Reasons for final shutdown

To guarantee that the plant is safe according to the state-of-the-art, regular retrofits are required, which, especially for long-term operation, may involve major investments. If the operator gets to the situation where the amortisation of such upgrades does not make good sense under the current economic, regulatory and political boundary conditions, they will shut their plant down and permanently decommission it. This applies mainly if it can also be foreseen that further changes will occur in the medium-term, which although being currently unquantifiable in terms of technical, economic and political uncertainties, would substantially increase the financial risks of long-term operation.

BKW announces the decommissioning of its nuclear power plant six years before the planned end of operation.Source: NZZ

For such reasons, for example in October 2013 BKW decided to continue to operate the Mühleberg nuclear power plant, complying with all safety requirements, until 2019 and then take it off the grid. When making this business decision, the operator took into account all known technical, commercial, regulatory and political aspects.

With its decision, BKW took on the first project in Switzerland for the decommissioning of a commercial nuclear power plant.

Source: “First decommissioning of a commercially operated nuclear power plant in Switzerland”; von Gunten (BKW) et al., Kontec 2015, 12. International symposium “Conditioning of radioactive operational and decommissioning waste”, Dresden, 25th–27th March 2015
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