Swiss nuclear power plant decommissioning reaches halfway mark

Mühleberg power plant decommissioning at the halfway stage Keystone-SDA

The first decommissioning of a nuclear power plant in Switzerland, at Mühleberg, is halfway complete.

+Get the most important news from Switzerland in your inbox

Work on the 11-year project is proceeding according to plan.

+ Could Switzerland build new nuclear power plants?

Of the 13,000 tonnes of metal structures, 6,700 have already left the shutdown nuclear power plant, Stefan Klute, project manager for the decommissioning, told the Keystone-ATS news agency.

Decommissioning of BKW’s nuclear power plant began in January 2020. By the end of 2030, all radioactive materials should have been removed from the plant and the actual dismantling of the nuclear power plant should be complete.

+ Is nuclear energy poised for a comeback?

Although the way in which a nuclear power plant is dismantled is internationally tried and tested, this work nevertheless has a certain pioneering character, according to Klute.

“As far as the necessary administrative procedures are concerned, we are pioneering the way for subsequent decommissioning projects,” he said.

What is your opinion? Join the debate:

Translated from French by DeepL/mga

How we work

We select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools to translate them into English. A journalist then reviews the translation for clarity and accuracy before publication.  

Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles. The news stories we select have been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team from news agencies such as Bloomberg or Keystone.

If you have any questions about how we work, write to us at [e-mail]