The disposal of radioactive waste

Just over 1.3 billion Swiss francs will be spent on dismantling, conditioning and interim storage, while the remaining 1.2 billion Swiss francs will be spent on deep disposal. Part of the 2.5 billion total costs will be financed by fees charged to the polluters. Another part will not be incurred until 2070, after the end of the operational phase of the deep geological repository. This leaves around one billion Swiss francs, which will be divided equally between the federal government and the ETH Domain.

Estimates from 2015 still assumed total costs of around 1.4 billion Swiss francs. However, this estimate did not fully take into account the expenses already incurred for conditioning and interim storage. The higher total costs are due in particular to the increased costs for the future deep repository for low- and intermediate-level waste.
The new estimates also showed that the federal share of the annual costs to fund the National Cooperative Storage radioactive waste (Nagra) has been too low for years compared to the operators of nuclear power plants. This must be adjusted accordingly.

The federal government is responsible for the disposal of radioactive waste from medicine, industry and research. Such waste is generated at federal research facilities and at the Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology (ETH), but also in industry, hospitals and other research institutions. This waste is later to be disposed of in a geological Deep repository disposed of, together with the waste from Swiss nuclear power plants, for which the operators of the nuclear power plants are responsible.

The Federal Council has asked the relevant departments (Department of the Interior, Department of Economics, Education and Research, Department of Finance and Department for Environment, Transport, Energy and Communications) to submit cost estimates to it again by the end of 2023.

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