Companies that build and repair bomb shelters are being ‘overwhelmed with enquiries’ for nuclear fallout bunkers in Switzerland, as Russian’s invasion of Ukraine has reawakened interest in the secure facilities.
Residents in Switzerland, where nuclear bunkers have been mandatory for every household since the 1960s, are now contacting the companies to build or renovate their shelters to make sure they can be protected in the event of bombings or nuclear war.
Demand is so high for the concrete nuclear bunkers that specialist companies are now facing shortages in raw materials required to build them………………………………………………………………….
Switzerland’s vast network of nuclear bunkers have a range of other day-to-day uses, including as military barracks or as temporary accommodation for asylum seekers. But Swiss authorities require that they can be emptied and reverted back to nuclear shelters within five days.
So far, Switzerland’s population has never been ordered down into the shelters, not even in the wake of the Chernobyl disaster.
Experts say the most likely scenario for needing to use them has always been a possible accident at one of Switzerland’s own nuclear power plants.
But now the conflict raging in Ukraine has added a new, urgent layer to the national nuclear anxiety.
With public concern growing, Swiss authorities have published overviews of the available shelter spots, and have urged households to always maintain a stock of food to last at least a week. ………………………………..
Experts caution though that the level of protection provided by the shelters in the case of actual nuclear weapons use would depend heavily on the intensity and proximity of the strikes.
‘The shelters could offer the population a certain level of temporary protection against radioactive events,’ Swiss defence ministry spokesman Andreas Bucher said.
Straits Times SAINT-URSANNE, SWITZERLAND (AFP) 10 Apr 22, – Storing radioactive waste above ground is a risky business, but the Swiss think they have found the solution: Burying spent nuclear fuel deep underground in clay.
The Mont Terri international laboratory was built to study the effects of burying radioactive waste in clay which sits 300m below the surface near Saint-Ursanne in the northwestern Jura region.
The underground laboratory stretches across 1.2km of tunnels.
Niches along the way, each around 5m high, are filled with various storage simulations, containing small quantities of radioactive material monitored by thousands of sensors.
More than 170 experiments have been carried out to simulate the different phases of the process – positioning the waste, sealing off the tunnels, surveillance – and to reproduce every imaginable physical and chemical effect.
According to experts, it takes 200,000 years for the radioactivity in the most toxic waste to return to natural levels……..
Three prospective sites in the northeast, near the German border, have been identified to receive such radioactive waste.
Switzerland’s nuclear plant operators are expected to choose their preferred option in September.
The Swiss government is not due to make the final decision until 2029, but that is unlikely to be the last word as the issue would probably go to a referendum under Switzerland’s famous direct democracy system.
Despite the drawn-out process, environmental campaigners Greenpeace say Switzerland is moving too fast.
“There are a myriad of technical questions that have not been resolved,” Mr Florian Kasser, in charge of nuclear issues for the environmental activist group, told AFP.
For starters, he said, it remains to be seen if the systems in place can “guarantee there will be no radioactive leakage in 100, 1,000 or 100,000 years”.
“We are putting the cart before the horse, because with numerous questions still unresolved, we are already looking for sites” to host the storage facilities, he said.
Mr Kasser said Switzerland also needed to consider how it will signal where there sites are to ensure they are not forgotten, and that people many centuries from now remain aware of the dangers.
Swiss nuclear power plants have been pumping out radioactive waste for more than half a century.
Until now, it has been handled by the National Cooperative for the Disposal of Radioactive Waste, or NAGRA, founded in 1972 by the plant operators in conjunction with the state.
For now, the waste is being stored in an “intermediary depot” in Wurenlingen, some 15km from the German border.
Switzerland hopes to join an elite club of countries closing in on deep geological storage……………….
Following the 2011 nuclear accident at the Fukushima power station in Japan, Switzerland decided to phase out nuclear power gradually: Its reactors can continue for as long as they remain safe.
A projected 83,000 cubic metres of radioactive waste, including some high activity waste, will have to be buried.
This volume corresponds to a 60-year operating life of the Beznau, Gosgen and Leibstadt nuclear power plants, and the 47 years that Muhleberg was in operation before closing in 2019.
Filling in the underground nuclear waste tombs should begin by 2060…….
