"Yes, Thanks" to Nuclear Power

By as much as 3 to 1. -

A key vote on energy policy heartens pronuke forces in Europe

For three months it seemed that everyone in Sweden was wearing a lapel button. Some sported badges reading ENERGY FOR SWEDEN. Others wore yellow buttons with a red sunburst proclaiming

ATOMIC POWER? NO, THANK YOU. Hardly a telephone pole or lamppost was left unpostered.

By referendum day last week, Swedes were so wearied by the campaign that Expressen, the nation's largest newspaper, editorialized: "The people are victims of overkill--let us vote and be done with it." So they did. When the 4.7 million ballots were counted, the pronukes had a clear majority: 58% voted yes, favoring completion of the country's half-finished nuclear program; only 39% voted for a proposal to abandon the country's reactor program.

At stake was the future of a dozen nuclear reactors in Sweden: six in operation, four more ready for startup, and two to be completed. Had the majority voted no, all would have been phased out over the next ten years. Instead, even though the referendum was not constitutionally binding, the government is now obliged to move forward with a national plan to continue developing nuclear energy for at least another 25 years. Still sporting his NO, THANK YOU button after the vote, Centrist Premier Thorbjoern Falldin went on national television. "I remain personally opposed to nuclear power," he said. "But my conscience is not the decisive factor. Swedes have spoken, and I am pledged to carry out their will."

One of the first plebiscites on the nuclear issue, the Swedish vote was watched closely in Western Europe. In Denmark, it was believed to have reinforced public sentiment in favor of starting a nuclear program to reduce the country's 95% dependence on imported energy. In Zurich, where a referendum will be held on April 27 concerning a sixth reactor, proponents of the project were encouraged.

In West Germany, with 15 reactors already in operation, the vote was regarded as a glancing political blow against the Greens--the antinuclear environmentalists who have conducted a successful campaign to hold up construction of eleven new nuclear plants. Even in France, Europe's second most advanced nuclear country, with 16 reactors, the Swedish trend captured attention because France has been confronted by local protests against a new reactor in Plogoff in Brittany. Conceded Austria's Chancellor Bruno Kreisky, whose country voted against nuclear power in 1978: "The Swedish result is impressive."

No country would seem to present a better case for nuclear power than Sweden. It has no petroleum, and so little coal that virtually none has been mined in 50 years. Its oil bill of $3.1 billion last year made it the world's largest per capita importer. On the other hand, the country has Western Europe's largest uranium deposit, the unmined 300,000-ton Ranstad lode in southern Sweden, which some regard as their future energy ace in the hole.'

Accordingly, Stockholm plunged enthusiastically into nuclear power in 1972, and within five years, under Premier Olof Palme, Sweden was leading the world in its per capita use. In 1976, however, Palme's Social Democrats were unseated for the first time in 44 years, and successive governments have been alternately for and against nuclear energy.

As last week's referendum proved, even such foreboding examples as the accident at Three Mile Island could not compete with Palme's prediction of widespread unemployment, recession and burdensome new energy costs if the reactor program were shut down. That was particularly clear in the six districts where reactors already operate: there the yes vote won by as much as 3 to 1.

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