Throttled Reactors and Cold Grills: Switzerland's Bureaucratic Drought

Switzerland likes to believe it can engineer its way out of any problem. Blessed with a robust economy and a highly functional state apparatus, the Alpine nation is accustomed to managing its environment as precisely as its train schedules. Yet, a persistent drought is currently reminding the Swiss that nature does not always adhere to federal guidelines.

Consider the Beznau nuclear power plant in the canton of Aargau. For weeks, the facility's twin reactors were forced offline, not due to a technical flaw or a grid failure, but because the Aare river reached a balmy 25 degrees Celsius on June 26. To protect the local river ecosystem and comply with stringent environmental regulations, the state mandated a shutdown. Now, with the water marginally cooler, energy provider Axpo has been granted permission by the Swiss Federal Office of Energy and the Federal Nuclear Safety Inspectorate to bring Reactor 1 and Reactor 2 back online at reduced capacity. Reactor 1 was restarted on Friday, following Reactor 2 which was brought back a week prior. Axpo noted that the water temperatures are being continuously monitored and further measures will be taken if the limits are breached again. It is a luxurious sort of crisis where a wealthy nation can afford to throttle its baseload energy production to ensure the comfort of river trout.

Meanwhile, the physical landscape is visibly shrinking. Lake Constance is recording historic lows. In the Untersee region, the water level sits a full 1.5 metres below the seasonal average. The town of Romanshorn has never seen the lake this shallow in July. Over in Berlingen, the water is a mere 26 centimetres away from the absolute minimum recorded in January 1949. The cause is entirely straightforward: a remarkably dry April left the mountains with inadequate snowpack, depriving the lower altitudes of vital meltwater. With impending heatwaves, the historic August low records are expected to fall next.

The bureaucratic response to the dry spell is exactly as thorough as one would expect from the Swiss state. With the August 1 national holiday approaching, the canton of Zurich has maintained a strict fire ban in and around forests. Municipalities have gone further, outlawing even the use of charcoal grills in private gardens and banning fireworks entirely.

The citizenry, ever compliant and perhaps overly eager to police one another, has taken to reporting infractions with enthusiasm. In St. Gallen, police forwarded six individuals to the public prosecutor over the weekend for unauthorized fires. Two were caught near a forest, while four others were simply burning green waste or wood in fire bowls on their own private property. These arrests were made largely thanks to tips from vigilant neighbours. The cantonal police have logged 40 such violations since mid-July, noting that while several minor brush fires occurred, they ended without disaster. It is a fitting snapshot of a comfortable society: facing a severe drought, the immediate instinct is to write a ticket for a backyard barbecue and wait for the rain.

Written by Thomas Nussbaumer thomas.nussbaumer@alpineweekly.com