Swedes turn to support nuclear power as prices soar
Date: 22-Jan-03
Country: SWEDEN
The poll, done for the Svenska Dagbladet daily, showed 55 percent of 1,000 Swedes surveyed between January 13-16, favoured keeping nuclear power output at current levels or raising it, while 41 percent favoured gradual or quick shutdown.
Sweden decided in a 1980 referendum, which followed a disaster at the U.S. Three Mile Island nuclear plant a year earlier, that nuclear power is to be replaced with renewable sources of energy by 2010.
But the country still gets half of its power from nuclear plants as the new sources have not materialised.
The rest comes from hydro-power facilities which depend on sufficient rainfall in the summer and autumn to gather water in reservoirs for use during the winter demand peak.
This year's dry summer and autumn made reservoir water levels low and relatively harsh winter weather has boosted demand for electricity, driving prices at the Nordic Power bourse Nordpool to almost five times the May 2002 and three times the average in December 2001.
"The opinion poll is rational. It is affected by what is going on - by issues of power supply and prices," the paper quoted Soren Holmberg, a professor of political science at Gothenburg University, as saying.
The energy crunch has fanned a discussion in Sweden on whether to close down Barseback 2, a nuclear power plant in the south of the country, scheduled for this year.
Energy intensive industry sectors want the decision about the shut-down reversed and want the Barseback 1 reactor, taken off line in 1999, to be restarted, because rising electricity prices have already forced some firms to cut output.
