Its no secret that we are in the warmer decade since hundreds of years, so in fact of "overriding their own environmental norms on the maximum temperature of water drained from the plants", its called "adaptation".

So what does it have to see with the norvegian incident ? nothing.

--
editor note: That doesn't make sense. How is it "adaptation" to override regulations that were based on scientific evidence (in this case, that the river ecosystems can't absorb more than a certain amount of heat form the power plant)? In that specific case, there were no good choices; either you damage the rivers or you shut down the plants.

And what it has to do with the SWEDISH incident is that it shows how these power plants aren't as fool-proof and reliable as some people would have us believe.

The reactor core never faulted, nothing happened to the core.

The backup generator failed.
The primary systems did not.
Nothing other than the backup generator (a diesel engine) failed to start.

You fix the backup, you have no problem. These things have triple redundant systems, you'd have to have 3 different backup generators fail, AFTER losing a primary system.

The reason they are being pulled offline is to determine if the backup systems are in need of replacement. They found the backup system to be inoperable during a routine safety check NOT because the plant had a fault and needed the backup systems.

The incident wasn't half as dangerous as media made it look.

During some maintenance work the switch that distributes the power between the plant and the grid burned. Ofcourse the plant had to be shut down at that point and all of the automatical safety procedures worked like they were supposed to. Unfortunately only two of the four diesel engines that are used to provide power to the plant during the shutdown-procedures started automatically. They remaining two were then started manually and after that all was good. In reality the plant will shutdown with only two working engines, but as a safety precausion all four are started.

The former director of Forsmark who stated that it was pure luck that a meltdown didn't occur overreacted and his statement has later been critized by various different experts.
One of them even said "If you look at everything that happened in Forsmark you see that the safety procedures acctually worked although parts of the safety system were offline. No accident occured!"

PS. Swedish media are notorious when it comes to exaggerating and blowing up stories like this.

--
editor note: And what is your source?

Do you think I'm making this up? :)

My sources are swedish newspapers, i.e. not the big tabloids Aftonbladet and Expressen who always make things look worse than they really are.

I get my info from various articles in newspapers such as Dagens Nyheter, Dagens Industri and Svenska Dagbladet.

www.dagensnyheter.se
www.di.se
www.svd.se

--
editor note: We don't think you made it up, it's just always better to know the sources. Thanks.

Just another reason to upgrade nuclear plants from water cooled to something else.

Good that you covering this. I dont think swedish newspapers exaggerating this more than any other country would. I am impressed by the government getting away with having done almost nothing - although the referendum was more than 20 years ago - to get rid of this bad energyform.

One more sign that Swedish media do not exaggerating the risks is that the majority of the swedish people not want to phase out the nukes anymore. Why? Becourse the do not think its possible without getting more coal and oil.

Swedish media are notorious when it comes to doubt the potential of different alternatives.

Bad fantasy. Thats at least my impression, living in Lund, Sweden.

"bad energyform" you say... I don't want to get into a huge discussion about the pros and cons about nuclear energy, I will say this though.

A 1000MW nuclear plant produces about 30 tonnes of waste per year. Yes the waste is highly radioactive, but it's also relatively easy to store - deep underground in contained areas that will hold it safely there for at least half a millennia. To me that sounds pretty good.

The risks of a nuclear powerplant (which are virtually nonexistent in the newer plants) is a completely different discussion, but to say that nuclear energy is a bad form of energy is wrong.

--
editor note: You forgot to count uranium mining and the monetary costs of contrusction and operation of a plant (usually heavily susidized, as is the insurance in case of problems).

How long has this debate been going on for? Ever since the first Nuke went online... it's a ring around the rosie argument. Some people either get it, or they don't. The interesting thing is, that a good portion of folks who work in Nukes their whole lives, come out of it, after retirement, as some of the most outspoken advocates to ending this method of producing electrical power. So that should tell you all something.

"editor note: You forgot to count uranium mining and the monetary costs of contrusction and operation of a plant (usually heavily susidized, as is the insurance in case of problems)."
It is only expensive because of the ignotance surrounding nuclear power. With many of the new reactors we could use current waste to make power there by reducing it and it's halflike. It can be economical and 'green' but politics hinders both.

--
editor note: Right, it's all political. And in 50 years I'm sure we won't look back at the current generation of reactors as safe and inexpensive.

ThI agree there could be so much said about this energy form, although everything allready is said. But also - some issues are misunderstood. For example many people claiming its a clean source without any CO2 emmission - although when taking the whole "life cycle" (I hope its called that in enlish to when counting in everything from seed to bread) ). The german Wuppertal institute has made life cykle analyzes and claiming the total CO2/Kwh is the same as from a Biogas plant - cause there is so many transports and so much oilbased fules when extracting the Uran. Well well - and its a fossil anyway. Why not build for the future? I mean - without fuel limits? I wish I was not that ahead of my time.

By the way, you've put a picture of Barseback, not Forsmark.

Gosh! India is building huge amounts of new nuclear capacity - China is deploying the largest amount of new nuclear power ever attempted in a sustained way, the Russians are going ahead with expanding thier reactors programs. But of course these are all *stupid* countries?
They do not have the foresight and intelluctual capabilities of you the editor of this site.
Think about it! Just calm down for a moment and think about the world energy equation and think where all the oil is and are those the sort of countries you want to be a hostage to?
Iran? Iraq? Saudi Arabia?
I think Sweden led the way on nuclear power and human rights and the welfare state. Please don't lose sight of all those gains by hysterically jumping on the anti-nuclear bandwagon, please I beg you.

BTW the only thing that would be better then Nuclear energy would be nuclear energy produced by a "cold" fusion. "Cold fusion" which you all know is controversial effect reported by some researchers to have been produced from nuclear fusion at conditions near room temperature and atmospheric pressure. Early announcements raised hopes of a cheap source of electricity or fuel, but as yet, no reproducible results have gained scientific consensus as to the existence of the phenomenon. Where as "Standard" fusion, in which the fuel reaches tremendous temperature and pressure inside a fusion reactor is very unstable and in given conditions can result in a radiation breach due to lack of coolant reaching the fusion reactor. Also in "standard fusion" the resulting material after the initial fusion process has been depleted is considered radioactive waste which after sitting in the fusion reactor has to sit in a waste tank where it will need to sit and also be cooled. if these depleted rods were to be exposed to the atmosphere due to lack of coolant they would release very large amounts of radiation and heat into the surrounding area as is partially what happened at chernobyl. With cold fusion theoreticaly the fuel is entirely burned of in the fusion reaction and there is very little radiation produced.