According to Spanish media at the weekend eleven Spanish towns have volunteered themselves to host a major new nuclear waste storage site – a long-delayed project that is fiercely opposed by environmentalists. Spain’s six nuclear plants produce approximately 20% of the total electricity and currently store their own spent fuel however, last month the government requested bids from locations interested in building a central storage site.
Before the Friday deadline 11 towns had submitted their bids, however they all have fewer than 800 inhabitants, reported Spain’s daily Catalan newspaper El Periodico.
Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero remarked that the location of the site, which is expected to cost 700 million euros, would be reached by “consensus” and will bring in millions of euros in government subsidies to the waste site host town furthermore it would employ around 100 people once it becomes operational.
However, environmental group Ecologists in Action accuses the selection process as being a “circus” – they argue that most of the towns in the race are “poor, with few residents and whose mayors made the bids without knowing what the risks are”
Bids have also met opposition from neighbouring municipalities, who fear they will share the potential risks less the financial gains, and, in addition regional government leaders in both central Castile-La Mancha and Northwestern Catalonia have vowed to block construction of a nuclear waste site on their territory.
The Spanish government estimated that Spain’s nuclear power stations would no longer have storage room on site from as soon as 2013, then in 2004 Parliament voted to build a central waste storage site – but this project has been at a standstill since.
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Source: nuclearpowerdaily.com
Tags: business utilities
