Dr. Conca opines that no one has ever died because of Swedish nuclear power. Nuclear power provides 40% of that countrys electricity, same as hydropower. Nuclear has avoided over 2 billion tons of CO2 emissions since 1980, same as hydro. Replacing nuclear with fossil fuel would kill an additional 50,000 people or so over the next 20 years and would triple carbon emissions.
Since 2011, Sweden has been a net exporter of low-carbon electricity to other parts of Europe. Sweden is farther along in its commercial nuclear waste disposal program than most countries (SKB TR-10-52), and is building two deep geologic nuclear waste repositories at Forsmark. One will be for short-lived radioactive waste from reactor operations, nuclear medicine, industry and research.
So, with the nuclear reactors only about half-way through their life-spans, and the whole program running really well, who in Sweden would want to completely shut them down? People who dislike even the idea of nuclear. Like members of the Swedish coalition-government. They want to prematurely close their entire nuclear fleet, and replace the 2 trillion kWhs with renewables and gas.
But can they actually accomplish that? What would really happen if they stopped all nuclear power? That is the question addressed by researcher Dr. Staffan Qvist at Uppsala University in Sweden, and co-author Dr. Barry Brook, in two recent papers (Qvist and Brook, 2015a, 2015b). They estimated that the increased number of human deaths and other health effects, the loss of $100 billion in tax revenues and the huge increase in CO2 emissions, would be a major step backwards for the normally eco-friendly nation.
The worlds-leading climate scientist, James Hansen, echoed this warning, citing the Qvist work when he urged the Swedish government, for the sake of the planet, stop its attack on nuclear power.
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