Germany Opposes Swiss Plans To Store Nuclear Waste Near Border

Switzerland has announced plans to construct a nuclear waste storage facility near the nation’s north-eastern border with Germany. The thought of Swiss nuclear waste sitting next to homes has worried local communities, especially those just across the German border, and raised potential security implications for the area’s water supply: the new waste facility could hamper water quality in the region, resulting in a lack of usable drinking water. While the proposition still requires official approval from the Swiss government, the leading power plant operators in the locality have already given the contentious move the go-ahead.

According to Patrick Studer, an official at the National Co-Operative for the Disposal of Radioactive Waste (Nagra) – the operator behind the proposal – safety would be guaranteed by embedding the nuclear waste in Opalinus Clay hundreds of meters beneath the ground. Nagra officially stated that “the required confinement time is around 200,000 years for high-level waste and around 30,000 for low-level and intermediate-level waste.”

However, not everybody shares Studer’s confidence. The German Federal Ministry for the Environment has criticized Switzerland’s decision to set up a nuclear waste repository in such close proximity to Germany. Christian Kühn, Parliamentary State Secretary in the Environment Ministry and Bundestag member for Baden-Württemberg, stated that the facility’s proximity to the southern German village of Hohentengen am Hochrhein “poses a problem both during the construction phase and during the operation” – so much so that Martin Steinebrunner, from the German co-ordination office for the planned waste facility, called protecting drinking water “a major concern for the population.”

The German cultural psyche has long endured a fractious relationship with the concept of nuclear energy, famously providing the world with the slogan Atomkraft? Nein, Danke in the 1980’s. This slogan became a rallying cry for anti-nuclear activists who opposed the storage of nuclear waste and felt that there was no plausible way to store clean nuclear power.

Sharp agitation over nuclear energy’s fatal potential asphyxiated any chance for Germany to see its supposed benefits. This opposition pervaded so deeply that thousands of protestors clashed with police during a demonstration against the Brokdorf nuclear power plant – commissioned in 1986 – in the German state of Schleswig-Holstein, near the nation’s northern border with Denmark.

Nuclear disasters in other parts of the world have further exacerbated Germany’s anti-nuclear position. Although times have changed and public resistance has softened, the German rejection of the Swiss facility shows that trepidation still lingers.

Nonetheless, good news remains: Switzerland has only announced plans, and the move has not yet been given the official seal of approval. Nagra has declared that it will submit an official planning application by 2024. Even if approved, construction on the facility would likely not begin until at least 2050. There is still time for Switzerland to reach the correct, most peaceable decision.

The project may still go ahead, but residents hope that the public backlash, along with the publicly-expressed governmental disquiet, will force the Swiss to renege on their controversial plans. It would appear that Switzerland has chosen the wrong country, and the wrong border, to reignite debates over nuclear energy with.

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