Response to interpellation 2022/23:253 on uranium mining
Translated from Swedish by AI; the translation may contain errors. The Swedish text is the original.
Summary AI, written in advance
KD considers it urgent to evaluate the ban on uranium mining 1 and that a previous ideological stance against uranium mining was incorrect 2. KD emphasizes the importance of raw materials for the green transition, competitiveness, and economic growth 2 3. KD argues that Sweden needs to take advantage of its natural resources 3, reduce the EU's dependence on China 3 and learn from the decisions regarding Russia 3. SD considers that the uranium ban was pushed through for ideological reasons and should be lifted for security policy and rational reasons 4. SD wants to remove the ban to create the right conditions for the prospecting industry 5 and so that Sweden can become a nuclear power nation with a good degree of self-sufficiency 5. SD considers it unjustifiable to be dependent on imports of nuclear fuel from countries with questionable governance 5. SD regrets that the Committee on Industry's report does not contain anything that removes the ban 6.
Written by AI in advance and may contain errors. The numbers lead to the speech a statement builds on; check against the text below.
Energi- och näringsministern Ebba Busch (KD)
Madam Speaker! I have been asked whether I and the government intend to work towards lifting the ban on uranium mining.
On 1 August 2018, a new provision was introduced in the Environmental Code which means that it is not possible to break, process, or physically or chemically enrich uranium-bearing material during mining activities or through the recycling of extraction waste if the purpose is to extract the radionuclides or use the material's radioactivity. The prohibition also applies to test mining. In the Minerals Act (1991:45), uranium was removed as a concession mineral, which means that it is not possible to grant either exploration permits or processing concessions for uranium.
It is important that the ban on the extraction of uranium be evaluated, which is also emphasized in the bill (prop. 2017/18:212) that forms the basis for the ban. It is too early to answer the question of whether the government intends to work towards lifting the ban, and I must therefore return with a clear answer at a later date.
Eric Palmqvist (SD)
Madam Speaker! Thank you, Minister, for the answer!
It is now five years since the government at the time pushed through a ban on mining, processing, or physically or chemically enriching uranium-bearing material, a decision that the then S-MP government pushed through more for ideological reasons than for realpolitik reasons. Quite simply, no uranium mining in its true sense was either ongoing or planned in Sweden when the law came into force. It can be said that the Green Party (Miljöpartiet) in the ordinary course of things conducted a kind of poster politics, because uranium mining, i.e., what they wanted to ban, was not something that occurred in Sweden in 2018 and therefore did not constitute a problem either.
However, Madam Speaker, prospecting was conducted after uranium because uranium is an important lead metal in the search for other metals and minerals that are important for our industrial development but relatively difficult and costly to find. This was also something that the industry and the Mining State made us politicians aware of, but here ideology triumphed over reason, and prospecting for and mining of uranium was prohibited in 2018.
It is worth noting in this context that M, KD, SD and L, i.e., all the Tidö parties, reserved themselves against this when it occurred in the spring of 2018. The same parties now have a majority here in this chamber, why an annulment of the law should both be possible and right - for domestic policy reasons but also for clearly security policy and rational reasons.
Five years have passed, and much has happened since then. The security policy situation has changed significantly, energy prices have skyrocketed, nuclear power is finally making a comeback, and ordinary people have begun to understand the consequences of Europe largely making itself dependent on Russian energy in the form of gas. At the same time, we have seen how the willingness to prospect in Sweden has plummeted in an international context. I mean that the uranium ban is part of the explanation for why it has become so.
In her reply to me, Minister Busch refers to the fact that the ban shall be evaluated in accordance with the decisions made when Proposition 2017/18:212, which forms the basis for the ban, was handled. My question to the minister is then why she and the government see themselves bound by this, when there should be a parliamentary majority today to overturn the law.
If one nevertheless considers that the ban on uranium mining must be preceded by an evaluation, despite the fact that all parties that currently make up the government basis were against this, my question is: When shall this evaluation take place, does the Minister believe?
Energi- och näringsministern Ebba Busch (KD)
Madam Speaker! I will return to the more detailed and specific question that the member raised at the end, but I want to start by saying that I am very happy that we are now finally discussing access to raw materials with a completely different pressure than we did a few years ago. This is due, among other things, to our four coalition parties' basic view on this, namely that there are some things that have built our country strong, including the ore and the forest, but also the access to plenty of and cheap electricity.
