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How Sweden wants to ramp up nuclear energy production in next 25 years

Sweden's government pledged to make the country 'a strong nuclear nation again' as it presented a new plan for energy production.

Published: 17 November 2023 06:25 CET

How Sweden wants to ramp up nuclear energy production in next 25 years

Forsmark, one of Sweden's existing nuclear power plants. Photo: Christine Olsson/TT

The government presented a new roadmap outlining increased production equivalent to two nuclear reactors by 2035 at the latest, with a “massive expansion” to follow by 2045.

Energy minister Ebba Busch said the plan would be a further step towards Sweden “becoming a strong nuclear nation again”.

“In the next 25 years, we must double Sweden’s electricity production,” she added at a press conference.

The government insisted the plan would also ensure the success of its energy transition.

It estimates the country will need the equivalent of 10 new conventional nuclear reactors by 2045 to achieve these goals.

Sweden currently operates six reactors in three different power stations, with the government announcing in August that it would remove obstacles to the construction of new reactors.

Finance minister Elisabeth Svantesson said the cost of the project would be looked into “as quickly as possible”.

Greenpeace spokesperson Rolf Lindahl warned of possible spiralling costs, pointing to similar projects in France, Finland and the UK which had “suffered major cost increases and delays”.

The announcement comes as EU countries prepare for another winter with reduced supplies of Russian gas, which has led electricity prices to soar.

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REVEALED: Sweden Democrats' secret social media 'troll factory'

In the Kalla Fakta programme for broadcaster TV4, a reporter spent five months working undercover for the Sweden Democrats, first on the YouTube channel Riks, previously owned by the party, and later for the party’s communications team.

“I was undercover for a whole year, five months of which I was working [for the party],” Kalla Fakta’s reporter Daniel Andersson told The Local. “Two of them I was on Riks, the YouTube channel, and three of them I was in the communications department.”

During this period, Andersson wore a hidden camera to show how the YouTube channel, which the party claims is independent, is in fact closely linked with the party.

Andersson said he found out about the troll factory just before moving over to the communications department.

“They are in the same office building, Riks rents their office from the Sweden Democrats, so during lunch the departments often met, ate lunch together and talked a lot about it. That’s where I overheard secretive talks about anonymous accounts on social media, and they didn’t want to say what their name was or why they had them.”

The Sweden Democrats are also Riks’ largest source of financing, with daily meetings taking place between the channel’s owner, Jacob Hagnell, and Sweden Democrat head of communications Joakim Wallerstein.

Kalla Fakta’s report revealed that the party’s communications wing has been tasked with managing a large number of anonymous social media accounts, referred to within the party as a “troll factory”, an organised group of fake accounts with the aim of influencing public opinion and debate by spreading pro-Sweden Democrat content.

“We’re going to talk a lot more about how they operate in the next episode, in a week,” Andersson said. “But what we saw very early was that it was very, very systematic, it’s organised. And the purpose is to create a huge load of posts on different social media to create an illusion of the fact that the Sweden Democrats and their image of the world and of Sweden is larger than it is.”

“The boss is Joakim Wallerstein, the communications chief of the Sweden Democrats. He’s also the mastermind behind this – we also identified Riks as a part of it, where he is creating a conservative ecosystem, troll factory, to manipulate people’s views of the world,” he added.

Back in 2022, the Sweden Democrats were accused of running a “troll factory” by left-wing newspaper Dagens ETC. At the time, the party rejected the accusations, calling ETC’s article “unserious and obvious activism” in an email to SVT, while admitting that a group called Battlefield, responsible for moderating the party’s comments boxes on social media, did exist at one point.

In the new Kalla Fakta programme and in another interview with Dagens ETC, Wallerstein admits that these anonymous accounts exist, although he rejects the term “troll factory”.

“I don’t think I’ve been running so called troll sites, for the simple reason that I haven’t been spreading false information,” he told Kalla Fakta.

Andersson believes this is nothing more than damage control from the party.

“He doesn’t want to acknowledge that it is a troll factory. He doesn’t see a problem with the fact that they are anonymous, or the fact that the connection to the party is hidden,” Andersson said.

By Paul O’Mahony and Becky Waterton

Hear TV4’s reporter Daniel Andersson explain more about the investigation in the next episode of The Local’s podcast, Sweden in Focus. Out on Friday, May 10th.

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