Full Text

Nuclear Energy: A New Future in Europe
Nuclear energy is regaining favor as an environment-friendly technology.

Mr. Sutela was one of the several speakers at The European Institute roundtable who mentioned the role of nuclear power in Europe's future energy mix, saying inter alia:

If you look at this question [of nuclear energy] in the European countries and try to assess which countries have had something like a consistent energy policy during the last several years, I think three of the prime candidates would be France, Sweden and my own country, Finland. All have decided to build additional nuclear power capacity. The countries that decided not to consider the possibility of having [more] nuclear power have serious problems at the moment. We have nuclear reaction-construction capability in Europe, but it has been quite some time since we have had any major construction projects, so while there has been development of new prototypes, the capability, currently, is not as good as it might be. This is not a suggestion that the Europeans should be buying their nuclear plants in the future from Russia. Obviously, Russians have to be considered, and it is noteworthy that very recently Germany's Siemens announced that it will be winding down its nuclear cooperation with France's Areva and looking for possibilities of cooperation with the Russian companies that have continuous experience of building nuclear plants.

Let me add two points. The first thing is my conviction that responsible policy in the nuclear field demands that the country where the reactor resides also must take care of the final storage of the spent fuel. It is not ethically, morally or environmentally acceptable that we would forever rely on other countries to take care of that.

A second point is this. The reputation of Russian nuclear technology was obviously spoiled by the Chernobyl accident. But I have been told by several specialists that the catastrophe was not so much a consequence of the particular technology used but a completely irresponsible experiment run at the plant. So perhaps it was not so well founded that the European Union demanded that reactors of this type should be shut by countries seeking to join. So I think we should, in Europe, ask again, whether we did the right thing in the end by demanding from the Slovaks, the Lithuanians and others that their so-called Chernobyl-type nuclear plants would be closed as a condition for their membership.

(Subsequently to this talk, Germany's Siemens did sign up in a nuclear-reaction construction partnership with a Russian manufacturer and Italy announced plans to reverse its ban on nuclear reactors and work with France to build new ones in Italy.)