One can summarize it somewhat bluntly by saying that we have great challenges regarding all three parts now, and that is why so much of the four coalition parties' time and energy goes toward cleaning up and doing the groundwork to change the conditions.
An important part for us to succeed in our green transition and competitiveness has to do with the availability of raw materials. There, we are now shifting the policy towards a much more offensive mining policy. This is what we are driving within the EU and also within Sweden.
To this is added the question of uranium, which occurs both in low concentrations in the earth's interior and in higher concentrations in the earth's crust. Sweden's bedrock is actually quite rich in uranium, which many Swedes do not know about, but the local variation is large. The resources can actually be divided into two main groups. One is the large, but low-grade resources found in, for example, alumschist and phosphorite.
At the time of the bill we are referring to - 2017 - it was judged not to be particularly economically profitable to mine, but just as Eric Palmqvist points out, the uranium itself can be decisive when it comes to leading to something else. Regardless, I can offer something that I believe is well known, namely that my view as minister and party leader is that an ideological stance towards uranium mining in Sweden has been held which has been incorrect. This is the reason why we were several parties who opposed what was voted through about five years ago.
Whether active uranium mining in Sweden would make a big difference or not and how it could be used is too early to say, partly because it is a rather unexplored area, given how it has been treated in recent years.
We will, as said, return to the issue, but I want to clarify the government's response, which I have accounted for and which will be published in writing after this interpellation debate. We adhere to the bill to the extent that we point out that it was indicated in the bill, which was not particularly favorably disposed towards uranium, that an evaluation would be made. But then we in the government do not need to adhere solely to this, which we also will not do.
Eric Palmqvist (SD)
Madam Speaker! Thank you, Minister, for the answers I have received! I share the Minister's enthusiasm that we are now discussing raw material supply.
I make no secret of the fact that I and my party consider this to be a relatively simple issue – to clear away the political buffet table which contains a number of other things that are significantly more difficult to chew.
We need to remove the ban to create the right conditions for the prospecting industry, which wants to be able to use uranium as a lead metal. We also need to acknowledge to ourselves that we are once again striving to become a nuclear power nation that should strive for a good degree of self-sufficiency not only when it comes to electricity production but also for the fuel needed for the electricity production.
It is not reasonable that in a shaky world with the geopolitical challenges we face, we should make ourselves dependent on imports from distant countries, sometimes with questionable governance. We have, thankfully, stopped importing nuclear fuel from Russia, but until not very long ago, we bought fuel from there. I do not consider that to be justifiable.
Madam Speaker! I have mentioned that the ban on uranium mining had an ideological character and was somewhat of a non-issue because no uranium mining for the purpose of using the uranium as nuclear fuel has occurred in Sweden for several decades. Thus, a repeal of the law would also not mean that uranium mines would pop up like mushrooms from the ground. We all know, at least those of us who work with the mineral policy issues, that mine establishments are not exactly popping up in Sweden.
The establishment of a uranium mine is also regulated by the Environmental Code, the Mining Act, and the Nuclear Energy Act. To this is added the municipal veto, which means that the relevant municipality must approve the operation. A repeal of these laws would, as I see it, not give rise to any kind of uranium bonanza in Sweden but rather be a logical position, justified on both energy policy and geopolitical grounds.
My question is: Does the Minister for Enterprise not share this view, and does she harbor concern that the legislations I have just mentioned are not sufficient to regulate any potential uranium mining or to stop any potentially questionable projects?
Energi- och näringsministern Ebba Busch (KD)
Madam Speaker! I shall begin by answering precisely and briefly to the member's question and follow-up questions here in this second round.
I do not have the basis that allows me to express myself on this, this against the background that this has not been tested. Our legislation has not been tested from those aspects for a very long time. I also cannot rule out that further tightenings may be needed somewhere. The intentions today are perfectly clear. At first glance, one might think that it should suffice, but I cannot rule out that a review needs to be made with these glasses, so to speak.
