Swiss chemicals lab renews IAEA partnership

Spiez Laboratory: strengthened partnership with IAEA Keystone-SDA

The Spiez Laboratory, which is celebrating its 100th anniversary in Switzerland, has been reconfirmed as the International Atomic Energy Agency's (IAEA) collaboration centre for four years.

+Get the most important news from Switzerland in your inbox

In this context, it will continue to monitor the Fukushima disaster.

Director General of the IAEA, Rafael Mariano Grossi, today presented Swiss government minister Martin Pfister with a plaque certifying the renewal of this designation, said the Federal Office for Civil Protection (FOCP), which oversees the Spiez Laboratory.

+ Working to counter weapons of mass destruction

With the renewal of the designation as a ‘collaborating centre’, the IAEA confirms the current partnership and extends the recognition as a laboratory of trust for another four years.

An IAEA Collaborating Centre since 2016, as a trusted laboratory the Spiez Laboratory makes its expertise in the analysis of radionuclides in environmental samples available to the International Atomic Energy Agency in particular. It also regularly participates in international missions in the field of environmental safety, collaborates in comparative tests and measurements, and organises training courses.

The renewal of the designation is an opportunity to define, together with the IAEA, the programme of the Spiez Laboratory’s activities as a collaboration centre for the period 2025-2028.

One of the main tasks planned is the monitoring of environmental safety in the areas affected by the accident at the Fukushima nuclear reactor. The Spiez Laboratory will therefore continue to participate in the collection and analysis of samples of the water discharged into the sea at Fukushima after the clean-up.

The IAEA provides a platform for promoting Switzerland’s multilateral engagement in the nuclear field. Its activities as an IAEA competence centre enable the Spiez Laboratory to gather valuable operational experience, to expand and strengthen its network of international contacts in the field of NBC protection, and to make important contributions to Switzerland’s ‘good offices’.

The ceremony to renew the designation of the Spiez Laboratory as an IAEA Collaboration Centre took place as part of Grossi’s two-day visit to the Swiss Confederation, during which he was awarded the title of Doctor honoris causa by the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL). After the designation ceremony, Grossi participated as keynote speaker in the centenary celebration of the Spiez Laboratory.

Translated from Italian 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]