In Sweden, the Ringhals AB nuclear power plant and the Forsmarks Kraftgrupp AB nuclear power plants each sent an Urgent Market Message to the Nord Pool power exchange yesterday about the potential risk that nuclear power reactors at both power plants might not be able to restart after scheduled outages in 2024, 2025, and 2028 because there is no place to store the spent nuclear fuel from the reactors.
The UUMs from the two nuclear power plants stated that this situation is an indirect result of the Swedish government’s slow handling of an application to construct a permanent underground repository for spent nuclear fuel. The application also request permission to extend the Clab intermediate nuclear repository.
Björn Linde is the CEO of Ringhals AB and Forsmark Kraftgrupp AB. He told an interviewer that “The fuel pools we have on site are smaller in size, and we store as little fuel as possible in the pools for safety reasons. We are also required to always keep space in the pools for the entire core’s fuel in case we would have to completely empty the reactors.”
The Clab storage facility is located next to the Oskarashamn nuclear power plant. It is licensed to store up to eight thousand tons of spent nuclear fuel and it currently holds seven thousand three hundred tons of fuel. It is estimated that Clab will be one hundred percent full by 2023.
The Swedish Nuclear Fuel and Waste Management Company (SKB) was formed by the Swedish nuclear industry in the 1970s. The application for the repository and the interim storage expansion was originally sent to the Swedish government in 2011 by SKB. The application requested that the Clab license be extended to eleven thousand tons of spent nuclear fuel. Clab is technically able to accommodate the expansion without any modifications.
Both the Oskarshamn Municipality which hosts the Clab facility, and the Östhammar Municipality, which is the proposed host of the final repository, have approved the application. However, the Swedish government has not approved it yet even though it has been sitting on the application since 2019. Following government approval of the application, a specialist court and the Swedish Radiation Safety Authority, SSM, would carry out a review of the requested permit that is expected to take about two years. That is the reasons that the UUMs concluded that the government needs to approve the application “no later than 31 August 2021 in order not to risk that the intermediate storage of used fuel reaches the limit of the existing permit.”
Sama Bilbao y León is the director general of World Nuclear Association (WNA). He said, “These five reactors make up the vast majority of Sweden’s nuclear fleet and have played a crucial role in providing its citizens and businesses with clean and affordable electricity for decades. There is scientific consensus that deep geological repositories are suitable for the safe long-term management of used nuclear fuel; indeed, Sweden is a pioneer in the development of these repositories. The Swedish government must urgently review the application submitted by SKB and ensure that these reactors can continue to serve the community for many more decades.”
John Lindberg is the public affairs manager at the WNA. He said, “The Swedish government has made it abundantly clear that action on climate change is urgent and yet its concerted effort to delay the approval of the waste repository is forcing the premature closure of the country's reactors. Doing that to the low-carbon backbone of Sweden's economy would decimate the nation's climate goals.”
Sweden’s nuclear power reactors generate about one third of Sweden’s electricity. In 2015, the decision was made to close four older reactors by 2020. This will remove two thousand and seven hundred megawatts from their grid. In December of 2020, Reactor 1 at Ringhals became the fourth Swedish reactor to close in the previous seven years. Currently, six nuclear reactors are operating in Sweden. There are three reactors at Fosmark, two at Ringhals and one at Oskarshamn.