ATOMIC POWER IN SWEDEN

Press, Volume XCIII, Issue 27858, 5 January 1956, Page 11

ATOMIC POWER IN SWEDEN

PLANS FOR 75,000 KW STATION DEVELOPMENT IN NEXT FOUR YEARS Sweden will have an atomic power station in full operation by 1960. according to Mr Aake Rusek. DirectorGeneral of the Waterfalls Board, the body responsible for national power supplies. It will be used, he explained. to heat the homes of the 45.000 inhabitants of Vaesteraas. a manufacturing town about 85 miles west of Stockholm. Three years later another station will be supplying electric light to a large area of south or central Sweden. The exact site of this second station has not yet been decided. In the official records of the Waterfalls Board, the first station is styled “Adam” and the second “Eve.” Detailed plans for both will be submitted to Parliament for approval and financing next spring. Although “Adam” and “Eve” will belong to the Waterfalls Board, they are the brain children of the Swedish Atomic Energy Company, Ltd., which was founded in 1947 for research into the industrial application of nuclear physics. The company has a share capital of about £250,000. of which four-sevenths has been paid by the State and the rest by private enterprise. Since 1947 the State has granted the company a further £4.200.000. Private industry has assisted by supplying free equipment and other help in kind. Uranium is Fuel “Adam.” which will be built by a big electrical equipment factory at Vaesteraas, will have an output of 75,000 kilowatts. Like “Eve ” the station will use natural uranium, with heavy water as a moderator. Channels have been built for conveying heat from the “Adam” station tc households in Vaesteraas. The Waterfalls Board already supplies hydraulically-generated heat to a central, municipally-run station which relays it to householders. “Adam” will just take over the work of the present heating plant. Plans are being made for other stations bigger than “Adam” and “Eve.” with an output of 100,000 kilowatts. To work out the practical details of their construction and to extend its general research, Atomic Energy, Ltd., is building three new reactors/ The first reactor, with an output of <.0,000 kilowatts, will be ready m one year, the second with an output of 90.000 kilowatts in four years, and the third, with an output of 75.000 kilowatts, in six years. Experimental heating and lighting stations will be run off the second reactor.