The government was accelerating its work to pass the law. new General Radioactive Waste Plan (PGRR) in order to update the roadmap on how to manage waste and how to eliminate waste. nuclear power plants and how much and how to pay for all work over the next few decades. The Ministry of Ecological Transition has already prepared a final version of the plan and the aim was to give final official approval in the coming weeks.
HE election progress leaves approval of the new plan in the air. Teresa Ribera’s department has not confirmed whether there is any intention for the text to be carried out before the 23J general election, although she assumes the industry is imminent. This confirmation in the coming weeks to pass the new roadmap to the Council of Ministers after the strategic environmental impact study of the nuclear waste plan.
Pedro Sánchez Government’s plan continues Build seven different warehouses To store radioactive waste, one at each of the Spanish nuclear power plants. intent keeping nuclear waste at each factory after it closesIt is planned to be closed gradually between 2027 and 2035. The waste will remain there for decades until a deep geological repository (AGP) is built to become operational in 2073 and store the waste forever.
‘No’ to Villar de Cañas
After keeping both options open for months, the Socialist Administration finally refused to build a single nuclear cemetery to store the waste and committed to having seven different warehouses. The upcoming election race for the general elections is restarting the fight on this issue, because Popular Party of Alberto Núñez Feijóo not only advocates a review of the shutdown plan agreed with the power companies and advocated by the Executive, but also explicitly supports the option: a single warehouse and revive the project to build in Villar de Cañasin Cuenca.
Only a month after Pedro Sánchez’s arrival in Moncloa following the 2018 no-confidence motion, the recently released Administrator paralyzed all operations related to the construction of a central temporary depot (ATC) in Villar de Cañas and prompted the Security Council to suspend the Nuclear Security Council. (CSN) has temporarily suspended project work because technicians doubted the quality of the land and the District Administration refused.
HE The Popular Party has advocated a reactivation of the Villar de Cañas project in recent months. In the Congress of Deputies, he included it as one of the measures in his programmatic proposal to face the energy crisis, and the mayoral candidate of the town of Cuenca defended it in the final election campaign of the 28M election (winning result).
While waiting to learn about the election schedule for the general elections at the end of July, PP defended this a few months ago in the document ‘In defense of families and companies’. For the recovery of the Spanish economy’, “Unblock the construction of the temporary central waste storage facility in Villar de Cañas (Cuenca) immediately”, stressing that the project “has more than 47,000 hours of CSN technical work and will be missing about 800 hours”. hour for completion”.
No consensus among AAPP
The Ministry of Ecological Transition claims that “lack of social, political and institutional consensusIt made the “one central repository” option “not possible”, which emerged at the time of the allegations regarding the draft of the new General Radioactive Waste Plan. It is recognized that the nuclear sector stems from the fact that, despite the interest of some municipalities, no autonomous community supports the possibility of hosting a nuclear cemetery on its territory.
In fact, the Junta de Castilla-La Mancha, headed by the socialist Emiliano García Page (re-elected by an absolute majority in the last regional elections), has demonstrated over the years through legislative reforms, persistently and by all means. the courts…- his unequivocal refusal to build the nuclear cemetery at Villar de Cañas. The selection of the municipality of Cuenca to host the ATC was approved in 2011 by the Mariano Rajoy Government with the support of the regional Board headed by the then-popular María Dolores de Cospedal.
collision with electricity
The government’s plan to build seven nuclear cemeteries is the most rejected option among power companies operating the plants, as it is the most expensive alternative. (€2,100 million more than building a single warehouse) and because they condemned the existing sites of nuclear power plants to storage these wastes for decades before they could develop other industrial projects on land after the power plants were shut down and dismantled.
The nuclear employers association, in which Iberdrola, Endesa, Naturgy and EDP are integrated, warned that they are opposed to incurring the billionaire’s extra cost of owning seven warehouses and surrounding facilities to guarantee their safety and waste treatment. Of particular concern to electricity companies is the unexpected extra cost that has to be paid by 2100 to manage nuclear waste (19,200 million when opting for seven temporary silos), as sources in the nuclear sector confirm. 2,000 million at fixed prices in relation to the previous draft, which would lead to an increase in the rates that power plants pay to finance waste management.
Endesa, Iberdrola, Naturgy and EDP They attribute these extra costs to the enormous delay accumulated by the old project for the construction of a central temporary warehouse in Villar de Cañas due to a lack of political consensus, and therefore they refuse to undertake them. The proposal of the major electricity companies in the claims reports for the PGRR draft is to consider these additional amounts as the cost of the electricity system and charge them at the electricity rate that all consumers pay.