Almaraz Plant has started procedures for the construction of the second Individualized Temporary Repository (ATI) for waste. nuclear. Since the end of 2018, the Cáceres plant had a facility of this type with a capacity of twenty containers of irradiated fuel; but now the planned facility will be much larger and have a greater capacity. Potential to accommodate up to 125 tanks.
After the basic project design was completed, the environmental impact study of the project was submitted to the Ministry of Ecological Transformation and Demographic Struggle last September, and a request for obtaining an Environmental Impact Declaration and permission for implementation and installation was also sent. It will be sent to the Nuclear Security Council (CSN) for evaluation, as confirmed by CNAT (Almaraz-Trillo Nuclear Power Plants) sources. They state that “both authorizations, along with other permits and authorizations, are required to begin construction work on this ATI-100.” “The goal is to achieve Having a fully capable ATI that can continue to drain fuel from the pools after 2028“, is detailed.
Regardless of the scenario the facility will face in the coming years, the construction of this second temporary warehouse will be necessary. ATI currently in operation 12 full containerseach has 32 fuel elements (so it is at 60% of its capacity). Thus, the Almaraz Power Plant has sufficient capacity to operate until the dates foreseen for closure in the National Integrated Energy and Climate Plan (PNIEC); Accordingly, the first reactor will be stopped in the last quarter of 2027, and the second reactor will be stopped in the last quarter of 2027. The last period of 2028.
However, both reactors’ two storage pools are approximately 90% full; Therefore, whether Almaraz eventually made an extension to continue operating or whether the facility was dismantled, A new installation of this type will be required this allows it to dry out the remainder of the high-density waste currently accumulating in ponds.
In fact, the revised version of the 7th Radioactive Waste General Plan, announced a year ago, evaluated that “it is not possible to have ATC (Central Temporary Storage)” for waste and envisaged the establishment of these facilities instead of five nuclear power plants in Spain. Those repositories that are currently operational must be enabled. Also in danger is Santa María de Garoña (Burgos), which is now in danger after a decade of interruption. beginning of dismantling (There is already one in José Cabrera -Guadalajara, where these works are almost completed).
The Cofrentes, Ascó and Vandellós factories have also recently initiated procedures for the construction of these ATIs. In the case of Almaraz, the waste plan mentioned above envisages that the storage period could be extended until 2086. margin to be able to license, build and operate AGP (Deep Geological Repository) of the future.
The new warehouse will be located in the northern area of the Almaraz Centre, east of the existing ATI. Their size will be significantly larger than this. So ATI-100 will have seismic concrete slab With dimensions of 125.1 meters x 32.5 compared to the 50 x 21 meters of the ATI-20.
For this ATI-100, the publicly traded company Enresa (the company responsible for the management of radioactive waste, including spent nuclear fuel, and the dismantling and closure of these facilities) “in coordination with sites that do not yet have ATI capacity, CNAT, total’s (Vandellós II, Ascó, Cofrentes and Almaraz) “chose a homogeneous storage system” for all these facilities, he explains.
In this case, it is a container model awarded to the ENSA-Holtec joint venture, which will be responsible for the design, licensing support, production and supply of storage and transportation systems to the facility under the contract with Enresa. Specifically, the dry storage system selected was HI-STORM FW version G from Holtec International, “a system already licensed and widely used in the United States.”