Finland was the first western European nation to decide to build more nuclear energy plants after the Chernobyl accident in 1986, and it has been equally unfazed by the
Fukushima disaster in Japan last year.
While Germany responded by bringing forward the phase-out of nuclear power from 2034 to 2020, with Belgium and Switzerland quickly following suit, Finland is pressing ahead with its fifth nuclear reactor and has plans to build two more.
This is partly, the government says, for environmental reasons. The Kyoto treaty discourages it from building fossil fuel plants and it cannot build many more hydroelectric plants without destroying tracts of precious wilderness. Given the climate, solar power is hardly an option, while biomass is insufficient, so the country has settled on nuclear.
A more significant factor is the desire to reduce its dependence on foreign energy, particularly from Russia, which is seen by many as an unstable supplier. The proud Nordic nation, which often describes itself as a “lone wolf”, derives about two-thirds of its energy from foreign sources at present.
Independence from Russia is driving a nuclear push across the region. Lithuania, which is entirely reliant on Gazprom, Russia’s state-controlled producer, for natural gas, is in the process of finalising a 1350 megawatt reactor in Visaginas, which will eventually supply power across the Baltics. “We will be independent,” says Andrius Kubilius, Lithuania’s prime minister.
Foreign energy imports are a drain on the economy, says the government. The Finns have one of the highest levels of energy consumption per head after Iceland and Norway. This is because of the cold winters, energy-intensive industries such as forestry and about 3m very hot saunas for just 5.2m people.
There is a strong political consensus in favour of nuclear power, but implementation has not always been easy. The flagship EPR reactor in the west of the country, which is the world’s first third-generation model and a test case for the industry, has been beset by embarrassing cost overruns and substantial delays.
It is being built by a consortium led by France’s
Areva, but is now five years late and more than €2.6bn over budget.
Areva had said the flagship plant would come online in 2013, after an initial service date of 2009 was abandoned, but it is now unlikely to be finished until August 2014, according to the company.
The main problem has been the under-developed supply chain – no reactor had been built in Europe for 20 years when construction started.
The amount of documentation that had to be produced for the tough Finnish nuclear safety regulator was another problem, according to Virginie Moucquot-Laiho, a spokesperson for Areva at the Olkiluoto power plant where the ERP is being built.
The project has become a symbol of the enormous cost, complexity and risk of new atomic projects and has raised questions about similar plants planned in the UK.
It has also resulted in an acrimonious legal dispute between Areva and TVO, the Finnish utility that will eventually own and run the reactor, about who should pay the costs of the delays.
But regardless of overruns and the disaster in Japan, the Finns are reluctant to abandon their nuclear plans. About half are in favour of more nuclear power, only slightly down from before Fukushima, according to a poll commissioned by Helsingin Sanomat, a newspaper, and conducted by TNS Gallup.
The Finns could also have a big market to sell any excess power, if plans to connect the Nordic and the Baltic regional energy grids go ahead as proposed.
“This could provide another argument for the pro-nuclear camp in Finland,” says Georg Zachmann, a fellow at Bruegel, a Brussels think-tank.
There is still opposition from the influential green party and a debate about whether Fortum, the local utility company, should be allowed to build two more plants to replace the reactors at Loviisa, which are scheduled for decommissioning in 2027 and 2030.
Only slightly more than a third of Finns think Fortum should be granted a licence, according to a recent poll, and the government has said that it is not going to make a decision during this parliament.
“We are happy to wait,” says Peter Tuominen, a manager in the nuclear division of Fortum.
But broadly the pro-nuclear camp is still winning the argument, in contrast with much of the rest of the world following the Fukushima accident.
Last year, the International Energy Agency cut its forecast for nuclear power’s share of the world’s total primary energy demand for 2035 from 8 per cent to 7 per cent as a result of the disaster.
The agency also warned of higher construction costs.
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