The great nuclear dilemma: Spain is destined to have seven radioactive cemeteries due to the lack of a centralized warehouse

It is the elephant in the room when it comes to nuclear power.

Or the big brown.

What to do with high-intensity, long-lived waste from nuclear power plants?

Where should this heritage that we leave to future generations be kept?

Neither the Government of Spain nor the communities where the seven nuclear plants are active or in the process of being dismantled in the country feel comfortable talking about this.

So much so that, despite the fact that this question has been floating around for decades in the sector, there is still no definitive answer.

The question is whether a single warehouse should be built to store this waste —mainly spent fuel— or whether each plant will keep its waste for at least the next 50 years.

The Government is processing the seventh radioactive waste plan and wants to approve it in this legislature, although the deadlines are increasingly tight after two years of paralysis in the process.

The text will be in the public information phase until mid-June and the Executive has not yet cleared up the mystery: the project leaves open the possibility of there being a single warehouse - known as ATC, Centralized Temporary Warehouse - or seven ATDs (Decentralized Temporary Warehouses). ).

José Luis Navarro, president of Enresa —the public company in charge of radioactive waste management in Spain— maintains that “it is time” for everyone to decide on which solution they prefer: “Autonomous Communities, owner companies, town halls, organizations environmentalists, interested public in general...”.

But neither Navarro nor the Ministry for Ecological Transition escapes the fact that the key is autonomy.

The opposition of the socialist Government of Castilla-La Mancha to the construction of the centralized warehouse in the Cuenca municipality of Villar de Cañas was, together with the soil problems in the designated area, what caused the shipwreck of that project, in which they spent 90 million euros.

The analysis of alternatives of the draft plan concludes that the best solution from practically all the points of view analyzed is to have a single cemetery.

But it is also pointed out that social and political consensus is necessary for the appointment.

"There have been city councils interested, there has been a willingness of the central governments to have an ATC, but an ATC cannot be designated against an autonomous community," Navarro abounds.

The draft of the seventh national radioactive waste plan, drawn up by Enresa, was released on March 16, 2020 —right at the beginning of the first confinement due to the pandemic—.

But it was not until April 11, 2022, in the middle of Holy Week, when the ministry released the proposal to public information.

In these two years there has been time for the Government to address this issue with the regional executives.

"We have spoken with the autonomous communities that already have high-level waste in their territory, and there are five of them: Castilla y León, Castilla-La Mancha, Catalonia, the Valencian Community and Extremadura," explains Navarro.

"We have not found any favorable reaction to taking the ATC to any territory, which would lead to the ATD", admits the president of Enresa.

José Luis Navarro, president of Enresa, last Tuesday at the Madrid headquarters of this public company.

"I think the most reasonable thing is seven warehouses," says José Luis Escudero, the Minister of Sustainable Development of Castilla-La Mancha, where there are two plants: one almost completely dismantled (Zorita, Guadalajara) and another in operation (Trillo, Guadalajara). ).

"It is understood that if there is no high consensus, ATDs are chosen, that is, each plant keeps its own waste," adds Escudero.

But this, in practice, means that the municipalities in which there are now plants will continue to be mortgaged with that waste when the plants close until the 1970s at least.

That in the best of scenarios, which would be that by then Spain would already have a Deep Geological Storage (AGP) in which to store nuclear waste definitively.

The Government's radioactive waste plan calculates that the AGP should be operational in 2073;

It would be then when the waste from the ATC or the seven cemeteries would be transferred there.

“If we haven't been able to build an ATC, how are we going to be able to build an AGP?

It is the million dollar question”, says Juan Pedro Sánchez, mayor of Yebra —next to the Zorita plant— and president of Amac, the Association of Municipalities in Nuclear Power Plant Areas.

Sánchez, whose association once defended the commitment to an ATC, considers "buried" the possibility of having a single national warehouse.

“When you fail on the first try...”, he says in reference to the Villar de Cañas fiasco.

The president of Amac recalls that the current waste plan, the seventh, has expired for more than a decade.

And he is very skeptical about the seventh plan that the Executive is processing: “I very much doubt that this legislature will be approved.

It is not serious that it does not materialize after so much time.

Navarro, however, believes that, if the planned schedule is met and the general elections are not brought forward, it is still possible that this legislature will go ahead with the new waste plan.

"In July 2023 it could be approved by the Council of Ministers," says the president of Enresa.

sense of state

The case of the Minister of Castilla-La Mancha, who clearly expresses his position, is the exception.

The rest of the communities are silent or do not reveal their position to EL PAÍS.

“We are seeing if we present allegations, we have until June, and we are not going to make a statement before that,” says Olga García, counselor for the Ecological Transition of Extremadura, where the Almaraz plant is located.

"From the outset, the deposit has to make sense and have a social and political consensus," adds García.

The Generalitat of Catalonia, where Ascó and Vandellòs are, also refuses to position itself, reports

.

A spokesman for the Department of Business and Labor alleges that the matter is beyond his powers: "We do not have powers in this area," he says.

“We are studying it”, sources from the Valencian Community are limited to commenting.

“There is a lack of State vision”, laments the president of Enresa.

More information

How does a nuclear fusion reactor work?

"Radioactive waste is brown," summarizes Meritxell Bennasar, from Greenpeace.

Her organization plans to submit claims to the plan.

In principle, she believes that perhaps the best solution could be the seven warehouses.

"This limits the risks in the transport of waste," she adds.

But Bennasar confesses that his organization is not 100% sure: "It's the least bad, but we're not sure either."

If you look only at the economic costs, the solution should be another.

Because, according to Enresa's plan, the additional cost involved in building seven ATDs instead of a single ATC is 2,125 million euros.

Enresa is financed mainly with the rates paid by the owners of the plants, the large electricity companies.

And this week the Nuclear Forum, which represents the interests of these companies, has complained about the increase in costs contemplated by the plan that has been submitted to public information.

The Villar de Cañas fiasco

There was a time when there was a certain consensus, at least between the two big parties (PSOE and PP), that the best alternative was a single ATC.

In 2004, Congress passed a resolution calling for the construction of such a deposit.

The PSOE promoted a process to select the location to which several municipalities presented themselves.

But it was not until 2011 when the PP, already from La Moncloa, appointed Villar de Cañas, a municipality in Castilla-La Mancha, where the popular also ruled at that time.

Hardly any progress has been made on that project since its designation and, when in 2015 the socialists returned to govern in that community, they declared war on the project and used all their legislative and executive weapons to stop it.

Added to this were doubts about the quality of the soils chosen for the silo.

Finally,

"It is evident that today the project in Villar de Cañas does not arouse the consensus that is claimed", says the president of Enresa, José Luis Navarro, about the possibility of its being taken up again.

The same is the opinion of José Luis Escudero, Minister of Sustainable Development of Castilla-La Mancha: "It does not meet the requirements of the seventh plan, the technical requirements and the absence of political and social rejection in the community."

Juan Pedro Sánchez, president of Amac, considers that "there were other better locations" than Villar de Cañas.

"His appointment of him was a wrong decision, as has since been shown," he concludes. 

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