A Radioactive Grave for My Village
Switzerland’s nuclear waste is supposed to be buried beneath my home village, of all places. What sounds like a nightmare is also an opportunity for some.“In the Zurich Lowlands,” I used to say when people asked me where I grew up. “Near the airport”, or: “Near the German border.” Today I say: “In the Zurich community of Stadel — where one day the nuclear waste of all of Switzerland is to be buried.” That’s exactly where I’m standing now, in front of the school building where I spent my breaks over twenty years ago. It’s just before eight on this Saturday morning in December when we get into a coach, me, my father, my grandmother’s partner and three dozen Stadler men and women. The goal: law. At the wheel: the National Cooperative for the Disposal of Radioactive Waste, in short: Nagra. In the Mont Terri research laboratory, the Nagra experts want to sell us the nuclear repository. At the beginning of September, we caught a rumor about a farmer’s wife who allegedly stored Switzerland’s radioactive waste under her farm. Not just anywhere, but less than two kilometers from my parents’ house. “Isn’t that there by the barbecue?” I wrote in the family Whatsapp chat. “Yes,” my mother replied. “Oh oh,” I wrote back. “Why?” my brother asked. “That’s exactly where the repository should go!” On the Nagra website I find out why barrels full of radioactive waste should be buried where my parents still live: 700 meters below the village with the half-timbered buildings and the small lake there is a special layer of rock, clay-like and gray-black — allegedly the ideal rock to seal nuclear waste. Ideal because this so-called Opalinus Clay can form a kind of geological vault.
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