This Wednesday, the Council of Ministers adopted the seventh general plan for radioactive waste, which sets the roadmap for the management of these dangerous wastes, which essentially come from nuclear power plants. This plan in particular, whose approval comes eight years late, is an essential part of allowing Spain to carry out the orderly closure of the five power plants that are still active, which will begin in 2027 and be completed in 2035. This closure is a complex process of dismantling the facilities and subsequent treatment of radioactive waste.
Waste with very low, low and medium activity is delivered to El Cabril, the warehouse in the province of Córdoba that needs to be expanded. The problem has always been with highly active fuels (which come primarily from hazardous spent fuel used in power plants).
The current waste plan, dated 2006, called for the construction of a central temporary storage facility (known by the nickname ATC) where the uranium used in the facilities would be stored for decades until Spain had a permanent storage facility. During the second term of office of the socialist José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, the process was opened to decide the location of the ATC. But it was the managing director of Mariano Rajoy who, after arriving in La Moncloa, finally designated Villar de Cañas in Cuenca as the place to build this infrastructure. This location – which, according to various voices, was not the best – was chosen primarily due to the efforts of the popular María Dolores de Cospedal, then president of Castile-La Mancha. But when the PSOE returned to government in this municipality, the regional executive launched a war to stop the project. When the PSOE finally returned to La Moncloa in 2018, it finally paralyzed the project, on which 90 million euros had been spent.
Now the ATC is finally getting the final touches on the seventh plan. The solution chosen provides for a temporary warehouse to be set up in each plant. There will be seven in total: one in each of the five power plants that are still active and two more in the Garoña and José Cabrera nuclear power plants, which are already being dismantled. In the same Council of Ministers, it was agreed to delete “the designation of Villar de Cañas” to house the ATC, as reported by the Ministry of Ecological Transition.
The government's plan also envisages these seven locations as a temporary solution. The last plant is expected to go into operation in the 1970s. It will be the future Deep Geological Warehouse (AGP) and the document approved this Wednesday sets “a roadmap for Spain to have this facility”. Other countries such as Finland, Sweden, Switzerland and France have chosen this infrastructure, emphasized Ecological Transition. Although none of these silos are in operation yet.
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The approval of this plan, which was pending before the last general elections, was essential in order to move forward with the closure of the plants in Spain, as the destination of the highly radioactive waste was unclear. During the drafting phase of the plan and almost until the end of the process, the government had left open the possibility of building a single ATC for all of the country's nuclear waste. But no autonomous community offered to host this silo, so the executive finally opted for the now confirmed solution of seven warehouses. That is, each facility will store the most hazardous waste until the AGP exists in 50 years.
In 2019, the government and the companies that own the nuclear power plants – Iberdrola, Endesa and Naturgy – agreed on a schedule for the closure of the country's five power plants, ending in 2035. A public company is responsible for the disposal of radioactive waste in Spain. : Enresa. However, funding comes primarily from the fees that electric companies pay for treating these hazardous wastes. The seventh plan provides for “future costs of 20.22 billion euros,” the ministry said on Wednesday. This figure corresponds to the expected expenditure in waste management for the period between 2024 and 2100. The solution of seven warehouses instead of one central warehouse will make administration more expensive by 2.125 million.
Five active plants and two in dismantling
Spain currently has seven active reactors spread across five nuclear power plants. Two reactors are in operation at the Almaraz plant in Cáceres and the Ascó plant (Tarragona). The other three plants in operation are Cofrentes (Valencia), Vandellós (Tarragona) and Trillo (Guadalajara). In addition, two other facilities are under dismantling: José Cabrera in the final phase and Santa María de Garoña in the initial phase.
These seven reactors provide around 20% of the country's electricity and were originally designed to operate for 40 years. This hurdle can be overcome, but must be accompanied by improvements that require significant investments that may not pay off for owners. In 2019, the owning companies agreed with the government on a decommissioning plan that ends in 2035. By that date, according to the executive branch's energy plans, the national grid will be nuclear-free and based primarily on renewable energy.
The closure of the Spanish nuclear park will begin with the first Almaraz reactor in November 2027 (the second will be decommissioned in October 2028). Then Ascó, Cofrentes, Vandellós and Trillo will be closed gradually, which will be the case in May 2035, always according to the plan agreed between the government and the electricity companies.
After the activity has ceased, at least three years must pass before dismantling can begin. At this moment Enresa takes over the management of the facilities and begins the entire process, as happened recently with Garoña. This work usually takes ten years and the land should be released after another ten years. However, this end will now be delayed, since, according to the plan, part of the facilities – the one occupied by the storage facility with the high-level radioactive waste from each facility – will remain occupied until at least the 1970s of this century. Waste was this Wednesday approved in the Council of Ministers.
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