2023-06-30 08:04:32
The Government had been working in recent years on the development of the new General Radioactive Waste Plan (PGRR). The executive already has a definitive version of the roadmap of how to manage waste, how to dismantle nuclear power plants, and how much and how to pay for all the jobs over the next few decades. But the final approval of the plan, whose last formal approval was expected by the sector as imminent, will not arrive until after general elections next 23J.
The Vice President and Minister for the Ecological Transition, Teresa Ribera, has confirmed that the total processing of the future PGRR is practically complete, but has placed the final ‘ok’ by the Government beyond the elections at the end of July. “We have to adopt more relevant measures in the short term and we will probably have to address this Waste Plan after the elections,” she said in statements to the press before speaking at the annual congress of the Wind Energy Association (AEE).
The Government sThis is how the debate during the electoral campaign on the construction of nuclear cemeteries for Spain. The plan of the Executive of Pedro Sánchez goes through building seven different warehouses to store radioactive waste, one in each of the Spanish nuclear plants.
The intention is to keep the nuclear waste in each plant after its closure, whose staggered decommissioning is scheduled between 2027 and 2035. The waste will remain there for decades, until a deep geological repository (AGP) is built with the aim of making it operational. in 2073 and keep the waste forever.
After keeping both options open for months, the Socialist Executive finally ruled out building a single nuclear cemetery to store the waste and is committed to having seven different warehouses. On the contrary, the Popular Party of Alberto Núñez Feijóo not only defends reviewing and postponing the closure schedule of the nuclear power plants between 2027 and 2035 agreed with the electric companies, it also explicitly supports the option of a single warehouse and resuscitating the project to build it in Villar de Cañas, in Cuenca.
The Villar de Cañas case
Barely a month after the arrival of Pedro Sánchez in Moncloa after the motion of no confidence in 2018, the recently released Executive paralyzed all the processing related to the construction of a centralized temporary warehouse (ATC) in Villar de Cañas and urged the Security Council Nuclear (CSN) to temporarily suspend the study of the project due to the doubts of the technicians about the quality of the land and the rejection of the regional Administration.
In recent months, the Popular Party has defended the reactivation of the Villar de Cañas project in the Congress of Deputies, including it as one of the measures in its programmatic proposal to deal with the energy crisis, and it has been defended by its candidate for mayor of the town of Cuenca in the last electoral campaign of the 28M elections (which has been the winner).
From the Ministry for Ecological Transition It has been alleged that the “lack of social, political and institutional consensus” demonstrated during the period of allegations of the draft of the new General Radioactive Waste Plan made the option of a single centralized warehouse “unfeasible”. From the nuclear sector it is recognized that it is due to the fact that no autonomous community supported the possibility of hosting the nuclear cemetery in its territory, despite the interest of some municipalities.
In fact, the Junta de Castilla-La Mancha, headed by the socialist Emiliano García Page (recently re-elected with an absolute majority in the last regional elections), has insistently shown for years and by all means -with legislative reforms, in which courts…- his outright rejection of the construction of the nuclear cemetery in Villar de Cañas. The election of the municipality of Cuenca to host the ATC was approved in 2011 by the Government of Mariano Rajoy, with the support of the regional Board then headed by the also popular María Dolores de Cospedal.
The plan and the electric
The current government’s plan to build seven nuclear cemeteries is the option that generates the most rejection among the electricity companies themselves that the power plants operate, because it is the most expensive alternative (2,100 million euros more than making a single warehouse) and because it condemns the current sites of the nuclear plants to store this waste for decades and without being able to develop other industrial projects in the land after the closure and dismantling of the power plants.
From the employers’ association of the nuclear companies -in which Iberdrola, Endesa, Naturgy and EDP are integrated- it has already been warned of his opposition to assuming the multimillion-dollar extra cost that having seven stores will imply and the surrounding facilities necessary to guarantee their safety and the treatment of waste. What worries electric companies especially, as confirmed by sources in the nuclear sector, is that the forecasts of what still remains to be paid until the year 2100 to manage nuclear waste -19,200 million when opting for the seven temporary silos- imply an extra cost unexpected 2,000 million at constant prices in relation to the previous draft that would lead to an increase in the rates paid by power plants to finance waste management.
Endesa, Iberdrola, Naturgy and EDP blame these extra costs on the enormous delay accumulated by the old project construction of a centralized temporary warehouse in Villar de Cañas due to lack of political consensus, and for this reason they refuse to assume them. The proposal of the large electric companies included in their report of allegations to the PGRR draft is to consider these additional amounts as costs of the electricity system and charge them at the electricity rate paid by all consumers.
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