”Now it's happening – with new nuclear power, Sweden gets a more stable, competitive and climate-friendly electricity supply”, writes Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson (M) on X.
Vattenfall motivates the decision to invest in smaller reactors for technical reasons, financial reasons and logistical reasons, which suit the relatively limited space on the Värö peninsula.
Would have involved greater risks
We have landed on the fact that small is better than large conventional, says Vattenfall's CEO Anna Borg to TT.
But it's a broad concept, in this particular case, the reactors are not very small, but they are smaller than the traditional large-scale ones. Large-scale reactors would have involved higher risks for us on this particular site, she continues.
Vattenfall has decided to proceed with the suppliers American GE Vernova and British Rolls-Royce. Both of these manufacture SMR (Small Modular Reactors).
1,500 megawatt
Vattenfall plans a project with either five BWRX-300 from GE Vernova or three Rolls-Royce SMR. This would give a total effect of 1,500 megawatt, which corresponds to approximately 1.5 reactors. A 500 megawatt SMR has the same capacity as the first large-scale reactor in Oskarshamn.
Vattenfall is also investigating the possibility of building an additional 1,000 MW of nuclear power where the old decommissioned Ringhals reactors are located, but these plans are further ahead, with a possible construction start in 2035.
State-owned Vattenfall has thus taken another major step in the plans to have new Swedish nuclear power in place in the mid-2030s. A final investment decision is not expected until 2029 at the earliest.
Can you start building something before that?
We can start planning on the site and we can start preparing certain types of infrastructure. Much depends on the environmental review and the conditions we will receive, says Desirée Comstedt, head of new nuclear power at Vattenfall.
Many orders from suppliers will have been placed before the final decision is made, according to Comstedt.
We are already acting as if we have made a decision to build reactors.
Cracked timeline
Last week, the government opened the "store" where nuclear power builders can apply for state support – a model that has been heavily criticized by both experts and the opposition for risking becoming expensive for taxpayers. It's about several hundred billion in state loans, plus 40-year guarantees of a minimum electricity price that nuclear power producers can rely on to dare invest – price guarantees that electricity buyers will have to pay for.
The electricity price is currently low, from the producers' point of view, and therefore does not really attract any investments.
The electricity price is very important to us, but when it comes to building new nuclear power, the risk-sharing model that the government has developed is crucial for us to be able to make this investment, says Anna Borg.
Vattenfall has so far said that they plan to apply for state support during the autumn.
SMR stands for Small Modular Reactors, or small, modular reactors.
SMR reactors use the same nuclear fission technology as reactors in traditional nuclear power plants, but are significantly smaller and produce a maximum of 300 electrical megawatt (MW).
The smaller size makes it easier to handle safety and the reactors are less expensive to build.
The development of SMR is driven primarily in North America, but there are currently only two active SMR reactors and they are located in China and Russia.
In the USA, tech giants Google and Amazon have announced their own investments in SMR reactors to supply their energy-intensive operations.
The challenges that exist for the technology include financing, licensing, and that some SMR concepts plan to use higher enriched uranium, which is not produced on the same scale as the uranium used in today's nuclear power plants.
Source: Vattenfall, Reuters.