Nuclear bunkers for all: Switzerland is ready as international tensions mount , euronews, By Charlotte Lam & AFP 03/04/2022 Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has reawakened interest in Switzerland’s concrete nuclear fallout shelters, built during the Cold War with enough space to shelter everyone in the country
Nuclear bunkers for all: Switzerland is ready as international tensions mount , euronews, By Charlotte Lam & AFP 03/04/2022 Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has reawakened interest in Switzerland’s concrete nuclear fallout shelters, built during the Cold War with enough space to shelter everyone in the country.
Since the 1960s, every Swiss municipality has had to build nuclear bunkers for their residents – and they’re mandatory in large homes and residential buildings.
“I think this shelter system makes sense,” says Marie-Claude Noth-Ecoeur, who heads civil and military security services in the mountainous southern Wallis region.
“We remember the problems that occurred at Fukushima because there was a time when the Federal Chambers wanted to remove shelters but then Fukushima happened. We realise that there are nuclear power plants in Switzerland and in Europe. So yes, this is useful, it was designed for that and I think we must keep them, at least with what is happening in the world, we must keep them in a state of readiness.”
The shelters have become an integral part of the Swiss identity, on par with the country’s famous chocolate, banks and watches…………
The wealthy Alpine country has pledged that each and every resident will have a shelter space if needed. The country of 8.6 million people counts nearly nine million spaces across 365,000 private and public shelters.
But while there are more than enough spots at a national level, there are vast regional differences. Geneva is worst off, with only enough places for 75 per cent of its population.
Nicola Squillaci, head of Geneva’s civil protection and military affairs division, said the shelters were conceived to provide protection “, especially in the case of a bombing and a nuclear attack”…………..
Switzerland’s vast network of nuclear bunkers have a range of other day-to-day uses, including as military barracks or as temporary accommodation for asylum seekers.
Use of Russian uranium for Swiss nuclear power under scrutiny, Russia’s state-owned nuclear firm Rosatom helps fuel two nuclear power plants in Switzerland. That commercial link is now under scrutiny as the Western world puts financial pressure on Russia to stop its aggression against Ukraine. Swiss Info March 31, 2022
Swiss electricity company Axpo purchases fuel from Rosatom to operate the Beznau and Leibstadt nuclear power plants in canton Aargau.
In a statement published on Thursday, the environmental NGO Greenpeace urged the authorities of seven Swiss cantons – which own Axpo – to stop buying uranium from Rosatom.
This commercial relationship, the NGO argued, helps to finance Russia’s war effort in Ukraine. Competitor company Alpiq, which runs the Gösgen nuclear site, stopped sourcing from Russia in 2016.
………………………………….. Of Switzerland’s four nuclear reactors, only Gösgen, operated by the company Alpiq, does not buy Russian uranium. Alpiq said this decision was taken in 2016 due to considerations about environmental compatibility and supply chain transparency………..
By paying for Russian uranium – Switzerland could also indirectly help finance Russia’s military apparatus. SRF points that Rosatom is the manufacturer of Russia’s warheads and now controls the operation of various Ukrainian nuclear power plants, such as at Zaporizhia, seized after fighting on March 4. https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/use-of-russian-uranium-for-swiss-nuclear-power-under-scrutiny/47479722
Boursorama 27th April 2021, Nuclear: the city of Geneva calls for the closure of the French power plant in Bugey. Located about 70 kilometers as the crow flies from Geneva, it is accused by the cantonal and municipal authorities of Geneva of causing serious danger to the population because of its obsolescence.
Nuclear withdrawal was thanks to women, says former energy minister,https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/nuclear-withdrawal-was-thanks-to-women–says-former-energy-minister/464238545 Mar 21, Having four women in Switzerland’s seven-person government played a key role in the decision to phase out nuclear energy ten years ago, according to Doris Leuthard, who was energy minister at the time of the nuclear disaster in Fukushima on March 11, 2011.
The three other female cabinet ministers at the time were Micheline Calmy-Rey and Simonetta Sommaruga from the left-wing Social Democratic Party and Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf from the centre-right Conservative Democratic Party.Leuthard, from the centre-right Christian Democratic Party, admitted that she didn’t immediately realise the scale of the disaster at Fukushima.
“My first reaction was to say that that’s very far away from us, in Japan, in a country that deals seriously and professionally with events of this kind. I didn’t realise right away that it was a major disaster,” she told Le Temps.
