Outside In | How energy guzzler Sweden has risen to the climate challenge by building nuclear power plants
- David Dodwell says a new book convincingly shows how Sweden’s use of nuclear power – far less dangerous than commonly believed – offers credible support to its transition to renewable energy sources, and the world should take notice
Not so Professor Joshua Goldstein from the American University in Washington, and the Swedish engineer, scientist and consultant Staffan Qvist, who last week published their new book, A Bright Future.
Goldstein and Qvist have a simple recommendation: “The world just needs to be a bit more like Sweden.” That means slashing our reliance on fossil fuels as ruthlessly as possible, continuing to build up our renewable energy resources, and above all else, build “kärnkraft”. That is Swedish for nuclear power plants.
But there is a ruthless logic to Goldstein and Qvist’s argument: the absolute priority is to decarbonise; and since it will take literally a century to build reliable and sufficient solar and wind power, we need to fill the breach with nuclear power generation, which is reliable and can be cranked up at speed while we solve the problems linked with other renewables. In short, it provides a safe, reliable and cost-effective route to fully decarbonised power generation within a time frame that keeps climate chaos at bay.