The Forsmark 1 reactor which was shut down after a short-cut caused a blackout

Credit: Mattias Olsson

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STOCKHOLM, 5 August 2006 - Swedish experts declared the country's nuclear sector out of danger on Saturday but said they did not know when the shut-down reactors would be allowed back on stream.

The nuclear question has entered Sweden's political arena six weeks before general elections. Technicians were working around the clock to find out what caused emergency shutdowns in four of Sweden's 10 nuclear reactors.

"The emergency has passed. There is no danger anymore that anything can happen," said Anders Bredfell, a spokesman for the Swedish Nuclear Power Inspectorate, or SKI. "The nuclear plants themselves have to do a lot of work and, given the amount of money involved, they are pretty much working around the clock to resolve the issues," he said.

On Friday SKI decided not to close down any more nuclear power stations after problems forced a halt to operations at four reactors.

The Forsmark 1 reactor last week was shut down after a short-cut caused a blackout. Two of four back-up diesel generators failed to start automatically, revealing other faults in the electrical system "that need to be investigated before the reactor can be restarted", SKI said.

Bredfell said he did not know when the power stations would restart. "This could take a long time," he said.

The Forsmark blackout is being treated as a Level Two incident, on a scale from zero to seven. A fifth reactor has been closed down for routine maintenance, which means that Sweden's nuclear capacity has been cut in half.

Sweden's other reactors would be allowed to continue operating as they did not have the same technical set-up as Forsmark, SKI said.

While the nuclear concerns faded, the political fallout from the incident has heated up, exposing a lack of government unity only six weeks ahead of Sweden's tightly-fought general election on September 17.

Prime Minister Goeran Persson has been mum on the issue, which divides Swedes who are committed to alternative energy sources but still dependent on nuclear power, which provides half the country's electricity.

But the Greens and the Left Party, on whose informal support the ruling Social Democrats depend, demanded an acceleration of Sweden's phasing-out of nuclear energy.

Left Party leader Lars Ohly said Sweden needed to close down one reactor during the lifetime of the next parliament before 2010. The Greens meanwhile warned that energy policy would be "an important topic in any cooperation talks with the Social Democrats after the election".

Opposition leader Fredrik Reinfeldt of the centrist Moderaterna party was quick to seize on the divisions between Persson, who has not committed to a timetable for further closures, and his allies.

"Is [Ohly's demand] a joint declaration to voters? It is time for Persson to say where he stands," Reinfeldt taunted his rival.

A 1980 referendum following a nuclear accident at Three Mile Island in the United States committed Sweden to phasing out nuclear power by 2010 if alternatives were available.
But this has since been declared unrealistic and Sweden has closed down two of its original 12 nuclear reactors since 1999.

Current policy is to phase out nuclear power over the next 30 or so years, or when the reactors' lifespan expires. But according to a recent opinion poll, an increasing number of Swedes want to continue to use nuclear energy and even expand it.