Nuclear power divides Swedish coalition

Press, 23 October 1978, Page 10

Nuclear power divides Swedish coalition

By

COLIN NARBROUGH

in Stockholm

r Sweden has lost its first non-Socialist Government for 44 years but has gained a political party that has certainly proved its commitment to restraining dependence on nuclear energy. The Centrist Prime Minister (Mr Thorbjoern Faelldin) announced his resignation recently, after his coalition partners, the Conservatives and Liberals, flatly rejected his call for a national referendum next year to let the people decide on nuclear power policy. There was also the more immediate question facing the two-year-old coalition of the Centrists’ intention to halt Government, funds to Sweden’s largest industrial project, Reactor Three at the Forsmark Nuclear complex. For months it has been growing increasingly clear that the coalition, never unified on the energy issue, was coming apart at the seams. Mr Faelldin, an untidy sheep farmer in his early 50s, a man of the vast Swedish backwoods, tried desperately to steer a careful compromise between pragmatism and the fervent anti-nuclear line of his own party’s environmentalist young lions, headed by the Minister of Energy (Mr Olof Johansson).

Reluctantly allowing the fuelling of one nuclear reactor soon after this Cabinet took office in October, 1977, he provoked cries of “traitor” from the press and many of his own party stalwarts. They asserted that he had gone back on his pre-election vows to stop nuclear energy and plan its dismantling by 1985 if safety conditions could not be met. Under the Social Democrats, the Swedish Parliament had approved a huge nuclear energy programme n 1975 that foresaw a total of 13 nuclear plants. Five were then operative. This was Swe'den’s logical response to the oil crisis and the new perspective. it gave nations with little domestic fuel resources. One of the world’s leading industrial exporters, Sweden vulnerably imports 80 per cent of its energy requirements. At his resignation press conference, Mr Faelldin pointed out to his critics that only seven reactors had proved necessary to meet the growth in energy consumption since the mid-19705. Why then was it so difficult for the other coalition parties to accept a reduction of the numbers of plants due for construction? Mr Faelldin was aiming at 10, it is be-

1 i e v e d , simultaneously seeking Norwegian oil in exchange for Swedish industrial co-operation to provide an almost domestic non-nuclear energy source.

During his troubled premiership, dogged by the worst economic crisis the cosseted Swedes have seen for decades, Mr Faelldin succeeded in passing legislation that obliged nuclear plants to overcome their radioactive waste disposal problems before going on stream.

The nuclear industry as also made responsible for reprocessing agreements and the constant debate over the nuclear safety issues has probably turned the Swedish public into the best informed people anywhere on the hazards and general technology involved.

Perhaps because of strong national wishes for full employment (a long tradition here) in spite of international recession, Swedish opinion polls have shown a slight majority in favour of the job-giving nuclear industry. The latest poll gave the pro-nuclear voices just over 40 per cent and the antis just under. There were still a large number of “don’t knows.” O.F.N.S. Copyright.