Beznau nuclear power plant, Switzerland.
The Beznau nuclear power plant in Switzerland, the oldest in Europe and one of the oldest in the world, will stop operating in 2033, its operator announced this Thursday, but Greenpeace calls for its immediate closure.
The Beznau plant has been connected to the electricity grid since 1969 and will remain so “until 2033”, declared the Swiss group Axpo, in , adding that “the safety was the top priority in all considerations”, but guarantees: “the Beznau nuclear power plant meets the most stringent safety requirements”.
The decision will not have any direct effect on electricity prices in Switzerland, says Axpo: “the plant will continue to reliably produce electricity with a low CO2 content for a long time”.
The Swiss approved the phase-out of nuclear energy, which represents 29% of the country’s electricity supplyin a referendum in 2017, voting in favor of a law that prohibits the construction of new power plants.
This law resulted from a long process initiated after the , caused by a tsunami in Japan in March 2011.
The Beznau 1 nuclear reactor, which came into operation in 1969, will stop operating in 2033, while Beznau 2, which has been connected to the grid since 1971, will close a year earlier, in 2032, and the plants “will then be deactivated and dismantled”Axpo added.
Axpo will invest a further 350 million Swiss francs (376 million euros) to guarantee operations until 2033. Since its entry into operation, the group has invested more than 2.5 billion Swiss francs (2.68 billion euros) in the improvement and modernization of Beznau.
The environmental association Greenpeace reacted to Axpo’s announcement in a press release, stating that “prolonging Beznau’s life” was “a useless and dangerous experiment.” “Beznau must be terminated immediately,” said Georg Klingler, climate and energy expert at Greenpeace Switzerland.
“The future lies in renewable energy, which reduces risks to the population, avoids the production of mountains of radioactive waste and reinforces our independence,” said the expert.
Switzerland hopes to join the very small club of countries capable of disposing of their nuclear waste in deep geological formations. A site in northern Switzerland, not far from the German border, has been chosen in 2022 but has not yet received the go-ahead from authorities.
