By Marcos Buser & Walter Wildi

Under the title “Focusing on geology instead of hoping for new technology,” Nagra compares technological developments for better treatment of high-level radioactive waste with the existing concept of deep geological disposal. In doing so, it justifies the superiority of deep geological disposal and at the same time sows all kinds of doubts about technological progress in the destruction of long-lived high-level radioactive materials through nuclear conversion or transmutation. The fact that the cooperative wants to “rely on geology” is quite risky from a linguistic point of view, as it means relying on something that one may be convinced of, but which is just as imaginary and speculative. Nagra’s linguistically underpinned bet on the development of technologies has the best prospects of being lost.

The picture on the front page of the article alone is enough to raise the worst fears. In all seriousness, an employee wearing a TYVEK protective suit, black gloves, and a gas mask is carrying a metal bucket filled with bright green rods to a collection container labeled “nuclear waste.” Next to it are other containers labeled “tinplate,” “plastic,” and “cardboard.” As if “nuclear waste” could be compared to these harmless types of waste and collected, dumped, and recycled in such an unprofessional manner. As if no radiation were released in the process. As if a TYVEK suit could offer real protection against radioactivity. Etc. These are staged scenes of trivialization that have little to do with reality. The nuclear industry and Nagra have always had a penchant for staging scenes that trivialize upcoming challenges and make them seem easy to overcome. From the disposal of a yellow glowing Lego nuclear waste brick in the referendum on the nuclear initiative in February 1979 to the Brio wooden train set, which made light work of storing highly radioactive waste and retrieving it from a final storage tunnel (Figure 2).

Figure 1: Lego brick as a symbol of highly radioactive waste in a domed geological structure, from a PR campaign by the nuclear industry in the run-up to the nuclear initiative of February 1979. Source: Social Archive Zürich.

Text: “The final storage of radioactive waste has been technically resolved. The implementation of the known solutions is also possible in Switzerland. However, it is currently still being delayed by political resistance.”

“The quantities are small. Take the most discussed example of highly radioactive waste: the three Swiss nuclear power plants produce a total of only around 3 cubic meters of vitrified highly radioactive waste per year. Converted to the population of Switzerland, this amounts to a waste volume equivalent to the size of this Lego brick (approx. 2 cm³) for a family of four. …”

Figure 2: Nagra film “The FE Experiment. Test Run for the Deep Repository,” 2015, featuring a Brio train set as a fictional transport system for “highly radioactive fuel elements.”

As a reader the first question that comes to mind when reading the aforementioned new Nagra article is: who is this “information” intended for? And whether the unnamed authors – and the authorizing management – really consider the readers of this article to be so naive that they cannot see through the intention behind this elaborate piece of writing. After all, the essence of the message from the sender to the recipient is banally simple: please keep your hands off complicated, uncertain technical solutions. We should not be blinded by false hopes. We do not need new and utopian technologies. Geology is more than good enough. We at Nagra know that. So much for the substance of the article.

Now, the cooperative’s new contribution can also be read and understood in a completely different way. Because these new technological options are clearly causing Nagra real headaches. Today’s developments in the nuclear transmutation of highly radioactive waste can no longer be ignored. Even Nagra cannot avoid addressing this issue. Global developments show without a doubt that transmutation research is definitely underway and is moving towards and shifting to industrial projects. The laboratory stage is already well behind today’s developments. The focus is now on the concrete implementation of large-scale industrial projects. And the signs point to this industrial implementation. In contrast to the 1960s to 1980s – the period of the first global nuclear expansion – there is growing interest in a fundamental renewal of nuclear energy. One can regret and condemn this development that is now underway. One can portray it as a chimera, as Nagra does in the aforementioned article. However, if we look at current developments on various fronts without preconceptions, the prospects for the deep geological repository disposal concept are looking bleak. There is no way around incorporating final disposal concepts into the technological development process of Nagra’scentury-long project, which is effectively already underway. This raises the question of what the prospects for technological developments actually look like in terms of disposing of existing radioactive waste in other ways. Let us therefore first look back at the last century and consider a few examples of technological developments that have been effectively implemented in order to better grasp the dimensions of potential changes. The last 100 years have overturned the wildest expectations in more or less all areas. We will look at three examples from aviation, mechanical and electronic writing instruments, and nuclear technology (Figures 3 to 5).

Figure 3: Development of the aircraft industry 1926-2016

Left: Lufthansa in 1926, first flight from Berlin to Zurich with a Fokker-Grulich biplane carrying four passengers, according to GEO, January 6, 2026

Right: Prototype of the new Airbus 350-1000 for 350 to 410 passengers, according to Airbus Aircraft

Figure 4: 1926–2026: Development of mechanical and electronic writing tools

Left: 1926 Underwood Champion 4 Bank Universal Manual Typewriter Hard Case B, offered on eBay; Right: Apple Computer A18 PRO 2026, according to Apple 2026.

