Newsletter N° 8 (Switzerland)

    Switzerland has agreed - in theory - to the contents of the recent "Guidelines for the Management of Plutonium" proposed by parties to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). While these guidelines explicitly request countries to publish annual figures for the countries' plutonium stockpiles, Switzerland has never published such figures. However, in a 31 March 1998 "note verbale", the Permanent Mission to the IAEA of Switzerland comments: "In the last years, political opposition against reprocessing has grown. Fuel element transports to reprocessing plants are increasingly the target of anti-nuclear activities by environmental organisations". And this was one month before the scandal of the contaminated spent fuel transports was revealed.

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