AFP/Stockholm

Two ageing nuclear reactors at the Oskarshamn plant in southeastern Sweden will be decommissioned, the owner and operator OKG said on Wednesday.

The Oskarshamn 1 reactor will be closed between 2017 and 2019, while no date was provided for the closure of the Oskarshamn 2 reactor.

German energy group E.ON, the majority shareholder in OKG, had announced in June that it wanted to shut reactor 2 by 2020 because it was unprofitable, even though it was able to operate until at least 2030.

The reactor has been in service since 1974 and was built with an original lifespan of about 40 years. It was in need of a major modernisation if it was to continue beyond 2020, when new cooling requirements take effect.

The Oskarshamn 1 reactor entered into service in 1972.

Sweden currently has 10 reactors at three nuclear power plants, which generated 38 percent of the electricity used in the country in 2014.

The reactors were opened in the 1970s and 1980s and most of them are in need of modernisation.

Two other reactors at the Ringhals plant in southwestern Sweden are to be decommissioned in 2018 and 2020.

The Swedish government coalition, made up of the Social Democrats and the Greens, agreed in October 2014 to freeze nuclear energy development, while the previous centre-right government had been in favour of building new reactors.

Oskarshamn's third reactor is meanwhile expected to continue operations. It went online a decade after reactors 1 and 2, and could theoretically go on producing electricity until around 2035.

OKG's minority shareholder Fortum, a Finnish electricity company, said in September the closure of the two reactors would cost it 700 million euros ($800 million).

While environmental group Greenpeace hailed the announcement of the closures, OKG and E.ON said the decision was based purely on economic factors.

Sweden has already closed two other reactors, at the southern Barseback plant, in 1999 and 2005.