Sweden’s environment minister called yesterday for nuclear and coal power to be phased out of the Baltic Sea region and announced that Sweden wants to be a world leader in developing sources of renewable energy. Kjell Larsson, who spoke at a meeting in Lithuania on the closure of the Chernobyl-style Ignalina nuclear power plant, gave no details on how Sweden might implement such a phaseout. Sweden now has 11 nuclear reactors that supply 48 percent of the nation’s energy, with the rest coming primarily from hydropower and renewable sources like sun, wind, and biomass. The German government reached an agreement last week to phase out nuclear power within its borders over the next two decades.
