Leaders of Sweden's opposition party on Sunday pledged to phase out nuclear power if they win the 2010 elections, just weeks after the government backed to keep the country's 10 reactors running.
"We want to phase out the nuclear power stations … replacing them with renewable energy," wrote the Social Democrats, the Greens and the Lefts in a joint piece published in the daily Dagens Nyheter.
The change should be done gradually in such a way as to protect jobs, they added.
On February 5, the ruling centre-right coalition decided to reverse a previous decision to gradually shut down the country's 10 nuclear reactors.
In 1980, the Swedish government came out in favour of closing all its nuclear reactors by 2010, but the objective was dropped in 1997 after studies showed it would not be possible to generate enough energy from alternative sources.
The then Social Democrat government reached agreement with the other main parties on the progressive shutdown of the aging reactors over a 30-year period. Since 1999, two of the country's 12 nuclear reactors have been closed.
The remaining 10 reactors however produce nearly half of the country's electricity.
The opposition, which has criticised the government's decision to suspend talks on the issue, argues that no decision on the country's future energy policy is needed before 2015.
