7 Mar (NucNet): The government of Switzerland’s canton of Bern has proposed to negotiate with owner-operator BKW-FMB Energie AG (BKW) on the permanent shutdown of the 373-megawatt Mühleberg boiling water reactor as soon as possible and by 2022 at the latest.
In a statement yesterday the canton government said it had made the proposal as an alternative to a cantonal citizens’ initiative , or referendum, calling for the canton, which owns 52 percent of BKW, to oblige the utility to close the unit “immediately”.
BKW said in a statement that its long-term strategy assumes the closure of Mühleberg in 2022, but added it was reviewing all scenarios and would decide by the end of 2013. Shutdown of the reactor in 2022 is “a possible solution”, the company said.
Mühleberg, which began commercial operation in November 1972, is one of the oldest reactors in Switzerland.
After the Fukushima-Daiichi accident in 2011, the Swiss federal government and parliament voted to ban new-build reactors and to close the existing five units at the end of their useful lifetimes.
The canton said it would run “significant liability risks” up to “hundreds of millions” of francs, if it forced closure because other BKW shareholders could be expected to sue for damages. Coordinating closure with BKW would lower the risk for the canton, it said.
Immediate closure would also contradict national energy policy, which favours an orderly phase-out, it said.
In January 2013, the Swiss Federal Chancellery said that 107,533 of the 108,227 signatures on an earlier, popular initiative submitted by the Green Party for a partial revision of the federal constitution on the phase-out of nuclear energy were valid, meaning that measure will be put to a nationwide vote.
This initiative calls for a mandatory 45-year operating limit for the country’s nuclear reactors. If the initiative is adopted by voters, it would mean there would be no nuclear power production in Switzerland after 2029, when the single-unit Leibstadt plant – the last in the country to begin commercial operation – will have been operational for 45 years.
The initiative calls for substituting renewable generation for nuclear power and for an energy policy emphasising efficiency.
The initiative must be put before federal government and parliament before it is goes to a nationwide vote.
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