A step has been taken in the creation of a radioactive waste storage site in Switzerland. The municipality of Stadel, north of Zurich, was chosen in 2022 to host a “deep” nuclear dump, dug up to 900 meters underground. Nagra, the company responsible for implementing this project, submitted the necessary applications to the Federal Office for the Environment (SFOE) on Tuesday morning.
The file contains thousands of pages and also concerns the fuel element conditioning installation on the site of the current centralized intermediate depot in Würenlingen (AG). You will have to be patient to know the position of the Confederation. The latter evokes “the end of the decade” so that the file is transmitted to the Federal Chambers. If the latter are in favor, a referendum will still be possible. For the moment, it is planned that waste from Swiss nuclear power plants can be buried around 2060.
But we won’t have to wait until then to find out if the project is contested. Residents of Stadel quickly expressed their fears. Several scientific and political figures have followed suit and are organizing resistance. They warn of the risks and ask that the local population be able to vote first, and without delay. “This is a project with implications for a million years, or 30,000 generations,” insisted physicist Harald Jenny last week.
In an interview published Tuesday in the “NZZ”, Nagra boss Matthias Braun said he welcomed the emergence of a debate: “A project of this magnitude requires not only a technical examination, but also democratic legitimation .” A survey carried out at the start of the year showed that 66% of Swiss were not opposed to the creation of such a depot near their home. The inhabitants of Stadel had shown themselves in favor of nuclear energy during votes, but some were afraid when their municipality was chosen for the landfill to be built there.
Several Swiss universities have investigated whether the return of an ice age several millennia from now could affect a radioactive waste dump, which is supposed to be safe for a million years. Analyzes at the Stadel site (ZH) showed that the deep layers had not been eroded by the glaciers when they reached the Swiss Plateau. “According to current knowledge, even an exceptional advance of the Rhine and Linth glacier would not be enough to dislodge nuclear waste,” where the storage site is planned, the Confederation said last week.
