has to pay the reactor owner the difference instead.
The only way to generate short-term profits from nuclear power is to take over a running reactor. But building these things takes a close-to-prohibitive amount of money in all Western countries. There must be motivations other than cost effectiveness.
The motivation is getting money from lobbyists.
And those don’t even need to be pro-nuclear lobbyists… fossil fuel ones will do to as every single “sure, we totally will build nuclear power and it will magically solve all our problems (even i fthe capacity is meaningless to actually solve anything)”-story helps to delay reneweable power.
Weird how fossil fuel companies also managed to instrumentalize solar PV too. Iirc, both Shell and BP created solar departments which they then allowed to generate a low single-digit percentage of revenue. Thus, a) generating positive media coverage and b) not endangering their fossil core business.
What to remember from this promise is that a construction of a new nuclear plant will begin… in some form.
That is, not necessarily a physical nuclear plant, it can just as well be only a permit to make one. It’s a nice way to say ‘Hey we began the process of a new reactor!’ without having to go back on his words if there won’t be an actual construction start before the election.
🤦
From the article:
The type of reactor is still being decided upon, but Kristersson’s government aims to hit the goal of two new large-scale reactors by 2035.
No SMRs yet?
If you mean molten salt / thorium reactor: forget it, not gonna happen in a loong time.
“SMR” just means “small” and implies nothing about the technology used. But the quote specifically mentioned a “large-scale” reactor.
That said, if Sweden were willing to buy molten salt tech from China, it might happen sooner.
