HS Analysis | Many people blame the Greens for Finland's “missing nuclear power plants”, but the Basic Finns were also against nuclear power

Archives are a beautiful thing, the Parliamentary archive especially.

From there, anyone can read in which words the nation's most pressing questions have been discussed at any given time. No need to go to social media to guess. Thank you, Parliament's stenographers.

Tuesday, May 11, 2010 in the Parliament there was talk of nuclear power. The board had decided to present approval for two new reactors as a decision in principle: for TVO, i.e. Olkiluoto's fourth reactor, and for Fennovoima.

Fortum's application for a third reactor in Loviisa was about to be closed out.

The center, the coalition, the Greens and Rkp sat in the government. In the opposition, Sdp, the Left Alliance, Christians and basic Finns voted.

As a plot reveal, let it be said that Olkiluoto 4 and Fennovoima received the blessing of the parliament, but neither has been built to date.

More important for this article, however, are the arguments heard in the large hall and their presenters.

Electric was historically expensive on Friday, January 5. In connection with the price spike, alternative futures were considered in the message service X: What if more nuclear power had been built and there was less opposition? Would Finland's energy situation be even better and emissions lower?

In these comments, the green party or, more broadly, the European green movement, is often singled out as the only “culprit” for the unbuilt nuclear power plants.

This is what at least the parliament member of the coalition did in their messages Atte Kaleva and CEO of the Central Chamber of Commerce Juho Romakkaniemi.

This text does not take a position on what amount of nuclear power is best for Finland. Now let's look at a snapshot of Finland's nuclear power debate from the time when major solutions were last made.

In the spring of 2010, the Greens were a significant and influential opponent of additional nuclear power within the government, but they were not alone in their views.

Many other parties and half of the people were of the same opinion.

The conversation opened by the Prime Minister Matti Vanhanen (center). He justified additional nuclear power by talking about the necessity of combating climate change.

Back in 1992, Vanhanen got through in the parliament the drive against the further construction of nuclear power. In 1993, the prime minister of the centre Esko Ahok voted against additional nuclear power.

By 2010, Vanhanen's mind was changed due to climate reasons.

“Climate change is a big market error caused by humanity, which will cost money to fix,” Vanhanen said. “The government's goal is especially to increase self-sufficiency and reduce the use of coal.”

In the center, there were still MPs opposing new reactors.

Minister of Economic Affairs Mauri Pekkarinen (center) continued from here. He added avoiding dependence on Russia to the reasons. The long line of Finland's energy policy is versatility.

“If we did not start from the fact that instead of the electricity that is now imported from Russia and imported from abroad, in the future we will produce the electricity we need here, if we did not start from the fact that we are ready to increase electricity production as much as the Finnish business life needs […] we wouldn't need to build more nuclear power,” he said.

Now in the 2020s, it is known that the increase in electricity consumption estimated by the government at that time has not been realized in Finland. In the future, however, the electrification of industry and transport is estimated to significantly increase electricity consumption.

The watchman removed the mask that was coming off the protester Mauri Pekkarine in the galleries of the parliament on May 11, 2010. Picture: Martti Kainulainen / Magazine photo

In May 2010, Vanhanen and Pekkarinen did not justify why two of the three were chosen, i.e. why Fortum's Loviisan application was about to be rejected, but Fennovoima, to be built further north, was accepted.

Party colleague Timo Kalli will give a hint later. “The license proposals for Fennovoima and TVO will improve the competitiveness of energy-intensive industry and companies operating in the provinces,” he said in the large hall.

The greens Ville Niinistö spoke against decisions in principle allowing additional nuclear power, even though the Greens were in the government. According to Niinistö, Finland was being turned into “Europe's nuclear waste dump”, as the final disposal of the waste was also being processed.

Now, in 2024, Posiva's operating permit application for placing 6,500 tons of nuclear waste in the Eurajoki bedrock is Under consideration by the Radiation Protection Agency.

In Niinistö's opinion, nuclear power ate up money from the transition the greens wanted.

“Who can claim with an honest mind and heart that the nuclear power proposal requiring massive investments of nearly 15 billion won't take capi
tal away from renewable energy and other energy solutions of the future?” he asked.

The Greens' Ville Niinistö (center) talked with the Greens' Janina Andersson and the left-wing coalition's Paavo Arhinmäki in the parliament on May 11, 2010. Arhinmäki also gave a speech against power plant licenses. He suspected that the government overestimated the growth of electricity consumption by 2020, as it did. Picture: Martti Kainulainen / Magazine photo

Today, the nuclear power positions of the Greens are changing.

“The regulation of small nuclear reactors must be streamlined and the safety of nuclear power must be taken care of,” read the party's election program in the spring of 2023. Chairman of the parliamentary group Atte Harjanne has writtenthat “the need for clean energy is huge, and it is practically impossible to cover it without nuclear power”.

