Following a 14-year site selection process, Switzerland's national radioactive waste disposal cooperative Nagra has proposed Nördlich Lägern in northern Switzerland as the site of a deep geological repository. A used fuel encapsulation plant is to be built at the existing Zwilag interim storage facility.

With fuel removal proceeding on schedule at the Mühleberg nuclear power plant, Swiss utility BKW has submitted an application for the second of three decommissioning phases of the plant. Mühleberg is the first nuclear power plant in Switzerland to be decommissioned.

While support for the continued use of nuclear energy is evenly split in the Swiss population, the majority of people support the lifting of the country's ban on the construction of new nuclear power plants, a poll conducted by market research company DemoSCOPE on behalf of the Swiss Nuclear Forum shows.

Modelling and laboratory work at three US Department of Energy national laboratories is being undertaken to support the HotBENT international field experiment to evaluate the behaviour of bentonite clay used as an impermeable backfill in deep geological repositories for high-level waste.

Switzerland is committed to maintaining and strengthening its regulatory framework for nuclear and radiation safety, an International Atomic Energy Agency team of experts has concluded. The Integrated Regulatory Review Service mission team said a key challenge for the country is to keep and to build new safety competence for the future by evaluating anticipated gaps in expertise and in identifying actions required to fill them.

A group of six students recently spent nine days living in the Grimsel underground research laboratory in Switzerland in a simulated mission to the Moon. During the mission, the "astronauts" taking part in the Asclepios I project undertook several scientific experiments, the results of which could be applied to future actual space missions.

The Swiss Federal Nuclear Safety Inspectorate has announced that the operating licence of the Mühleberg nuclear power plant has been replaced with a decommissioning order issued by the Federal Department of Environment, Transport, Energy and Communication. The single unit 373 MWe boiling water reactor began operations in 1972.

Switzerland's national radioactive waste disposal cooperative Nagra has today released a report on the advantages and disadvantages of siting a used fuel and high-level waste encapsulation plant at the planned deep geological repository site or elsewhere. It says the best solution would be to construct the encapsulation plant at either the repository or at the Zwilag interim waste management facility at Würenlingen.

France's Framatome has been awarded a contract by the European Laboratory for Particle Physics (CERN) to support research that will inform the development of new materials to be used in the High-Luminosity Large Hadron Collider, a major upgrade to the existing Large Hadron Collider.

The Mühleberg nuclear power plant in Switzerland today ended generation after 47 years in operation. Meanwhile, Ringhals unit 2 in Sweden and Philippsburg unit 2 in Germany are preparing to shut down by the end of 2019.

The operators of Switzerland's nuclear power plants have criticised a reform of regulations for decommissioning and waste disposal funds, which they say will disproportionately increase their costs and thus reduce their ability to invest in the country’s energy sector. The reform, which takes effect on 1 January, includes a reduced yield from the two funds and also removes a 30% safety margin.

The Swiss government has announced it will cut its greenhouse gas emissions to a net-zero level by 2050. According to Swiss government statistics, about 60% of Switzerland's electricity generation comes from renewable sources, most of it from hydro (56.6%). Nuclear contributes about 37.6% and about 2.5% comes from fossil fuels.