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Under pressure from the CIA, the Swiss government destroyed thousands of documents that would have revealed the CIA's relations with a family a Swiss engineers, Friedrich Tinner and his two sons, who are suspected of supplying Iran and Libya with nuclear technology, The New York Times reported. Last May, when the Swiss president announced the documents' destruction, he claimed that it was to make sure that detailed plans for nuclear weapons never fell into the hands of terrorists. The real explanation, according to US government officials, was that the United States had urged that the files be destroyed in order to conceal ties between the Tinners and the CIA.

Deep inside the Swiss Alps, scientists from around the world are testing how to dispose of radioactive material. The Grimsel Test Site is a series of tunnels dug deep into the mountains. It's operated by the National Cooperative for the Disposal of Radioactive Waste (NAGRA). The cooperative was started in 1972 by nuclear power plant operators and the Swiss government. World Radio Switzerland's Alex Helmick reports from the underground laboratory near the Grimsel Pass on the cantonal border of Bern and Valais.

The Swiss government on Wednesday ordered the quick destruction of about 100 pages of evidence linked to an investigation of three Swiss engineers suspected of smuggling nuclear weapons technology. The Cabinet said the documents were "the most explosive" material in a file of more than 1,000 pages related to the case against the Tinner family, which is suspected of links to the nuclear smuggling network of Abdul Qadeer Khan - the creator of Pakistan's atomic bomb. The documents are copies of files destroyed in 2007 under a previous order that led to protests from lawmakers and legal experts, who said the government undermined the prosecution in the smuggling case. The copies were found in prosecutors' archives last December. Citing security concerns and its legal obligations under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, the Cabinet, or Federal Council, said that about 100 pages dealing with atomic weapons designs would be shredded shortly to keep them out of "the wrong hands." It didn't give a date for the destruction.

Federal judges have raided government offices and seized the key which gives access to sensitive documents in the Tinner nuclear smuggling case. The documents, which are believed to contain nuclear warhead designs, are at the centre of a tug of war between the judiciary and the state. Judges investigating the Tinner case want access to the papers, but the government wants them destroyed. Earlier this week Swiss President Hans-Rudolf Merz said the government had the right to do so under the Swiss constitution, but federal judges have challenged this decision. Earlier today the Federal Criminal Court advised judges to ensure the safekeeping of the documents.

The US Central Intelligence Agency recruited a family of Swiss engineers to help it thwart the Libyan and Iranian nuclear programs as well as an underground supply network of Pakistani nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, The New York Times reported on its website late Sunday. The newspaper said the operation involved Friedrich Tinner and his two sons, who have been accused in Switzerland of dealing with rogue nations seeking nuclear equipment and expertise.

BERN, Switzerland: The Swiss government destroyed sensitive evidence in a high-profile nuclear smuggling case linked to Libya's now-abandoned effort to build an atomic bomb because of security reasons, Switzerland's president said Friday.

"The Swiss government has ruled out any return to nuclear power once current stations are shut down. At the end of August the Senate Energy Committee recommended that Switzerland restrict itself to banning the construction of nuclear power stations "of the current generation", leaving the door open for the construction of new generation reactors in the future. "This would leave the nuclear option on the table and create a lot of confusion," the government said in its response to the proposal on Thursday. The government announced in May that it would phase out the use of nuclear power by 2034 by not replacing the country's existing nuclear reactors when they reached the end of their lifespan."

Parliament has strongly criticised the government for ordering documents destroyed in a case of Swiss engineers suspected of involvement in a nuclear smuggling ring. A control committee said that the reasons the government gave for doing so were not convincing and that briefings given to members of parliament were not sufficient. Destroying the documents had also compromised an investigation. Claude Janiak, head of the delegation, said on Thursday that the government was wrong to do so but it had acted under pressure. He did not elaborate.

A study has been launched in Switzerland to investigate whether children living near nuclear reactors have a higher risk of cancer. The study - Childhood Cancer and Nuclear Power Plants in Switzerland - follows an analysis by German scientists last year that found a possible link between higher rates of leukaemia in children who live near nuclear power plants. Researchers will study cancer rates among Swiss minors born between 1985 and 2007. It will compare the data against the distances the children lived from reactors when and before they became ill.

The president of Switzerland stepped to a podium in Bern last May and read a statement confirming rumors that had swirled through the capital for months. The government, he acknowledged, had indeed destroyed a huge trove of computer files and other material documenting the business dealings of a family of Swiss engineers suspected of helping smuggle nuclear technology to Libya and Iran.

27 May 2008 - The wet storage facility for spent fuel at Goesgen nuclear power plant in Switzerland has been unveiled by Kernkraftwerk Goesgen-Daeniken AG at a ceremony attended by high-ranking representatives of the customer, Areva. The facility is capable of accommodating up to 1008 uranium or mixed-oxide (MOX) fuel assemblies. It has already received its first batch of spent fuel and impressively confirmed the merits of its sophisticated design.

Plans to destroy sensitive documents relating to an international nuclear smuggling ring mustn't go ahead. That's the decision of a parliamentary control delegation. It says that the government is capable of safely storing files which contain evidence linked to an investigation of three Swiss engineers - the Tinner brothers and their father - suspected of smuggling nuclear weapons technology. The documents are copies of files destroyed two years ago on the say-so of the government. This prompted criticism from parliament and legal experts who accused the government of undermining the prosecution in the smuggling case.

