nuclear-news

Swiss referendum might bring earlier shutdown for nuclear power

Swiss to vote on new proposal for phase out
http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/NP-Swiss_to_vote_on_phase_out_initiative-1801134.html
18 January 2013
A Green-led initiative to phase out the use of nuclear energy in
Switzerland by 2029 has secured enough support for a national
referendum on the issue to be held. A date for the vote has yet to be
announced.

The Swiss Federal Chancellery announced that the initiative, filed on
16 November 2012, has now formally ended. It said that it had
validated 107,533 of the 108,227 signatures submitted, noting that
this exceeds the 100,000 needed for an initiative to be put to a
referendum.

Switzerland’s federal government has already decided to phase out the
five nuclear reactors which generate 40% of the country’s electricity
by not replacing them with new nuclear capacity at the end of their
anticipated working lives. The decision came in response to the March
2011 accident at Fukushima Daiichi and would effectively see all of
Switzerland’s nuclear power plants shut by 2035. However, legislation
to formalise that phase-out decision is still outstanding, as is an
energy policy that accommodates the loss of capacity.

The initiative for an earlier phase out was put forward by an alliance
of environmental groups, political parties, anti-nuclear organisations
and trade unions including the Green Party and Greenpeace Switzerland.
It seeks to impose a statutory limit of 45 years on the operating
lives of the country’s nuclear power plants and a ban on new
construction, which would result in Swiss nuclear power being phased
out slightly earler than the government plan, in 2029.

January 21, 2013 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics, Switzerland