The land earmarked for the project would have taken in some of the residential areas of Niedergösgen, Gretzenbach and Däniken.

On 9 June 2008, the Kernkraftwerk Niederamt AG, a project company of Atel Holding AG, which now goes by the name of Alpiq Holding, submitted the general licence application to the Swiss Federal Office of Energy.

[1] This is the first stage of the licensing procedure for a new nuclear power plant in Switzerland.

Following the natural disasters in Japan, which resulted in the reactor accidents at the Fukushima nuclear power plant, on 14 March 2011, Federal Councillor Doris Leuthard suspended the general licensing procedures for the replacement of existing nuclear power plants.

It was based on a generic nuclear power plant of the third-generation designs available today with light water reactors (pressurised or boiling water reactors) but stopped short of specifying the actual make or manufacturer.