In an interviewExternal link with Swiss newspaper Le Temps on Thursday, Leuthard said she would have had a hard time convincing men on the political right to abandon nuclear power.
“I think women are generally more sensitive to the environment and to the risks to which the population is exposed. When safety is at stake, they are willing to look at new solutions, even if it means paying a little more. They were more quickly convinced that we could opt for a new energy mix,” said Leuthard, who stepped down from the government at the end of 2018.
Only gradually did it become clear how serious the disaster was and that Switzerland had to act. On March 14 the government imposed a moratorium on nuclear projects.
“It was a decision that had to be taken quickly because, at the time, we intended to replace the three oldest [nuclear] plants with a modern, new-generation facility. We had to carry out a new risk analysis and see whether we could maintain the nuclear option in our energy policy. We informed the owners of the Swiss power plants, who had submitted applications to build this new-generation facility. It was a difficult moment, as our decision could cause them significant damage. […] I must admit that I didn’t sleep very well for two nights.”
In the end Switzerland did decide in 2011 to phase out nuclear power, which supplies about a third of the country’s electricity production.
In 2017 Swiss voters endorsed a new energy law that aims to promote renewable energy by banning new nuclear power plants and reducing energy consumption.
In December 2019 the 47-year-old Mühleberg nuclear power plant near Bern was permanently switched off – the first of five Swiss nuclear power reactors to be decommissioned. The event was considered so important that viewers could follow the progress live on Swiss television.
Technical problem shuts down Swiss nuclear power station,SwissInfoCh, 29 Dec 19, The Leibstadt nuclear power station in northern Switzerland has been disconnected from the power grid and shut down because of a technical fault.
Once the cause has been clarified, the plant will be put back into operation as soon as possible, the operator said. It is not clear when that will be. ……
Transducers replaced
Two reactor shutdowns had already occurred at Leibstadt in April and May 2019. Both had the same cause. According to ENSI a malfunctioning transducer led to incorrect values in a channel of the main steam pressure measuring system. These triggered a rapid closure of the turbine inlet valves.
Switzerland to shut down first nuclear reactor le News18/12/2019 BY LE NEWS
On 20 December 2019, Switzerland will shut down the Mühleberg nuclear reactor in the canton of Bern. The plant went into operation in 1972, making it the nation’s second oldest nuclear power station after Beznau, which started its first reactor in 1969.
The Mühleberg power station, which takes its cooling water from the Aare river, was originally scheduled for shutdown in 2012. This date was later extended to 2019. Fissures in the mantle surrounding the reactor and rising operating costs mean the plant is no longer economically viable.
Groups concerned about the safety of the reactor are celebrating. The safety justification for the nation and it neighbours for shutting down this reactor has existed for a long time, according to Philippe de Rougemont, a spokesperson for the group Sortir du nucléaire, a group that organised an unsuccessful referendum in 2016 to precipitate the phaseout of Switzerland’s nuclear power industry.
The Mühleberg reactor, which is the closest Swiss reactor to Lausanne and Geneva, must now be decommissioned. Radioactive material must be cooled, processed and disposed of safely. The organisation Sortir du nucléaire said it will keep a close eye on this process, which it considers a major risk.
Switzerland has five nuclear reactors on four sites. After the 2011 nuclear accident at Fukushima in Japan, the Federal Council, Switzerland’s executive, said it would build no new nuclear reactors and decommission existing nuclear power plants at the end of their safe operational lifespans. It estimated the safe operational lifespan to be about 50 years, which means Beznau I would be taken offline in 2019, Beznau II and Mühleberg in 2022, Gösgen in 2029 and Leibstadt in 2034. However, the government made no commitment to close any nuclear reactor by a specific date. The Federal Council was supported by parliamentary and upper house majorities……. https://lenews.ch/2019/12/18/switzerland-to-shut-down-first-nuclear-reactor/
The world’s oldest nuclear power plant, By Jack UnwinPower Technology, 16 Oct 19, A look at Beznau nuclear power plant in Switzerland, the world’s oldest nuclear power plant currently in operation…….
