(Bloomberg) -- Sweden will explore building out its nuclear power capacity via a new government inquiry as the Nordic nation looks for ways to meet its growing energy needs.
The inquiry’s focus will center on speeding up the assessments of permits, as well as looking at fee adjustments for applications, according to a presentation by the center-right government on Thursday. It will also analyze the process for nuclear waste management and regulations for emergency and planning zones.
“Nuclear power has a central and decisive role in our climate transition,” Minister for climate and environment Romina Pourmokhtari said at a press conference in Stockholm. “We therefore need to initiate a substantial expansion of nuclear power during this term.”
The government said the country needs to adapt to the technical development within nuclear safety and also “to improve conditions to enable both small modular reactors as well as conventional reactors on more locations.”
The development comes less than a month after Sweden’s administration made public the conclusions of another inquiry into climate and power policies. Those findings proposed creating a broad, long-term political agreement on the future of nuclear power.
The same government-led inquiry also proposed scrapping a national target for reducing emissions from the transport sector and instead aligning the country’s climate ambitions with goals set by the European Union.
Read More: Sweden Should Abandon Transport’s Climate Target, Inquiry Finds
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