Germany seeks talks with Switzerland after choosing a nuclear waste landfill near the border
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced on Monday that Germany would seek talks with Switzerland on storing nuclear waste, at a time when Berlin warned that setting up a Swiss facility near the border would be a “heavy burden” for the population.
Scholz said during a press conference in Berlin that Germany would have to discuss the decision “through the usual channels with all officials of the Swiss government”.
Last Saturday, the Swiss authorities said they had chosen a site in the north of the country, not far from the German border, to set up a deep geological storage repository for radioactive waste.
A final decision on it won’t be taken before 2029, but it is unlikely that Germany will receive the announcement positively, given that the issue of nuclear energy has long been a very sensitive issue in the country and has its roots in the Cold War era.
A spokesman for Germany’s environment ministry said the location of the storage facility “would place a heavy burden on communities on the German side” of the border.
He added that talks had already begun with the Swiss government on “compensation for regional development”.
After nearly 50 years of searching for the best way to store its radioactive waste, Switzerland is preparing for the “Project of the Century” based on burying nuclear fuel that was spent in clay deep in the earth.
Like Germany, Switzerland plans to phase out nuclear power, following the 2011 Fukushima disaster in Japan.
The Swiss authorities considered the site they chose in Nordlich-Legern to be “the safest for the establishment of a deep geological repository”.
A spokesman for the Environment Ministry indicated that German officials would evaluate the Swiss decision, without specifying a time frame for reaching a conclusion.
He stated that while the facility would be “a few kilometers” from the border, certain “surface buildings” would only be two kilometers from German territory.
Currently, Swiss nuclear waste is stored in an “intermediate warehouse” in Vogenlingen, about 15 kilometers from the German border.
