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Month: October 2009

Michael, the saboteur?! Part 2: asking for email

By Michael Karnerfors 2009-10-31, continued from part 1

“Every Swedish citizen shall be entitled to have free access to official documents, in order to encourage the free exchange of opinion and the availability of comprehensive information.”

The paragraph above is the first act of the second chapter of The Freedom of The Press act, a cornerstone of the Swedish constitution. In short chapter two, titled “On the public nature of official documents”, says that if I as a Swedish citizen wish to take part of any official document, I am entitled to have swift access to it, no questions asked.

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Michael, the saboteur?! Part one…

By Michael Karnerfors, 2009-10-24

I have had some crazy last few days, culminating with a Swedish newspaper calling me and asking me if I am a saboteur trying to wreck a scientist’s work on behalf of the nuclear industry! Whatever prompted anyone to ask something that bizarre? Well, the whole thing started over 30 years ago…

Anyone using fissionable material in Sweden is by law responsible for the safekeeping and disposal of the end-products. We’re not allowing reprocessing, and we’re not allowing the export of highly radioactive waste products, so we have to deposit any such materials.

To that end, the Swedish nuclear power companies formed the Swedish Nuclear Fuel And Waste Management Company, SKB for short for the purpose to researching a viable method to deposit spent nuclear fuel that is acceptable for the public as well as politically. Not that we didn’t know of viable methods since such methods were known since the early 70’s. But only very few of them were palatable, so we needed a bit of research of our own.  The project “KärnBränsleSäkerhet” (Nuclear fuel safety), or KBS for short, was started in 1976. In 1983 the third report of this project, KBS-3, was put forth and it proposed what is most likely a solution to the nuclear waste problem.

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