You can read daily about the great climate changes and global warming that are affecting our world today. Researchers around the world agree that it is humans and our extensive over-consumption and emissions from the burning of fossil fuels that are the cause of climate change. This has given rise to states, companies and organizations around the world actively seeking renewable alternatives. The most common candidates are wind, water and solar energy, but there is another alternative that is hotly debated if it can be seen as a sustainable energy source, namely nuclear power.
Among the red-greens, it is the Green Party and the Left Party that have been most proactive in the issue of banning nuclear power. In both the Green Party's and the Left Party's party program, the argument is made that nuclear power is not an environmentally friendly or sustainable alternative. The argument is based on the fact that the mining of uranium is dirty and environmentally destructive and that today there is no efficient and safe way to store the spent fuel. The Social Democrats write that they want nuclear power to be phased out over time and replaced with renewable energy sources, but at the same time acknowledge that nuclear power today is a large part of Sweden's energy supply. This policy has had an impact at government level and from the first of August 2018, it is forbidden to extract uranium in Sweden.
The alliance parties see nuclear power as a secure source of energy and have long argued for an expansion of nuclear power in Sweden. The moderates describe nuclear power as a secure energy source and see it as an important part of Sweden's energy supply for a long time to come. The Liberals and Christian Democrats build on this argument, both parties believe that there should be an expansion of nuclear power and more investments should be made in nuclear power and the development of generation IV reactors, in addition to these reactors being more efficient and safer than the current reactors, so they can also reuse the waste from the spent fuel. The strongest arguments for the alliance's nuclear power are the low amount of greenhouse gas emissions that nuclear power contributes, unlike fossil fuels and the jobs that nuclear power contributes.
By reading these parties' party programs, comparing them and studying the positive and negative sides of nuclear power elsewhere, it is obvious that the parties themselves understand nuclear power and its properties. All parties address both the negative and positive sides of nuclear power, the difference that arises in whether a party supports nuclear power seems to come from the party's ideological affiliation, the parties on the left focus on the problems that arise due to nuclear power, such as uranium mining and nuclear waste without producing the positive aspects of nuclear power. The parties on the right focus in turn on the positive aspects, ie the low amount of greenhouse gas emissions and the large amount of energy produced in the process.
From a global perspective, Sweden's environmental footprint may not be enormous, but all the countries in the world must pull their weight to work towards a sustainable future where future generations can live. If Sweden decides to expand its nuclear power, it should not be forgotten that the mining of uranium, which is environmentally damaging, no longer takes place on Swedish soil, but what affects Sweden's environment and sustainability is the storage of waste.
In the end, it is problematic to write whether nuclear power is a renewable energy source or not, it all depends on what arguments are made and who is leading the arguments and the political parties' arguments about nuclear power are a clear example of this. Nuclear power is today used as a game piece by all parties to attract support and retain this support among the parties' respective voter groups.