CONSULTING

2019. 839 In December 2015, BKW officially began the closure procedure. According to current
planning, the Federal Energy Department will take the formal shutdown decision by the middle
of 2018 840 and in March 2016, BKW communicated the date, when Mühleberg will be
disconnected from the grid as the 20 December 2019. 841
The nuclear operators in Switzerland, like their colleagues in other countries, are struggling with
increasing production costs at aging facilities, decreasing bulk power prices and stiff competition.
Beznau operator AXPO filed a loss of CHF1 billion in 2015. The leak of an internal strategy paper
of Alpiq, besides AXPO the largest shareholder of the two reactors at Leibstadt and Gösgen,
revealed the utilities' ambitions for a nationalization of the loss-making reactors. 842 Hans Wanner,
Director of ENSI, started his presentation at the Swiss Energy Foundation's Nuclear Phaseout
Congress in March 2016 with the following statement over a full slide: “We must not allow political
and economic considerations to have a negative impact on the safety of the Swiss NPP.” 843
Until 3/11, the nuclear phase-out option never gained a sufficient majority, but the “Swiss-style”
referenda have maintained an effective moratorium on any new project over long periods of time.
Fukushima had a very significant impact in Switzerland. On 8 June 2011, the Swiss parliament
voted in favor of the phase-out of nuclear power in the country at the end of the projected lifetime
of the last operating reactor in 2034.
Since then, a number of initiatives have attempted to modify the schedule, seeking either to
accelerate or to slow down the process. While there seems to be a durable consensus in the
country that any new-build initiative is off the table, the Government has initiated a process called
Energy Strategy 2050 that does not fix any precise shutdown dates and aims to keep the existing
reactors operating “as long as they are safe”. On 26 January 2016, the Energy Commission of the
Federal Assembly voted on the issue, in order to “eliminate divergences”. A majority voted in favor
of not limiting reactor lifetimes in the framework of the Energy Strategy 2050. 844 A new nuclear
phase-out initiative has been launched by various organizations and will be lead to a national
referendum on 27 November 2016. The initiative aims at the ultimate constitutional prohibition
of the operation of nuclear power plants and a lifetime limitation of 45 years for the operating
units, except for Beznau-1, that should be closed at the latest one year after the adoption of the
constitutional change. 845
839 ENSI, “Forderungen des ENSI für den Weiterbetrieb des Kernkraftwerks Mühleberg bis zur
endgültigen Ausserbetriebnahme im Jahr 2019”, 23 January 2015.
840 Office Fédéral de l'Énergie (OFEN), “Calendrier et explications—1er Procédure de désaffectation de la
centrale nucléaire de Mühleberg”, 4 April 2016.
841 BKW, “Kernkraftwerk Mühleberg geht am 20. Dezember 2019 definitiv vom Netz”, 2 March 2016, see
http://www.bkw.ch/en/about-us/press-releases/detail/news/detail/News/kernkraftwerk-muehleberg-gehtam-20-dezember-2019-definitiv-vom-netz,
accessed 15 June 2016.
842 Alpiq Public Affairs Konzept 2016, First Draft, see http://www.pdf-archive.com/2016/03/19/alpiqkonzept/preview/page/1/,
accessed 21 June 2016.
843 Hans Wanner, “Umgang mit älter werdenden Reaktoren”, ENSI, 21 March 2016, see
www.energiestiftung.ch/files/pdf/20160321_npc_hans_wanner.pdf, accessed 18 June 2016.
844 Swiss Federal Assembly, “Pas de durée d'exploitation limitée pour les centrales nucléaires suisses”,
Press Release, 26 January 2016, (in French), see https://www.parlament.ch/press-releases/Pages/2016/mmurek-n-2016-01-26.aspx,
accessed 2 July 2016.
845 SES-Magazin Energie & Umwelt, “Die Bevölkerung muss sich vor den alten AKW selber schützen”,
April 2016, see http://www.energiestiftung.ch/files/pdf/e-u_2_2016_web.pdf, accessed 15 June 2016.
Mycle Schneider, Antony Froggatt et al. 198 World Nuclear Industry Status Report 2016