There are 602 days without incident. Record of days without incidents, 1,100. These are the data that appear on the illuminated sign that welcomes visitors to the Almaraz nuclear power plant, in Cáceres. To reach it they will have had to show their identity documents on several occasions, undergo body scans and cross three high security barriers surrounded by wires and concertina wires that remind the most neophytes of this type of facility of a war scene or the fences that separate Melilla from Morocco.
Exhaustive control and extreme security are the maximum in this installation both with regard to physical security and electrical production activity. Not even the steps to move from one building to another in the complex of more than 10,000 square meters are left to improvisation. Everything is exhaustively planned. But in 2024 there is something that escapes that tight control. Your closing date.
On paper there is a closure schedule for all nuclear power plants on Spanish soil that their owners signed with the Government in 2019. Almaraz reactor I is the first on that list and the date of that event: November 1, 2027 One year later, the closure of the Almaraz reactor II is scheduled for October 31, 2028.
The Minister for the Energy Transition, Teresa Ribera, refuses to question this date. The owners of Almaraz (Iberdrola, 53%, Endesa, 36% and Naturgy, 11%) publicly maintain their commitment to complying with the agreed closure schedule. But the reality is not so compelling.
The employees of the plant, which La Vanguardia visited this week, do not even want to talk about the issue. “We try not to think about that possibility. Our work has not changed at all; If one day it happens, we want the last electron to leave here to do so under the same safety conditions and without lowering the demands at any time,” they say.
For the Arañuelo field area, the region in which it is located, it is an irreplaceable source of employment. It generates more than 2,000 jobs a year and unparalleled economic activity. Defense that clashes with detractors who have been calling for his dismissal for years.
Now, a small group would already be working on that closure. “There is an asset transition department that is working together with Enresa in case that closing date is met,” says the director of the plant, Rafael Campos, without giving any further clue. The manager explains that for an orderly closure, the first dismantling processes should begin at the end of 2024 or beginning of 2025.
But Campos confirms what the owners of the plant have repeated sotto voce in recent months. “Almaraz could continue operating until the day before that date, if so decided, or continue for another 20 years in complete safety, as other nuclear plants with similar technology (Westinghouse reactor) in the United States have demonstrated.”
The origin of this infrastructure dates back to the first reactor on May 1, 1981, and the second on October 8, 1983, after a decade of construction. The dull green colors of its control room make it impossible not to think of the eighties James Bond movies with thousands of buttons and lights.
Almaraz is one of the largest nuclear plants in Spain along with Ascó in Tarragona. In 2023 it produced 16,927 gigawatt hours (GWh), which is equivalent to 7% of the energy consumption of Spanish annual demand. It is precisely this great generation power that has meant that, after the energy crisis derived from the war in Ukraine, the closure schedule has been called into question, due to its value as support energy for the system.
Working with an activity expansion schedule entails, among many other things, continuing to place orders for uranium, updating emergency maintenance equipment and even the bunker for crisis situations. In addition, Almaraz must assume, whether it closes or not, the investment in the storage of its waste. Currently, there is an individualized temporary warehouse (ATI) with capacity for 20 containers, 18 of which already contain the waste accumulated throughout the life of the plant. But in 2023 its expansion has already begun and a new ATI with capacity for 120 containers is underway. Sufficient to house the waste from the entire life of the plant, even if the activity is extended to the end of its useful life.
