Link: http://euanmearns.com/the-looming-nordic-energy-crisis/#more-12970
The looming Nordic energy crisis by Rauli Partanen March 21, 2016 Guest Post by Rauli Partanen who is an independent author and communicator on energy and its role in the environment and modern society. Originally written in Finnish for Energia. English translation first published on Energy Post. Nuclear power in Sweden has become uneconomical. Wholesale prices of electricity in Sweden have been much lower than the breakeven price for nuclear generation. Electricity has been sold at a record low price of €20 per megawatt hour (MWh), while the cost of generating nuclear power has been in the same ballpark, or even slightly higher. In addition, the Swedish government has set a tax on nuclear power, which has been steadily rising. After the latest hike, it amounts to about a third of the wholesale price, roughly €7 per MWh. The publicly owned utility Vattenfall, which owns and operates seven reactors in Sweden, announced recently that if the government does not remove the nuclear tax, it would close down all of its reactors by 2020. This, in addition to the earlier announcements by the German utility Uniper (the company was created when E.On split its business; Uniper got the nuclear and fossil fuels part) to close down two of its three reactors prematurely, would mean a massive loss of generating capacity in Sweden and in the common Nordic electricity market. The ramifications would be huge. How did this situation arise? To put it frankly, Swedish energy policy has been messy when it comes to nuclear power. After the oil crises in the 1970s Sweden moved away from fossil-based electricity production with record speed. In addition to its existing hydropower fleet, the country built twelve nuclear reactors, commissioned between 1972 and 1985. Their total capacity was over ten gigawatts, but three plants have since been closed: Barsebäck 1 (600 MW) in 1999, Barsebäck 2 (600 MW) in 2005 and Oskarshamn 2 (638 MW) in 2015. The current operational capacity is around 9000 MW. Nuclear power has produced between 40 and 50 percent of Sweden’s electricity.
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