Looking at it now, the more surprising opponent of additional nuclear power in May 2010 was the basic Finns Raimo Vistbacka. He used a group speech on behalf of the five MPs from the Basic Finns.

“Nuclear power can be both supported and opposed on reasonable grounds,” Vistbacka began.

Even that sentence stops the modern reader. It doesn't take long to spend time on social media these days to notice that the supporters of additional nuclear power often position themselves as reasonable and rational, while calling opponents unreasonable, technologically incomprehensible, or ideological.

Vistbacka was concerned about indigenous peoples and the mess caused by uranium mining.

“You can also think about what has been and is the fate of the local communities and indigenous peoples in Australia and Canada, for example, whose homes have had uranium, the raw material for nuclear power plants, mined. Millions of tons of radioactive waste, sand and mud will remain in those areas as a result of Finland's procurement of fuels,” he said.

The drinking water of the natives contaminated by uranium mining was reported in Australia most recently last year.

Excerpt from the speech given by basic Finns Raimo Vistbacka in the parliament in 2010.

In addition, Vistbacka took care of security, armaments and crisis situations.

“Neither can we ignore the interdependence of nuclear power and nuclear weapons and the international military industry, nor the fact that a nuclear power plant is a sensitive target in war and terrorist attacks.”

The future of the last sentence proved true. Europe's largest nuclear power plant in Ukraine's Zaporizhia is currently in a worryingly unsafe situation due to the Russian attack, according to the Atomic Energy Organization IAEA. In the January report the organization complained about the explosions heard in the vicinity and the blocking of access to part of the reactor halls. According to Ukrainian intelligence Russia has mined the cooling pool.

Later in July 2010, four representatives of the Basic Finns voted against additional nuclear power and one was absent.

The permits for Olkiluoto 4, Fennovoima and waste disposal were voted on separately. Below you can see the voting result for the Olkiluoto 4 permit by party. Many parties split in two, as MPs were allowed to vote according to their conscience regardless of group discipline.

There were 120 yes votes, 72 no votes.

After 2010, Perussuomalaiset has changed a lot.

It became a major party in the general election of the following year. In 2017, the party split in two when Jussi Halla-aho won in the vote of the Jyväskylä party meeting Timo Soinin protector Sampo Terhon.

Modern Finns believe in nuclear energy in all its forms. Party leader Riikka Purra Has saidthat “nuclear power is the only form of energy production that can really have a significant impact on the fight against climate change”.

Coalition would have initially supported the approval of all three applications on the table, i.e. it also supported Fortum's third reactor in Loviisa. In May 2010, the group talk was held Pekka Ravi.

He also used the climate justification. With the help of the decisions, a “bold leap towards an emission-free Finland” is taken, he said. He also spoke about the goal of multiplying the production of wind power, since the government proposed a wind power feed-in tariff.

That goal was achieved. Finland's current wind power capacity, 6946 megawatts, is 35 times higher than in 2010.

Ravi also said something that might come as a surprise to a member of the coalition: “The essential thing in terms of reducing emissions is that energy consumption as a whole can be reduced.”

It's a bit like that in Finland counted. Ravi spoke about the necessity of energy efficiency. He saw the role of electricity aptly.

“However, this does not mean a decrease in electricity consumption, as the share of electricity within the entire energy palette will increase, and in fact it will happen precisely because of climate measures,” he said. He also predicted the spread of electric cars and heat pumps.

Sdp was divided on the question. Eero Heinäluoma was surprised that Fortum was left out, but also stressed that in his opinion nuclear power in general “can only be accepted as a transitional solution”.

“The future is in renewable energy sources,” Heinäluoma said.

He too was of the opinion that Finland should not be lulled to rely on Russian electricity imports.

Additional nuclear power – which was never built in the end – was therefore opposed in 2010 by more than a third of the MPs: the Greens, the Basic Finns and the Left Alliance and about half of the Sdp, the Rkp and the Christians, as well as one in five from the center.

The people of Finland were even more upset. Mightily in the survey 51 percent were of the opinion that after the completion of Olkiluoto 3, no more reactors are needed. There were 34 percent supporters of additional nuclear power.

The same is also confirmed by the special researcher of the State Economic Research Institute who studied the nuclear power decisions in question Maid Remes. In a survey related to the 2010 nuclear power vote, the public was significantly more concerned about the risks of nuclear power than the members of parliament.

Citizens were particularly worried about the risk of accidents and the issue of waste.

“If the people had decided, not a single permit would have been granted,” Remes sums up.

Of course, everyone can change their mind, including the voter. The situation has changed after Russia attacked Ukraine.

In Eva's surveys in 2019 and 2022, the statement “additional construction of nuclear power would be the best solution to increase our country's electricity production” was presented to a representative sample of Finns. In 2019, 42 percent completely or somewhat agreed.

Just three years later, after Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine from three directions, the share was 67 percent.

The spirit of the times is now such that even the good arguments against nuclear energy heard in 2010 may be left unsaid by a politician thinking about his support.