Construction on the plant began in 1965 and Beznau 1 began producing power on 1 September 1969, with Beznau 2 following in 1972. It has two pressurised water reactors (PWR) built by Westinghouse with a capacity of 365MW each, for a total capacity of 730MW and able to produce 6000 gigawatt-hours (GWh) of energy. The plant is owned and operated by Swiss private company Axpo Holdings.
Accidents will happenDespite its long run producing power, Beznau has been no stranger to accidents at its site. According to the Swiss Federal Nuclear Safety Inspectorate, there were 91 nuclear security incidents between 1995 and 2014.
However 86 of these were at level 0 on the International Nuclear Event Scale (INES), the least severe on its scale. Four were at level 1 and one in 2009 that was level 2, when two workers at the plant were exposed to “inadmissible” levels of radiation .
Protestors in Switzerland have targeted Beznau in particular, and nuclear power in general. Following the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan in 2011, 20,000 protestors gathered in the town of Doettingen to condemn Beznau in the largest anti-nuclear protest in the country for 25 years.
In 2014 100 Greenpeace activists broke into Beznau and scaled one of the buildings at the site with a banner proclaiming “the end” of nuclear power due to safety concerns for the ageing plant.
Despite still producing power and being one of five nuclear plants that form35% of Switzerland’s energy mix, Beznau and nuclear power itself is under threat.
Switzerland will instead develop renewable energy from wind, solar and hydropower as part of its Energy Strategy 2050 plan. Meanwhile there will be no new general licenses for nuclear power plants, but old plants like Beznau will continue to run until they are decommissioned…..https://www.power-technology.com/features/worlds-oldest-nuclear-power-plant/
The Federal Court rejected an appeal by SECO which had refused to transfer detailed information to a journalist from the WOZ newspaper on companies that had filed arms exports requests in 2014.
In a decision published on Wednesdayexternal link, the court backed an earlier ruling by the Federal Administrative Court on behalf of the WOZ journalist, who had filed a freedom of information request.
Last March, the Federal Administrative Court had ruled in favour of the journalist, stating that it was public interest to ensure greater transparency and information on arms exports and that the media played an important role in holding the authorities to account in this regard.
SECO had argued that, in accordance with the law on war materiel, only the parliamentary oversight committee should be sent the details on Swiss arms exports. It said that publishing details on arms exports could also displease importing countries.
However, the Federal Court said publishing such information was not a threat for Switzerland’s interests. If there is no business secret involved, SECO must publish the firms’ names.
Hot topic
Rules governing arms exports and calls for greater transparency remain a hot topic in Switzerland. In 2008 the government tightened rules on arms exports; in 2014 it relaxed them on behalf of parliament.
In October 2018 the government abandoned plans to ease Swiss weapons exports following a public outcry.
In December 2018 campaigners started collecting signatures for a people’s initiative to prevent the Swiss government from relaxing rules for exporting arms to conflict-ridden states.
What a Swiss nuclear disaster could do to Europe, Swissinfo.ch , BySusan Misicka, MAY 21, 2019– If there were to be a serious accident at one of Switzerland’s nuclear reactors, many of the radiation victims would be residents of other countries.
A Swiss-led study has calculated the potential effect of nuclear meltdowns on the health of people living nearby. Its focus is on how meteorology and geography would influence the movement of a radioactive cloud.
For example, this clip [on original] illustrates how the weather conditions on January 19, 2017 would have shaped the aftermath of an accident at the Gösgen reactor between Bern and Zurich.
The study was led by Frédéric-Paul Piguet at Institut Biosphèreexternal link, an interdisciplinary research institute in Geneva. Piguet and his team examined the accident risk at Switzerland’s five nuclear power plants, which fall between Fukushima and Chernobyl in terms of size. This includes 50-year-old Beznau I in northern Switzerland, the oldest nuclear reactor in the world.
The research team used the weather conditions throughout 2017 to calculate the fallout of disasters at the Swiss reactors and concluded that 16-24 million Europeans would be affected by a nuclear meltdown in Switzerland, which itself has a population of 8.5 million. They reckoned that 12,500-31,100 people would die on account of cancer and heart problems caused by the radiation. On top of that, there would be additional health problems, including genetic maladies and sterility.
Fifty years ago today, a nuclear meltdown occurred in Switzerland’s first experimental nuclear power station. Built in an underground chamber in Lucens in the western part of the country, it was the site of the worst nuclear accident in Swiss history.
