Recently, the government adopted the proposal for a state risk-sharing in the construction of new nuclear power. The details are not finalized, but it may involve the state lending out approximately 300 billion kronor to those building new nuclear power, plus guaranteeing the owners a certain minimum price for the electricity.
Vattenfall intends to seek the state support and a prerequisite is that they have a special project company, Videberg Kraft AB, which is now being established.
"We are having a dialogue"
The state-owned energy giant would like to see the Swedish large-scale industry participate as co-owners, in the form of the company Industrikraft with several large Swedish industrial companies as co-owners.
We are having a dialogue with Industrikraft about opportunities for future co-ownership, says Desirée Comstedt.
That future electricity customers are also owners would be positive, according to her.
We have long talked about the fact that close cooperation between us energy companies and industry is a prerequisite for the transformation to take place.
Would you express it as a wish or a necessity?
I would express it as that we see very positively on the industry also stepping in and driving the development of new nuclear power.
How large a stake Industrikraft may come to have is too early to say, according to Vattenfall. Among Industrikraft's owners are large companies and electricity consumers such as ABB, Volvo, the steel conglomerate SSAB, the mining giant Boliden, the forestry companies Billerud and Stora Enso, SKF, and the defense conglomerate Saab, among others.
"The next step begins now"
"The next step to be able to make an investment decision begins now", says Industrikraft's chairman Tom Erixon in a written comment.
How large Vattenfall's and the potential co-owners' investments will be is unclear. It depends, among other things, on what type of nuclear reactors Vattenfall intends to build, small-scale nuclear power or more conventional reactors of the type that exist today. How the negotiations with the state go is also decisive, according to Desirée Comstedt.
The plan is to have the first new reactors at Ringhals in operation in the mid-2030s, at the earliest. And a final investment decision, when all permits are expected to be in place, is estimated to be around the "end of the 2020s", according to Desirée Comstedt.
