Council of States committee wants to re-authorise new nuclear power plant construction
Keystone-SDA
A majority in the responsible committee in the Swiss Senate would like to allow the construction of new nuclear power plants again. It has voted in favour of a counter-proposal to the Stop Blackout Initiative with a clear majority. The centre-left had vetoed the proposal during the consultation process.
+ Get the most important news from Switzerland in your inbox
In the Senate’s Environment, Spatial Planning and Energy Committee (Urek-S), however, the majorities were clearly divided: By 10 votes to 2 with abstentions, it voted in favour of lifting the existing ban on general licences for new nuclear power plants, as reported by the parliamentary services on Tuesday. The Senate expected to deal with the topic in the spring.
A technology-neutral energy policy should ensure sufficient domestic production capacities for a secure and cost-effective power supply at all times, according to the press release. The possibility of building new nuclear power plants will expand the room for manoeuvre for future energy supply.
More
More
Survey reignites debate on nuclear power in Switzerland
Urek-S states in the press release that the indirect counter-proposal only creates the fundamental possibility of new nuclear power plants, but does not regulate their financing. However, it does not explicitly rule out subsidisation by the federal government.
Environmental organisations and the Green party sharply criticised the Commission’s decision, arguing it would impact the energy transition. The Swiss Energy Foundation (SES) and other organisations initiated a public letter of protest so that the Senate could prevent “the failed nuclear turnaround”.
Translated from German by AI/jdp
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 english@swissinfo.ch