The plant was opened in 1962, with the aim of not only producing energy, but also allowing Switzerland to develop a reactor bearing the “Made in Switzerland” label and enabling experiments with nuclear energy.
But these plans were pushed aside when disaster struck in the plant’s reactor cavity on January 21, 1969. A pressure tube burst which created a power surge leading to the reactor malfunctioning and an explosion. Luckily, a member of staff who was scheduled to be working on the reactor at the time was found safe and sound elsewhere. The plant’s underground design also prevented people and the environment from being harmed.
The accident’s severity registered at 5 out of a possible 7. The concentration of leaked cooling gas that was behind the door of the reactor cavity was lethal. It wasn’t even possible to measure the radioactivity because it was above the maximum level on the measuring instruments.
But the reactor cavern was not completely sealed: the radioactivity spread to the control room 100 metres away. In the machine cavern closest to the reactor, a team involved in shutting down the turbine had been exposed to radiation. A witness report said that since the decontamination showers had been out of order, the workers had to shower in a temporary facility without hot water.
The government ordered an inquiry into the incident and a report was eventually published ten years later. The Swiss Association for Atomic Energy found there had been no major negligence on the part of the plant’s managers. The cause of the incident was corrosion in a pressure tube, brought about by humidity.
Government under pressure to sign nuclear ban treaty, SWISS INFO.CH DEC 12, 2018 Parliament has urged the Swiss government to ratify a United Nations accord banning nuclear arms and to submit it to a political debate for approval.The Senate on Wednesday followed the House of Representatives approving a formal call thereby overruling a government decision earlier in the year not to sign the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW).
Supporters said failure to sign the accord sent a negative message to the international community and undermined Switzerland’s credibility as a champion of humanitarian law………
The TPNW will enter into force when at least 50 countries ratify it. Signatories have obligations not to develop, test, produce, acquire, possess, stockpile, use or threaten to use nuclear weapons. The agreement also prohibits the deployment of nuclear weapons on national territory and assistance to any country involved in prohibited activities.
The Mühleberg Nuclear Power Plant in the canton of Bern has announced it is reducing its output due to the rising temperature in the river Aar, which cools the plant’s reactors.
The plant this week announced it has reduced its energy production by more than 10 per cent because of the record temperatures in Switzerland. The hottest summer since 1864 has seen water temperatures in many water bodies rise above 23 degrees Celsius, threatening aquatic fauna, and now energy supplies.
“We have reduced the reactors’ power to 89 per cent,” Tobias Habegger, a spokesman for the BKW Group, the energy company that manages the plant, told Swiss news portal 20 Minutes.
The Mühleberg Nuclear Power Plant is obliged by law to reduce production once temperatures in the Aar river exceed 20.5 degrees Celsius. This is the second reduction – already on July 5th the power plant was ordered to reduce production as a safety precaution, according to the same report.
The nuclear power station in Mühleberg is the first to have had to curtail production because of the current heatwave. The nearby power plant in Beznau is functioning normally. That plant only has to take similar safety precautions once temperatures in the Aar river exceed 32 Celsius.
The Mühleberg Nuclear Power Plant, which has been active since 1972, will be the first in Switzerland to be disconnected as of December 2019, according to a statement by the BKW Group.
Abnormal bugs found around Swiss nuclear power plants http://www.beyondnuclear.org/home/2018/7/11/abnormal-bugs-found-around-swiss-nuclear-power-plants.html A new study, believed to be the first to investigate health effects on insects near operating nuclear power plants, has found a highly significant twofold increase in morphological malformations on true bugs in the 5 km vicinity of three Swiss nuclear power stations.
The study — Morphological Abnormalities in True Bugs (Heteroptera) near Swiss Nuclear Power Stations — was conducted by Alfred Körblein, a physicist and authority on the health impacts of low-dose radiation, and Cornelia Hesse-Honegger, who has studied and painted insects affected by the Chernobyl nuclear accident. (You can read more about Hesse-Honegger’s work here.) Earlier studies on wildlife around Chernobyl and Fukushima found large and highly statistically significant incidences of radiation-induced mutation rates. Due to its ecological design, however, the Swiss study cannot answer the question whether the effect is caused by radiation from nuclear power plants. However, given the results, the researchers are calling for future studies to confirm their findings. Read the study.
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