When it comes to energy, resource-poor Finland needs a wide array of technology to meet its needs. Energy sources range from hydro-electric power to burning wood left over by the country’s paper industry. Now the Finnish government has approved plans to build the nation’s fifth nuclear power station, its first new reactor in more than two decades.
That’s bad news in much of the rest of Europe, where the public and politicians are dead set against new reactors. Last week, the upper house of the German parliament passed a law that will phase out the country’s 19 nuclear reactors over the next two decades. In Austria, more than 915,000 signed a petition in January demanding that the Czech Republic close its Temelin nuclear power station or face an Austrian veto of its application to join the European Union. In Lithuania, the E.U. has pressured the government to shut down the Soviet-era Ignalina power station, similar in design to the ill-fated reactor in Chernobyl. In Western Europe, only France, which currently has 58 working reactors, continues to rely heavily on nuclear power. But even there politicians are wary of approving new nuclear plants in an election year. None of that has dissuaded the Finns from planning a new reactor on the site of one of two existing nuclear facilities. “It’s not an either-or situation anymore,” says Juhani Santaholma, president of finergy, the Finnish Energy Industries Federation. “We need nuclear power for the long term.”
The Finnish cabinet’s decision to approve the plant last month followed a decade of strife. A new plant was first proposed in 1993, but Parliament voted against it. And even this time the cabinet was sharply divided, voting by only 10-6 to approve. Parliament will open debate on the new application Feb. 13, with the outcome likely to be close. Osmo Soininvaara, chairman of the Green League and Minister of Health and Social Services in Finland’s coalition government, says members are evenly divided: one-third in favor, one-third against and one-third undecided. “I am quite optimistic” that the nuclear application will be rejected, he says, even though a no vote might force the Greens to leave the government.
Finland clearly faces a bleak energy future. Government estimates suggest that electricity production will have to increase by 2,850 megawatts by the year 2010 and 3,800 megawatts by 2015 to meet expected demand. Nuclear power now accounts for 27% of electricity production. The country depends on imports from its neighbors for 71% of its energy. The largest supplier is Russia, selling Finland electricity as well as natural gas. According to Timo Haapalehto, a senior adviser in the Ministry of Trade and Industry’s Energy Department, the government has concluded it can either build a nuclear power station or ramp up imports of natural gas from Russia. “We don’t think it would be a good idea to depend on one country for so much of our energy needs,” he says.
Finland gets about a third of its imports from Denmark, Sweden and Norway. But Finnish industry studies suggest that their excess capacity will disappear as demand for electricity rises in those countries. And Finland has agreed to meet its obligations on greenhouse gases under the Kyoto Protocol, which requires it to cut production of carbon dioxide to below 1990 levels. That rules out burning more oil or coal.
According to Teollisuuden Voima (TVO), the privately held electricity consortium that proposed the new plant, the facility would be built on the site of an existing nuclear station at Loviisa, on the coast east of Helsinki, or Olkiluoto, on the country’s western coast, to save money on infrastructure such as waste storage. It would be capable of producing between 1,000 megawatts and 1,600 megawatts. If the plant is approved by Parliament, it will begin producing electricity in 2008. “If we exclude nuclear power, it won’t be possible for industry to grow as quickly,” says Finergy’s Santaholma.
Germany’s electricity producers make the same economic argument for their country, but to no avail. The government of Chancellor Gerhard Schröder rules in coalition with the Green Party, which made abolition of nuclear power its No. 1 priority. The phase-out of nuclear-power was approved by the Bundestag in December and will be signed into law this month. The new law sets the overall working time of nuclear reactors at an average age of 32 years, meaning most stations will have between 11 and 13 years of life remaining, with the last station closing in 2020. “Germany is leaving nuclear-power production more quickly than any other European nation,” says Jürgen Trittin, a leading member of the Green Party who is the Minister for the Environment. “This change sends signals far beyond Europe.”
Perhaps so, but signals from the rest of Europe are decidedly mixed. Swedish voters approved a referendum in 1980 to phase out nuclear power, but the decision was not binding on the country’s Parliament and nuclear power has steadily increased in the country partly because of a shift in opinion. In polls, 75% of those questioned opposed nuclear power in 1986, a figure that fell to 44% in 2001. Nevertheless, no new reactors have been ordered and the Barseback power station near Malmo is to be closed by 2003, partly because of objections from nearby Denmark.
The Czech Republic is plunging determinedly ahead with its Temelin reactor despite the wrath of its neighbors in Austria, just 60 km away. Temelin’s first reactor went fully on line Jan. 11 and the second is scheduled to follow in mid-2003. Austria has no nuclear stations and is fiercely opposed to Temelin, but the campaign against it is colored by politics. A petition campaign against Temelin was launched by the far-right Freedom Party — which many Austrians saw as a thinly disguised excuse by the anti-immigrant party to stir up resistance to European Union enlargement to the east. In the end, a compromise solution is likely to prevail. In November Austria and the Czech Republic agreed on a package of concessions including $2.7 million in further safety enhancements. While Temelin’s two pressurized water reactors are of Soviet design, Westinghouse Electric and a number of other foreign companies have been brought in to upgrade the facility. The International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna last November concluded that most of the 73 safety issues identified at Temelin had been resolved and the remaining issues “would not from the experts’ standpoint preclude the safe operation” of Temelin.
The IAEA could give no such assurances concerning the Ignalina power station in Lithuania, and the European Union is telling Lithuania that its membership in the E.U. would be contingent on shutting it down. The plant, built by the Soviet Union in 1983, now provides 80% of the country’s electricity and Lithuanian Prime Minister Algirdas Brazauskas said the expense of closing it “should not be just Lithuania’s problem.” The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development is administering pledges totalling $184 million to help pay for shutting down the first reactor by 2005. The E.U. wants the station completely closed by 2009. And somehow, funds must be found to provide Lithuania with the electricity it is giving up by closing Ignalina.
One of the oldest nuclear plants in Europe is the 55-year-old station at Sellafield about 480 km northwest of London. Critics have demanded for decades that it be closed, but the plant’s operator has resisted the pressure and, in fact, is opening a new processing facility to produce mixed-oxide fuel. The Irish government, which would like to block the new facility, is seeking international arbitration, while Norway and the Northern Ireland Assembly also raised objections. But the watchdog Nuclear Installations Inspectorate granted a long-delayed operating license in December.
France, with a highly developed nuclear industry, ranks No. 2 after the U.S. in number of working nuclear power plants. The last new plant was completed 1993, but last week the French daily La Tribune reported that Secretary of State for Industry Christian Pierret had urged Prime Minister Lionel Jospin to approve construction of the first of a new generation in pressurized nuclear reactors. That brought protests from the Green Party, which Jospin wants to retain as a coalition partner for the Socialists. The Greens want to cut France’s production of nuclear energy from the current levels of 75% of the total to 60% by 2007. Despite the other strident opposition, the experience in France, Finland and the Czech Republic shows that nuclear power still has an important place in Europe, largely because there is no easy alternative.
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