Nuclear Energy Act
(NEA)

In this Act:

a.

mon­it­or­ing peri­odmeans the peri­od of time over which a deep geo­lo­gic­al re­pos­it­ory is mon­itored be­fore it is closed and dur­ing which ra­dio­act­ive waste can be re­trieved without un­due ef­fort;

b.

waste man­age­mentmeanscon­di­tion­ing, in­ter­im stor­age and dis­pos­al of ra­dio­act­ive waste in a deep geo­lo­gic­al re­pos­it­ory;

c.

deep geo­lo­gic­al re­pos­it­orymeansa in­stall­a­tion loc­ated deep un­der­ground, which may be closed, if the per­man­ent pro­tec­tion of hu­mans and the en­vir­on­ment through pass­ive bar­ri­ers is en­sured;

d.

nuc­le­ar in­stall­a­tionmeansany in­stall­a­tion or in­stall­a­tions in­ten­ded for the use of nuc­le­ar en­ergy, the ex­trac­tion, pro­duc­tion, use, pro­cessing or stor­age of nuc­le­ar ma­ter­i­als, and the man­age­ment of ra­dio­act­ive waste in ac­cord­ance with Art­icle 2, para­graph 1c;

e.

nuc­le­ar en­ergymeansany form of en­ergy that is re­leased fol­low­ing the fis­sion or fu­sion of atom­ic nuc­lei;

f.

nuc­le­ar ma­ter­i­alsmeanssub­stances that can be used for ob­tain­ing en­ergy by means of nuc­le­ar fis­sion pro­cesses;

g.

con­di­tion­ingmeansthe en­tire range of op­er­a­tions by which ra­dio­act­ive waste is pre­pared for in­ter­im stor­age or fi­nal dis­pos­al, in­clud­ing mech­an­ic­al re­duc­tion, de­con­tam­in­a­tion, press­ing, in­cin­er­a­tion, em­bed­ding in matrices, and pack­aging;

h.

nuc­le­ar goodsmeans:

1.

nuc­le­ar ma­ter­i­als,

2.

ma­ter­i­als and equip­ment in­ten­ded for or re­quired for the use of nuc­le­ar en­ergy,

3.

tech­no­logy that is re­quired for de­vel­op­ing, man­u­fac­tur­ing and us­ing goods cited in num­bers 1 and 2;

i.

ra­dio­act­ive wastemeansra­dio­act­ive sub­stances or con­tam­in­ated ma­ter­i­als that are no longer used;

j.

hand­lingmeansre­search, de­vel­op­ment, pro­duc­tion, stor­age, trans­port, im­port, ex­port, trans­it and broker­age;

k.

broker­agemeans:

1.

provid­ing the es­sen­tial re­quire­ments for con­clud­ing agree­ments on the de­liv­ery, pur­chase or for­ward­ing of nuc­le­ar goods and ra­dio­act­ive waste, re­gard­less of where the nuc­le­ar goods and ra­dio­act­ive waste may be loc­ated,

2.

con­clud­ing such agree­ments if per­form­ance is the duty of a third party or parties,

3.

trad­ing in nuc­le­ar goods and ra­dio­act­ive waste with for­eign coun­tries from Swiss sov­er­eign ter­rit­ory;

l.

clos­uremeansthe back­filling and seal­ing of all un­der­ground ex­cav­a­tions and the ac­cess shaft of a deep geo­lo­gic­al re­pos­it­ory after ter­min­a­tion of the mon­it­or­ing peri­od;

m.

re­pro­cessingmeanscut­ting up of spent fuel ele­ments, chem­ic­al dis­sol­u­tion of ox­ide fuel and sep­ar­a­tion in­to urani­um, plutoni­um and fis­sion products.