Growing up in Denmark in the 1980ies, like many others I was baffled that Sweden had built a nuclear power plant some 40 km from Copenhagen. “What must go? Barsebäck”, the protestors chanted. The plant at Barsebäck is still undergoing the process of nuclear decommissioning some 20 years after it produced its last Watt.
Little did I know that Sweden’s first commercial nuclear power plant was a heavy water reactor placed within 10 km of Stockholm.
A nuclear suburb
Ågesta Nuclear Power Station was built south of Stockholm to power a new suburb. By also providing district heating, the plant achieved high efficiency. Yet it had required an immense investment to get to that point. The reactor and the majority of the production facilities were placed in bedrock sealed with concrete. The plant was in operation from 1964. In 1974 it closed down. Ironically, the official argument was that energy from oil was cheaper. Other reasons likely played a decisive role.
The site today is being decommissioned. I went to have a look myself in the spring. It looks like something from a Cold War science fiction movie. How did this happen? What is the story?
World War II
Sweden during World War II was dependent on coal imported from Germany to power its industry. While Sweden is rich in mineral resources such as iron, copper and uranium, it does not have coal in scale. So while Sweden was officially neutral, it tolerated German troop transports to Finland and it shipped high quality steel to the German war industry. Soviet had attacked Finland in 1939 and while Sweden did not officially take part, large amounts of weapons, ammunition and volunteers flowed to the front to help stop the red army. Soviet submarines attacked Swedish commercial ships in the Baltic Sea. Sweden was in a pinch.
Lise Meitner, the scientist who came up with the theoretical interpretation of nuclear fission fled to Sweden in 1938. She was a physics professor at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute in Berlin. While she had converted to Protestantism, her parents were Jewish. In Stockholm she continued her research in peaceful use of nuclear energy and she declined an invitation to join the Manhattan project.
A large proportion of the uranium resources known at the time were in Sweden. In fact, the US contacted Sweden shortly before detonating the atomic bomb over Hiroshima to persuade Sweden to not provide uranium to the Soviet.
Clearly, Sweden had many incentives to delve into this new technology.
Sweden’s nuclear program
The first reactor in Sweden was placed in the bedrock underneath the technical university of Stockholm. The insights gained led to Sweden’s nuclear strategy that led to the construction of Ågesta. Officially to utilise nuclear power for peaceful goals. But you don’t need to be a conspiracy theorist to realise that the choice of a heavy water reactor also had the potential to produce weapon grade plutonium. Clearly Sweden had the potential to become a nuclear power.
Not until signing the nuclear non proliferation treaty in 1969 did Sweden officially give up the pursuit of a nuclear bomb.
While construction of Ågesta had been expensive and while technical mishaps happened, the US decision to grant access to its nuclear power technology exchange for joining the ‘Atoms for Peace’ organisation IAEA within the United Nations family likely all led to Sweden changing course. Maybe Sweden also secretly came under the US nuclear umbrella?
Nuclear power in Sweden today
Ågesta was not the end of nuclear energy in Sweden. Today, some 50% of Sweden’s electricity comes from nuclear fission. Reactors in Forsmark, Oskarshamn, and Ringhals using safer reactor types provide a reliable source of electricity while not as clean as wind, water, and solar and not as cheap and convenient as oil and gas. Extensive research has gone into solving the question of storing nuclear waste safely for 100,000 years and the Swedish parliament has recently approved the solution. Much safer than burying chemical waste under the dunes of the west coast of Denmark.
Ågesta Nuclear Power Plant will be completely dismantled soon, some 50 years after its last operating day. Historic artefacts are displayed at the Technical Museum in Stockholm together with extensive documentation. As Sweden now again actively pursues a policy of nuclear energy, the exhibition is well worth a visit to get wiser on how we got here and where the future may be. While nuclear power is never complexity without risk, it is a much better alternative than to continue to burn fossil fuels.
