Denmark is looking at whether to end its 40-year ban on nuclear energy as the Scandinavian wind energy powerhouse examines the best ways to avoid a similar blackout to last month’s outage in Spain and Portugal.
Lars Aagaard, Denmark’s minister for climate, energy and utilities, told Danish newspaper Politiken that the centrist coalition in Copenhagen would take a year to analyse the pros and cons of reviving nuclear power.
A lifting of its ban from 1985 would put Denmark in a growing group of countries looking at nuclear energy to help balance renewable sources in their electricity mix.
Neighbouring Sweden’s rightwing government is trying to revive nuclear power in the country, which still has three plants in operation, after big debates over closing them ever since the Three Mile Island accident in the US in 1979.
Denmark has one of the highest shares of renewable energy in its electricity mix in Europe thanks to vast offshore wind farms along its coast.
It uses coal and gas power as well as interconnectors to countries such as Sweden and Norway — which have nuclear and hydro resources — to ensure a low level of power interruptions by European standards.
But four rightwing opposition parties in Denmark’s parliament are keen to reintroduce nuclear power in Denmark and have tabled a debate with Aagaard for Wednesday.
“We observe that there is a development under way with new nuclear power technologies: small modular reactors,” Aagaard told Politiken.
The government had decided to launch an analysis of the potential of this new technology, he said, but added that “it is not enough that they have potential. We also need to know what it means for Danish society.”
SMRs, which are built in factories and potentially offer shorter construction times than large plants, have attracted significant investor enthusiasm globally, but many are still in design stages or awaiting regulatory approval.
Anders Fogh Rasmussen, Denmark’s former prime minister and an ex-secretary general of Nato, told the Financial Times he was in favour of lifting the “ridiculous” ban.
“Wind and solar are good as long as you have wind and sunshine. But you have to have a non-fossil base load and it’s ridiculous to exclude nuclear power in advance . . . My guess is that this is a process [from the government] towards lifting the ban,” he said.
Last month, a fund backed by Danish billionaire Joachim Ante announced plans to raise €350mn ($397mn) to back the advanced nuclear industry and its supply chain.
92 Capital is betting on a nuclear power renaissance because of a broader rise in concerns over energy security. Ante, who founded video game software company Unity, has so far put in €50mn of his own funds.
An earlier version of the fund, 92 Ventures, invested in Sweden’s Blykalla and Finland’s Steady Energy Oy, both developers of SMRs.
There is particular controversy in Denmark over where any new nuclear power plants would be situated and where waste from reactors would be stored.
Denmark had a research reactor just outside Copenhagen until 2001 where the waste is stored. Its parliament decided in 2018 to establish a secure disposal facility for the waste by 2073.
Large nuclear reactors have dwindled in popularity since accidents including Chornobyl in 1986 and Fukushima in 2011.
Recent large nuclear power projects in countries including France, the UK and Finland have run hugely over budget. Finland opened the Olkiluoto 3 plant in 2023, 14 years later than planned and almost quadruple the initial budget.
