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Early studies published in Ambio showed large-scale acidification of lakes in southern Sweden and Norway from acid rain. These studies were important for delimiting various scientific issues and thus for eventually contributing to legislation, which reduced emissions of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides and helped to mitigate this major environmental problem. Long-term studies and monitoring in Sweden and Norway and at Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest in New Hampshire helped guide this legislation in Europe and in the USA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2014, 25% of the sludge produced at Swedish municipal wastewater treatment plants was applied to agricultural land. Even though the Swedish heavy metal limits for sludge to be used in agriculture are amongst the most stringent in the EU, more stringent heavy metal limits are proposed. Most sludge applied to agricultural land is recycled within a certification system, Revaq. Revaq has targets for control at source management and improvement of sludge quality. Statistics based on data collected within the Revaq system was used to differentiate between local and general sources of heavy metals and assess the need to improve sludge quality. The analysis indicates that proposed future national limits on the quality of the sludge can be met by most of the sludge. The improvement needed for about 20% of the sludge is feasible through local control at source management. The levels of cadmium, copper and mercury need to be reduced if these metals are not to limit the amount of sludge that may be applied per unit area of arable land. Finally, the long term Revaq targets for cadmium and silver will be difficult to meet. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper studies the case of water pollution in Sweden, and how the city of Gothenburg had to struggle with this issue in order to secure a source of fresh water to satisfy its demand for drinking water. It is argued in the paper that the city employed a wide variety of strategies, ranging from water treatment to acquiring property rights over the watershed that provides its water. Most importantly, the city was interested in reducing the levels of pollution in the river, and consequently became a key stakeholder in the enforcement and implementation of effective environmental legislation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the long-standing association between the management of spent nuclear fuel in Sweden and the industry-led KBS (Karnbranslesakerhet/Nuclear Fuel Safety) research, development and demonstration project. This project was born under extraordinary circumstances during the 1970s when the future of nuclear power generation in Sweden was made conditional upon the nuclear industry's ability to publicly demonstrate the possibility of achieving 'absolute' nuclear fuel safety. Due to the success of the KBS project in bringing controversy to an end, and in winning the stamp of government approval for successive versions of its KBS concept, the achievement of nuclear fuel safety in Sweden has, for approaching 25 years now, centred on the stepwise implementation of the multi-barrier KBS-3 concept for the direct geological disposal of the nation's spent nuclear fuel. While the KBS-3 concept can be seen as representing a long-run victory of nuclear waste technology over conflictual nuclear politics in Sweden, this victory has remained incomplete so long as a site for a deep repository and the materialisation of the concept has remained undecided. Since 2002, the siting process has been re-centred on the KBS project's two historically preferred sites where Sweden's existing nuclear waste facilities are already clustered. As will be discussed in this paper, just when the KBS-3 concept appears close to fully materialising itself, it has run into yet another serious hurdle and an Environmental Impact Assessment process in respect of the Swedish Environmental Code - comprehensive environmental legislation introduced in 1999, more than 20 years after the KBS project was initiated. In facing this latest hurdle, it is becoming increasingly apparent that KBS-3, through the recent internationalisation of the Swedish nuclear industry, has outgrown its identity as a national solution to nuclear fuel safety, and is on the verge of mutating into a global platform in spent fuel/high-level waste management practice and technology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]