I would also like to briefly raise the question of how uranium is mined in mines today. Sweden is completely dependent on the nuclear power we have today. It is well known that the four coalition parties regret and have many times also pointed out the great risks that came with decommissioning four fully functional nuclear reactors, which, with the required maintenance, could have had a longer lifespan. We have also pointed out the seriousness of the fact that the designs for Ringhals 5 and 6 were not completed. We would have been eight years into them. Now, above all, the Swedish people are noticing the dramatic consequences of having removed that nuclear power.
But we are an established nuclear power nation. We intend to expand the nuclear power component in Sweden so that we can meet the expected doubled electricity demand in the coming years, and then we need to get uranium from somewhere. The largest producers of uranium ore are Australia, Kazakhstan, Canada, Namibia and Niger, which together account for more than 50 percent of the world production.
Within the Euratom cooperation, there is the Euratom Supply Agency, ESA, which helps to coordinate the member states' procurement of uranium, and it is in that way that Sweden gets its supply. Among the countries that were on the procurement list in 2021 are Canada, Namibia and Kazakhstan, which I mentioned earlier, and in the group of other countries are primarily Australia but also Russia, from which many states have successfully managed to significantly reduce their share.
Several of the countries have a completely different view on working conditions and completely different conditions for their mining and have not, I argue, ethically defensibly mined uranium. Here, there has been an enormous hypocrisy from many parties in Sweden - that we need to have nuclear power and uranium for this nuclear power, but that we do not want to take responsibility for which countries the uranium comes from.
We are slowly but surely changing that policy. It is not done in a heartbeat. But against this background, we in the four coalition parties have held the basic position that we have had regarding uranium mining in Sweden when it has been voted on in the chamber previously.
Eric Palmqvist (SD)
Madam Speaker! I thank the Minister for her overview of what the uranium production looks like and which countries the uranium comes from. I consider that what the Minister states is another reason why we should abolish this legislation.
The motive we heard in the previous answer, that this has not been particularly profitable, is actually not an argument for anything to be prohibited. It is up to the market to live up to the requirements that we in politics set. And if this can be done with good profitability, then one simply says "you're welcome." And if it is not profitable, one will not be interested either.
Shortly, we will here in the chamber debate the Committee on Industry's report 13 on mineral policy. This year, it contains nothing that removes the ban on prospecting for and mining uranium. I regret this. One reason for this may be that the government has actually been busy with other things in the Government Offices since they took office and had other balls to play that have been more prioritized.
But now that the smoke has cleared regarding electricity support and other urgent issues, it is my and the Sweden Democrats' hope that the government wants to play on this ball and that the government, in time for next year's mineral policy report, will come with a proposal aimed at repealing this legislation. In that case, we can make such a decision at the next parliamentary meeting when we handle the mineral policy report.
My final question to Ebba Busch is therefore whether she will work to lift the ban on uranium mining in connection with the handling of the mineral policy report next year.
Energi- och näringsministern Ebba Busch (KD)
Madam Speaker! I would like to begin by thanking Eric Palmqvist for highlighting this issue. I hear that the member's voice resonates with one of all our wonderful Swedish dialects, but I also note that Eric Palmqvist sits on the Norrbotten bench.
The view on mines and on the producing parts of Sweden is an important part of the four coalition parties' realignment of policy. We need to take advantage of the natural resources that we have in our country. We need to take advantage of the forest and of what can be extracted from the ground to a much greater extent. It is not possible to have such high climate goals as Sweden has and at the same time safeguard economic growth, growing welfare, competitiveness, that more companies should grow and flourish and that more Swedish mothers and fathers should have a job to go to with less than we take advantage of what exists in the producing parts of the country.
There, northern Sweden is of the utmost importance, and there, our view on the mining industry as a whole is also decisive. It is also important for Sweden to be able to contribute to reducing the EU's total dependence on China, to speak plainly. China accounts for about 70 percent of the world's production of the metals needed to facilitate the green transition. Everyone understands and should have learned the lesson, after the fatal decisions that were made regarding Russia, when it comes to what consequences it can have if one places so much of a country's or a continent's future in the hands of one country. Now we are changing this.
Otherwise, I believe it has become clear what the government parties' and the four coalition parties' basic position is regarding uranium. I will not go further than that in providing information today. We will return to the issue of uranium, hopefully in the near future.
Source: The Swedish Parliament. The speeches come from the open data of the Riksdag, translated into English by AI, which may contain errors.