Swiss poll rejects N-power curbs

Press, 20 February 1979, Page 9

Swiss poll rejects N-power curbs

NZPA-Reuter Bern In a crucial referendum closely watched in other European countries, Swiss voters have rejected by a slim, 51-49, margin a popular initiative backed by environmental groups that would have placed near-prohibitive curbs on the country’s multi-billion-dollar nuclearenergy programme.

Officials announced that a majority of 965,244 ■ to 919,823 had heeded the government’s appeal to reject the proposed constitutional amendment that sought to make the licensing of all nuclear installations subject to sweepingly stringent conditions to safeguard the rights and the security of the people. The vote, sure to have an impact on an increasingly

heated nuclear energy debate in other parts of Western Europe, came three months after a referendum in neighbouring Austria had narrowly refused approval for that country’s first nuclear power plant, at Zwentendorf.

The referendum came after months of heated campaigning in which the Government had said that approval of the initiative would have grave consequences for the Swiss economy, with energy shortages and increased unemployment. Inadvertent assistance for the Government came from the Iranian revolutionary’ movement’s stopping of all oil exports, which has sent Swiss heating-oil prices up by a spectacular 70 per cent in the last two months.