Switzerland - Ministry appeals Mühleberg nuclear plant ruling

The energy and environment ministry, which licences Mühleberg nuclear plant,
is to appeal a Federal Administrative Court decision to close the plant next
year.

The move follows last week’s announcement by the Bern plant’s operator BKW Energy
that it intended to appeal the ruling “in order to obtain the legal certainty
required for a decision on investments”.

On Wednesday the ministry said the judgment had called into question the
delineation of roles and responsibilities between itself and the Swiss Federal
Nuclear Safety Inspectorate, despite the fact that the two “administer their
tasks independently from each other and ensure a strict separation of their
competences”. “The swift and definitive resolution of these questions is
in the interests of Swiss energy policy and the public,” the ministry statement
said. The 1972 Mühleberg plant, one of five in Switzerland, supplies
five per cent of the country’s energy needs.

The court said on March 7 its licence should be taken away in June 2013 on safety grounds, after local opponents had lodged a complaint about the indefinite extension of the licence
granted by the environment ministry at the end of 2009. Switzerland’s
heavy reliance on nuclear energy came under intense pressure in the wake of
Japan’s Fukushima nuclear disaster a year ago, with the government ultimately
pledging to abandon nuclear power by 2034.