A parliamentary control delegation has rejected plans by the cabinet to destroy sensitive documents related to an international nuclear smuggling ring. The committee called on the government to seek an acceptable solution with justice authorities for about 100 pages of evidence linked to an investigation of three Swiss engineers suspected of smuggling nuclear weapons technology. "There is no international obligation to destroy the documents," said Hansruedi Stadler, a Christian Democratic senator, on Tuesday. The committee said the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) agreed that Switzerland was capable of safely storing the file, which contains more than 1,000 pages including documents on bomb designs, until a court rules on the case of Urs Tinner, his brother Marco and their father Friedrich. They are suspected of having links to the nuclear smuggling network of Abdul Qadeer Kahn, the father of Pakistan's nuclear programme, and are believed to have worked as undercover agents for the United States. Last week, the government ordered the quick destruction of sensitive material

"Switzerland latest country to shelve nuclear plant plans - but many states still lack an alternative low-carbon energy supply guardian.co.uk, Sunday 29 May 2011 22.00 Moves to cut carbon emissions in line with international targets have come under renewed strain since the nuclear crisis in Japan led some countries to shelve plans to use the technology. Switzerland became the latest country to decide to phase out nuclear power last week, citing concerns over the accident at the Fukushima plant that was left stricken by a 9.0 magnitude earthquake and tsunami in March. The Swiss deci"

The investment in nuclear power has been growing around the world over the last few years, being viewed as a means for countries to control their energy security, avoid the price fluctuations of other energy sources, and reduce their carbon dioxide emissions, but concerns are now being raised. A scientist from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology predicts that supplies of uranium are running out and countries relying on imports of uranium may face shortages by 2013, while a New York Times journalist suggests new nuclear power plants are an "abysmal" investment that will never pay for itself without government financial support. Dr Michael Dittmar, a physicist with CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research), said in the fourth and final part of an essay on the world's nuclear industry published this week that civilian stockpiles of uranium could be depleted by as early as 2013.

The investment in nuclear power has been growing around the world over the last few years, being viewed as a means for countries to control their energy security, avoid the price fluctuations of other energy sources, and reduce their carbon dioxide emissions, but concerns are now being raised. A scientist from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology predicts that supplies of uranium are running out and countries relying on imports of uranium may face shortages by 2013, while a New York Times journalist suggests new nuclear power plants are an "abysmal" investment that will never pay for itself without government financial support. Dr Michael Dittmar, a physicist with CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research), said in the fourth and final part of an essay on the world's nuclear industry published this week that civilian stockpiles of uranium could be depleted by as early as 2013.

A study to investigate whether living close to a nuclear power plant increases the risk of childhood cancer is being co-financed by electricity companies. The decision to allow the firms, Axpo and BKW Energy, to fund around a quarter of the SFr820,000 ($672,000) study raises questions about whether they will try to influence the results, due to be published in 2011. Axpo and BKW Energy support nuclear energy along with a mix of other non-renewable and renewable sources. Last Thursday, they submitted plans to replace the country's oldest nuclear plants with two new facilities.

On a 600-acre property in Windsor - formerly an isolated private hunting preserve - a Connecticut company called Combustion Engineering triggered the first nuclear chain reaction to take place in the state in the late 1950s, according to Ron Kurtz, communications director for ABB, the Swiss conglomerate that owns the land today. Now ABB, which bought CE in 1990, is spending tens of millions of dollars to clean the Windsor property of radioactive and chemical contamination in order to sell it for what it envisions as a mixed-use development of businesses, office buildings, some manufacturing, retail and residential.

"A decades-old debate over supplies of fuel for atomic power has been reignited by promises of a global "nuclear renaissance", and is raging as heatedly as ever. The world is running out of uranium and nobody seems to have noticed, contends the Swiss physicist Dr Michael Dittmar, a researcher at CERN, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research. "Without access to the military stocks, the civilian western uranium stocks will be exhausted by 2013," he predicts. "

"On The Simpsons, the effects of nuclear contamination are conspicuous and comedic. In nature, though, they're often subtle - and sometimes strangely beautiful. Scientific illustrator Cornelia Hesse-Honegger details these minute mutations in the so-called true bugs she collects near nuclear facilities and areas of chemical contamination. True bugs don't travel far, and they "suck the liquid from the plants they live on," she says. "So if the plant is contaminated, they take a lot of radioactivity into their bodies." Conventional wisdom holds that nuclear power stations don't leak enough radiation to create malformed organisms. But in some locations, Hesse-Honegger discovered mutations - curtailed feelers, misshapen legs, asymmetrical wings - in as many as 30 percent of the bugs she gathered. That's 10 times the overall rate of about 3 percent for insects found in the wild. "For me, the mutated bugs were like prototypes of a future nature," she says. A selection of Hesse-Honegger's work will be shown this fall in Berlin."

"An association based in Switzerland is helping its European neighbours in their search for a good place to dump nuclear waste. Ten nations have enlisted the aid of Baden-based Arius, or Association for Regional and International Underground Storage. They hope to consolidate their radioactive waste within a single location. The countries in question include Austria, Ireland, Italy and seven others - but not Switzerland. In 2006, the federal government enacted a ten-year moratorium on the export of nuclear waste - the storage of which is the producers' responsibility."