Swiss Review 6/2019

Swiss Review / November 2019 / No.6 19 Mühleberg nuclear power plant at twilight. Its lights will soon go off for good. Photo: Keystone dost on the Zurich side of the Zurich/Thurgau cantonal border. By 2022, test drilling will have revealedwhich placemerits further con- sideration. The approval process will also be put to a popular vote – probably in 2031. Switzerland’s final repository should then be ready by 2060. Other countries also lack final repositories for high-level radioac- tive waste. Work to build the world’s first-ever deep geological repos- itory in Olkiluoto, Finland, has been ongoing since 2016. This new fa- cility is due to begin operations in 2024. France is planning to build a final repository in the eastern department of Meuse, which will re- ceive highly radioactive, spent fuel-element waste from France’s 60 or so nuclear power plants. Low- and intermediate-level waste repos- itories exist in Finland, Sweden, South Korea, and Hungary. No nuclear revival Mühleberg is one of five nuclear power stations around theworld that will have been switched off by the end of the year. At the same time, nine new reactors – seven in China – have been connected to the grid. Nevertheless, fewer new installations are being built, according to the latest World Nuclear Industry Status Report. Whereas 68 projects were under construction in 2013, only 46 were ongoing in mid-2019. Experts believe that this is not enough to sustain nuclear energy in the long term. Despite having a positive carbon footprint, nuclear power is of little use as a means of fighting global warming, they say. Not only is nuclear the most expensive type of energy, it is also the slowest. Building a new nuclear power plant takes five to 17 years longer than installing a solar or wind power plant that would deliver the same output. Yet the Intergovernmental Panel onClimate Change believes that the next ten years will decide whether the goals of the Paris climate agreement can be achieved. Beznau – aged 50 and still running Switzerland’s oldest nuclear power station in Beznau (canton of Aargau) will turn 50 at the end of year. Unlike BKW, the plant operator Axpo is still committed to nuclear power. The Aargau-based energy group wants to continue running the two reactors on the banks of the River Aare for a further ten years and has invested 700 million francs on upgrades in recent years. Axpo calculates that some 300 million metric tons in CO 2 emissions have been saved in Beznau alone – compared to the average emissions of a brown-coal power station. Besides Beznau, the Gösgen nuclear power plant (on the grid since 1979) and Switzerland’s youngest and most powerful nuclear power plant in Leib- stadt (1984) continue to be connected to the grid. Nuclear power accounts for around one third of Swiss energy production. (TP)