BERN - The National Council joined the Council of States in backing a government proposal to allow new nuclear plants, reversing the ban Swiss voters approved in 2017. Energy minister Albert Rosti said the option is an insurance policy for electricity supply if renewables and imports are not enough for net zero by 2050.
The Green Party said it would launch a referendum, calling the vote a sabotage of faster renewable build-out. Collecting 50,000 signatures within 100 days is a hurdle that coalition has cleared before.
Winter kilowatts
Switzerland still leans on imports in the dark months. That fact, not a love of concrete towers, is what moved the bourgeois parties. Any actual plant would take well over a decade. The political plant is already in flower. Related energy context sits in our 2025 import note and the later heat-pump census.