Europe’s oldest functioning nuclear reactor, at Switzerland’s Beznau plant, will turn 50 next week — a lifespan deemed dangerously long by environmentalists who are demanding that it be shut down immediately. Commercial operation began at the plant in the northern canton of Aargau, near the German border, on December 9, 1969 — back when The Beatles were still together and a man had just walked on the Moon. Beznau 1 is one of the very oldest reactors in operation today, following only reactors 1 and 2 at Tarapur in western India, which went online in October 1969, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
