Slightly more than half of Finland’s population reject the idea of further nuclear reactors being built in the country. This was the finding of a poll commissioned by the Finnish Broadcasting Company’s (YLE) news programme Yle Uutiset.
The poll looked into people’s attitudes towards more nuclear power resources being built after the country’s fifth nuclear reactor, which is currently under construction at Olkiluoto.
According to the poll conducted by the market research company Taloustutkimus, 53 per cent of the Finns are against further nuclear building while 34 per cent support the idea. Twelve per cent of the respondents could not or did not want to specify their view.
There was a clear distinction between the attitudes of women and men towards additional nuclear building.
Among women, some 68 percent were against it. The corresponding figure for men was 39%.
Half of the interviewed men - but only 19% of the women - were in favour of more nuclear power.
For the poll, 1007 Finns between the ages of 15 and 79 were interviewed at the turn of the month.
Finland currently has four operational nuclear reactors at Loviisa (Fortum, 2 x 488 MWe) and Olkiluoto (TVO, 2 x 860 MWe), and a fifth is being built on the Olkiluoto site.
This will be the first EPR (European Pressurized Water Reactor), with a capacity of 1600 MWe. It was scheduled to go into service from 2009, but delays have put commissioning back to 2011.
