On 21 December, the Swedish government decided to follow the Swedish National Debt Office's proposal for large increases of the nuclear waste fees and financial guarantees, but instead of the entire period 2024-2026 only for 2024.
On 29 September 2023, the National Debt Office sent a proposal to the government in which the nuclear waste fees were proposed to increase significantly, especially for Ringhals which receives a fee of almost 9 öre per kWh. This did not please the nuclear industry, that tried to influence the government so that the increases would not be so large. In the end the government could not go against the Debt Office in this important matter, but has tasked the authority to investigate the possibility of using that all remaining reactors to operate and pay fees for 60 years instead of the currently assumed 50 years for the calculation. This may give the government an opportunity to lower the fees for 2025-2026, but the National Debt Office has already, in an investigation in autumn 2022, been against using an extended operating time.
The main reason for the increases is the increased future expenses in the document that the nuclear waste company SKB submitted in the autumn of 2022 (Plan-22).
More details on the fees and securities can be found in the news article on the MKG Swedish site.
The Swedish NGO Office for Nuclear Waste Review, MKG, thinks that it would be problematic if the state's risk is increased by assuming the estimated lifetime of the remaining nuclear power reactors to be 60 years. It is one thing that the nuclear power industry hopes to operate the reactors as long as possible. But the risk that the technical and financial lifespan of the remaining Swedish reactors will not even be 50 years is considerable.
More news on the nuclear waste finances:
