Sweden #
Sweden built 12 reactors between 1970-1985 [1]. In the period 1976-1986, Sweden added more than 600 kWh per person with nuclear power. Where Denmark between 2009 and 2020 added a small 155 kWh per person with solar and wind energy. As shown in the figure below.
In less than 20 years, Sweden switched from burning oil to producing electricity from nuclear power and reduced their greenhouse gas emissions by 75% [2].
Sweden thus has the world record for rapid conversion of electricity production to CO2-free sources. As can be seen, nothing – and not even Danish sun and wind – has come close since then.
According to a study, if the whole world followed the Swedish example, all fossil fuel-fired power plants could be replaced with nuclear power plants in about 30 years and thus significantly reduce emissions [3, 4].
France #
France period 1975-2000 build 58 Pressurised Water Reactors (PWR) based on a design supplied by a single American supplier with centralized management and stable construction teams. With mass production and standardization, they could reduce the construction time to 4 years. A total gross installed capacity of 66 GWe, producing close to 80% of the electricity in 25 years. Between 1979-1988, France added 627 kWh per capita per year nuclear.
The cost of France nuclear power program was around €60 billion (400 billion French francs in 1993 currency) [1]. France even cut costs by more than 2x by scaling from 300 MWe to 1350 MWe reactors.
Sources #
- Nuclear Energy in Sweden – World Nuclear Association (world-nuclear.org)
- https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/sweden
- Potential for Worldwide Displacement of Fossil-Fuel Electricity by Nuclear Energy in Three Decades Based on Extrapolation of Regional Deployment Data | PLOS ONE
- https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-world-really-could-go-nuclear/
- https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0301421510003526
