While I try to wash off any potential trace of contamination, security is screening my underwear. The life of a journalist in the field can be hazardous, especially when invited to have a look inside one of Switzerland’s nuclear power plants.
At some point during my time inside the dome-shaped structure containing the reactor of Switzerland’s most powerful nuclear plant I became contaminated – perhaps a grain of radioactive dust had settled on my back and mingled with a bead of sweat.
I was one of a dozen journalist to visit the open reactor at Kraftwerk Leibstadt, or KKL, this autumn, about halfway through its planned 60-year lifetime and more than two years after the Swiss cabinet’s historic and popular decision in 2011 to phase out nuclear power.
The Fukushima disaster earlier that year had triggered the largest anti-nuclear protest in Switzerland in 25 years, with organisations like Greenpeace calling for the shutdown of plants because they considered them an unacceptable risk to the environment and to humanity. According to a survey by nuclear safety body ENSI in 2012, only about a quarter of the Swiss population believed that the use of nuclear energy justified its risks.
As we drove up to the plant, the monumental cooling tower, rising 144 metres into the blue sky, came into view – this time without exhaling a typical cloud of steam. Closer still and the reactor building looms large.
Once a year, the KKL is powered down and taken off the mains. The time out for the reactor was a window of opportunity for the nuclear lobby to showcase the most modern of Switzerland’s four nuclear plants and answer our questions.
During this revision period workers inspect, maintain and upgrade various components and exchange a fifth of the fuel elements.
«The KKL is building for the future because the plan is to stay operational until at least 2045,» said director Andreas Pfeiffer ahead of the tour. «Even if Switzerland wants to phase out nuclear power in the future, we will need to make sure that power stations run safely until then.»
Radioactivity has negative connotations for most people including myself. Just looking at the yellow hazard symbol or hearing words like irradiation and contamination send a shiver down my back. I recall that I used to ride a bike with a Nuclear Power – No Thanks sticker, and for me, nuclear disasters always substantiated the technology’s dangers. So, my main concern is safety.
Building for the future
And safety, I learn, is key. The outermost barrier to reign in radiation is a concrete dome covering the steel containment. It’s designed to withstand hurricanes, earthquakes and the impact of aeroplanes.
Once inside that dome I first spot the alloy steel head of the inner 600-ton vessel, which has been removed for refuelling. Pfeiffer, a German engineer, explains that the reactor is like a giant pressure cooker. This pot has a diameter of six metres, 16-centimetre thick steel walls and an output of 3,600 Megawatt.
As I’m looking at the nuclear core, Pfeiffer explains that 16 metres of water, which floods the pool for the exchange of fuel elements, are enough to block off the radiation emitted by the fuel. The water is without ripples or reflection, so that it’s hard to discern its surface.
Jokes aside
On its surface I spot an inflatable alligator. This surely is our first sign that the staff may indeed have a sense of humour. It’s the mascot of the General Electric maintenance crew who use the green rubber animal so they can make sure at a glance that the water is at the required level.
As we’re shown around, Pfeiffer is keen to explain the main differences between the KKL and the Chernobyl and Fukushima plants. He points out that Chernobyl had no containment, that operators had disregarded basic safety considerations that the flawed reactor design resulted in an uncontrolled chain reaction.
Fukushima, which had been considered safe, also has GE reactors, he concedes, but it had construction flaws, and the engineers had underestimated tsunami and earthquake risks, so a turbine building with emergency generators was able to flood and the cooling systems failed, he explains.
In case of flash floods, the KKL would still be 16 metres above the maximum water level in a worst case scenario. As the strongest earthquakes measured in Switzerland in 1356 had a magnitude of 7 on the Richter scale, a magnitude 9 earthquake as was registered in Japan couldn’t happen in Switzerland, according to the KKL. But there is no zero risk, Pfeiffer admits.
Disaster risk
There are many indications on my visit that mark KKL as an unusual place. At the entry gate, we’re called forward in good army tradition, last name first, to receive the visitors’ cards that allow security to account for every person in the controlled area at any time.
The bright orange unisex underwear, socks and T-shirts sporting the KKL logo do not protect us from radiation, but their loud colour makes sure we won’t forget to take them off and get them laundered. Green helmets – again not for protection – identify us as a visitors. We change overalls twice, and a lift takes us from 13.5 metres to 28.5 metres to the containment.
We enter through an airlock, a small chamber with two airtight doors, which maintains the pressure inside the vessel at a lower level to prevent dust and particles from leaking out. I can’t feel the decompression. It dawns on me that I would also not be able to feel radiation or contamination. I’m not sure if my fellow visitors have similar thoughts but we all fall conspicuously quiet.
While we wait to enter, we ask our guides about the qualities employees require and practical jokes the staff like to play. Judging by their reaction, we gather that pranks are as popular here as at airport security.
Suited up
When we squeeze back into the airlock, we have to wait for the air to return to its normal pressure. Pfeiffer tells me how he ended up working for the KKL.
«I worked at [engineering group] Alstom when I was asked whether I would be interested in running this nuclear power station. At the beginning I was not really sure whether to join the nuclear community. In my youth I had protested against nuclear weapons», he explains. «But the more I got involved, the more I got fascinated, so I accepted the position.»
He makes us read our dosimeters, which registered the radiation dose we received. I have a dose of four micro Sievert, less than what I would get on an intercontinental flight, Pfeiffer points out.
I am somewhat reassured until I’m about to hop off, the final – and as it may turn out most sensitive – monitor screening us for contamination. The whole-body device sounds «contaminated», and it still detects a trace of radiation after I have changed back into a KKL undershirt.
After a thorough shower, I’m finally cleared. I will never know for certain whether it was perspiration or body lotion that triggered the alarm.