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Nabarralde | Nabarra Papers
Ecologists
Demand Closure of
Garoña Nuclear Power Plant
Mila Parot Zubimendi.
The ecologist
group Accion from Spain's autonomous community of Cantabria
demanded that the Spanish Ministry of Industry and Energy order
the definitive closure of the Garoņa reactor built in Burgos in
1971. According to Accion, the obsolete plant storages high-level
radioactive waste endangering the lives of not only the residents
of Burgos, but also of those in
Araba, and Santander.
Earlier this
month, Spain's Council of Ministers approved building a dry storage
facility for nuclear waste at the Central Nuclear Trillo, a nuclear
power station in the central Guadalajara province.
Trillo is jointly
owned by all Spain's major electricity generators. This fact has
led NGOs to suspect an undeclared intention of storing high-level
waste from the state's entire nuclear power industry at the site
at a later date.
Last February
Spain's national radioactive waste agency ENRESA claimed it was
not necessary to build deep underground storage in the Spanish
rocks before 2015-2020 as had earlier been planned.
At that time,
ENRESA experts, together with experts of the United States' Nuclear
Regulatory Commission, had designed and began constructing containers
to be stored at Spanish reactor sites. The first was likely to
be placed at Trillo.
The decision
to build a dry storage facility at Trillo, on grounds of "urgent
national interest," came despite vehement opposition by local
and regional governments.
Up to 128 containers
each holding 21 nuclear fuel elements are planned to be stored
at the site, which ecologists claim is more than double the future
requirements of the Trillo plant.
Enresa confirmed
that "fuel elements could possibly be stored at the new Trillo
site for a minimum of 50 years."
According to
the company, the storage facility "will be exclusively used for
the Trillo Nuclear Power Plant, as certified by the General Directorship
of Energy of the Ministry of Industry and Energy."
However, there's
some credibility to the ecologists' claim. The government's has
announced that its fifth national plan for radioactive waste envisages
a 10 year delay in the choice of a site for a deep geological
storage facility for high-level radioactive wast -- a decision
which was supposed to be taken this year.
The anti-nuclear
movement in the Spanish state has decreased since the impressive
mobilizations in the Basque Country in the 1980s. But it is not
dead. More than 20,000 people rallied Torrecampo (Cordoba) in
1998 against rumors that a high-level waste dumpsite was going
to be built in the area. Anti-nuclear activists still have the
capacity to react to such an important issue as the storage of
high-level radioactive waste.
The anti-nuclear
movement in the Basque Country
In very difficult
conditions of prosecution and even jail for activists, the anti-nuclear
movement in Spain had a particular success in southern Basque
Country. With the support of city councils and all political parties,
and after succeding in the giving up by Madrid of some nuclear
projects on the Basque coast, the movement concentrated its efforts
in fighting the two nuclear reactors being build in Lemoiz, some
few kilometers from Bilbo. General public mobilization included
impressive demonstrations, some coordinated blackouts, and public
meetings in villages and towns.
The pro-independence
and socialist Basque organization Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (Basque
Homeland and Freedom) joined in and attacked electric facilities
linked to the plant. Hundreds of electric high-tension pylons
and distribution stations were bombed and two managers of the
nuclear power plant were killed. In September 1982, construction
was stopped at both Lemoiz reactors and later on the government
decided to phase them out.
August 1999
Mila Parot
Zubimendi is a law student and free-lance writer. She's
currently living in Miarritze.
Sources consulted:
Antenna, Environment News Service.
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