The technical advances in the field of nuclear technology are also impressive. In the 1920s and 1930s, the use of nuclear technology in power plants and bombs was just a domain for writers, dreamers, and visionaries. For example, Herbert George Wells, who predicted these developments in 1914. ^[1] At that time, the technical development of nuclear energy seemed to be progressing at a snail’s pace anyway. It was still largely limited to applications of X-ray technology, for example in the field of medical and industrially manufactured products. At that time, for example, so-called pedoscopes came onto the market, X-ray machines for customers in shoe stores who were trying on new shoes. These allowed feet and foot bones to be X-rayed so that the correct shoe size could be selected. Some older people, including the two authors, may still vividly remember their school days in the 1950s, which often provided an opportunity to quickly step onto such a device at the shoe store around the corner and look at the X-rayed skeleton of their own feet.

Figure 5: 1926–2026: Development of nuclear technology

Left: Pedoscope (shoe X-ray machine) for optimal shoe size selection in stores from the 1920s onwards, according to Wikipedia (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedoskop)

Right: 2MW thorium liquid salt reactor of the Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics in the Gobi Desert. 2025. Source: Nuclear Forum/SINAP

Triggered by revolutionary political and military developments of the time, nuclear energy catapulted itself into human history. The period between the discovery of nuclear fission in December 1938 by Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann in Berlin-Dahlem and the dropping of the first atomic bombs on Japan in August 1945 was just over 6.5 years! And another 8 years later—in 1953—the world’s first nuclear power plant was already in operation. In the Soviet Union! Considering this tremendous technological achievement in the context of the economic and scientific performance of the time, there is no doubt that such acceleration could not be repeated in the coming decades. For example, in the development of new reactor types – and thus in transmutation.

This development has been back on track for a few years now, particularly in Russia and China, which continue to drive forward the development of new reactor types. Russia developed fast breeder reactors as early as the 1980s, two of which have been in operation since 1981 and 2016, with further types currently under construction. ^[2] China is also diversifying its reactor lines and building high-temperature reactors, fast breeders, and other SMR types,^[3] including the aforementioned experimental molten salt reactor in Ganshu. ^[4] Molten salt reactors in particular are closely linked to accelerator-driven systems (ADS), which are being researched in Europe and are intended to break down most of the highly radioactive waste that has already been produced. Two major transmutation projects are underway here: MYRRHA at the Belgian Study Center for Nuclear Energy SCK-CEN^[5] in Mol and Transmutex in Geneva.^[6] These two projects are intended not only to enable energy to be generated from highly radioactive waste, but above all to convert this waste into much shorter-lived isotopes through nuclear transmutation of long-lived radioactive isotopes. In just a few decades. The technology of electrochemical separation (partitioning) is also intended to enable the reuse of radioactive materials. It is currently considered promising,^[7] which should also open up new options for the disposal of radioactive waste streams.

What the above explanations show is that the nuclear and waste treatment world is in flux. How and how quickly these developments will actually take place can only be predicted to a limited extent today. However, as suggested in the Nagra article, it is not to be expected that such a development will extend over the next 100 years. Rather, it must be assumed that a fundamental technological development in nuclear technology will take place in the direction outlined above over the course of the next few decades. This in turn means that alternatives and options for dealing with these residues should be developed today and, if necessary, the course for the disposal of radioactive waste should be reset and adjusted.

Of course, one cannot expect Nagra, given its mandate and the work it has pursued to date, to be willing and able to take on a pioneering role in developing a new approach to radioactive waste management. This work must come from outside and be re-examined and re-evaluated in terms of both content and policy in a broad-based social debate. What the Swiss political system should ensure today is that the financial resources set aside in the disposal fund for the disposal of radioactive waste are not spent on projects that can be considered pointless and overpriced from the outset.

^[1] Buser, Marcos. 2019. Wohin mit dem Atommüll? Rotpunkt-Verlag Zurich.

^[2] GRS, 2025. Nuclear Energy in Russia. Society for Plant and Reactor Safety. November 2025. https://www.grs.de/de/kernenergie-russland

^[3] GRS, 2024. Nuclear Energy Worldwide 2024. Society for Plant and Reactor Safety. February 26, 2024. World Nuclear Industry Status Report. https://www.worldnuclearreport.org/Kernenergie-weltweit-2024

^[4] WNN, 2025. Chinese molten salt reactor achieves conversion of thorium-uranium fuel. World Nuclear News. November 4, 2025. https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/articles/chinese-msr-achieves-conversion-of-thorium-uranium-fuel

^[5] https://www.myrrha.be

^[6] https://www.transmutex.com 

^[7] TU Munich, 2019. Partitioning of radioactive waste by rectification. Partitioning of nuclear waste by fractionated distillation. Technical University of Munich. July 16, 2019. https://festkoerper-kernphysik.de/download/NuDest/Endbericht_NuDest.pdf