The damaged Fukushima site (2011): the realisation that even an advanced technological nation like Japan couldn’t guarantee nuclear safety had a strong influence on public sentiment in Switzerland. Photo: Keystone The nuclear energy paradox: on the one hand, the people have said yes to phasing out atomic energy; on the other hand Switzerland operates the world’s oldest nuclear plant, Beznau I. Reactor operators doing inspection work in May 2024. Photo: Keystone their respective capacities. The new government in the Netherlands plans to start construction on four new nuclear plants as soon as possible. And nuclear power is still the main energy source in France. Dependency on Russia The plot grows thicker. More nuclear power plants would reduce the dependency on coal or gas-powered energy. Some of the gas used to power plants in Switzerland still comes from Russia, as does some of the uranium for the nuclear plants. According to energy foundation Schweizerische Energie-Stiftung (SES), which opposes nuclear energy, 45 per cent of nuclear power and 15 per cent of Switzerland’s entire energy are sourced from Russian uranium. At least 7.5 per cent of that comes from Russian state enterprise Rosatom. Efforts are underway in the EU to change this situation. However, dependency has increased over the short term. Imports of Russian uranium to EU member states have increased markedly since the start of the Ukraine war. Proponents of nuclear power also have something else in their favour besides the climate policy and geopolitical situation in Europe: Switzerland has finally located a site, Stadel in the canton of Zurich, where radioactive waste can be stored for good. The end storage site has not yet been finalised. However, the opposition in Stadel is considerably weaker than before as the storage site municipality and the canton have practically no more legal avenues to pursue in opposition to the siting ruling. The National Cooperative for the Disposal of Radioactive Waste (Nagra) will submit a planning application to the Confederation this year. But the devil is, as always, in the detail. The planned deep geological repository is only designed for waste from plants already in existence, as Nagra pointed out in a recent report. New nuclear power plants were not factored into the site’s capacity. The anti-nuclear camp has been quick to point out the inherent absurdity of the situation: a second end storage site would be needed for the radioactive waste from new nuclear plants, while the first storage site still awaits approval. The nuclear lobby argues that the deep geological repository at the planned site would simply have to be much larger than originally thought. Plans for a low waste reactor Geneva company Transmutex is working on something that adds credence to the nuclear lobby’s position. It is developing a nuclear plant that runs without uranium and significantly reduces the waste coming from the reactors. The technology is called transmutation and it involves the reactor burning thorium instead of uranium. Experts say transmutation would reduce the volume of longlived, highly radioactive waste by a factor of 100. Instead, it would yield more short-lived fission products, which are also highly radioactive and need to be stored in an end storage site for several centuries at least. In other words, Switzerland needs its repository come what may, although the storage duration would be much shorter for the Transmutex reactors. Still, for the time being the system only exists on paper. Nuclear experts anticipate it will be fit for construction from 2035. It would take much longer than that for a new nuclear plant to be connected to the Swiss grid. The Federal Council has in principle only decided to initiate its withdrawal from the previous withdrawal. The counterproposal will be submitted for consultation this year. The parliament will then Swiss Review / December 2024 / No.6 6 Focus
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