Finally date for the return from France to Catalonia of the nuclear fuel spent in the seventeen years of activity of the Vandellòs I plant, closed in 1989 after the worst accident in Spanish nuclear history. The nuclear waste, processed in that country so that it loses radioactivity and could be stored, will return in 2028 and will be deposited in a temporary nuclear warehouse to be built within three years in the same Vandellòs I facility.
Enresa, the state waste company, detailed yesterday in the mouth of its president, José Luis Navarro, the calendar and plan agreed with the Ministry for the Ecological Transition. “We cannot wait any longer because there is an agreement with France that obliges us to fulfill our part to Spain, which is to receive that waste,” he warned. Nuclear waste should have started returning in 2017, according to the agreement signed.
Every year that France saves the Vandellòs I waste, the deposit increases by 30 million more. The amount is around 150 million, money that France will return to Spain when it can return the waste, according to Navarro. The bill charged by France for processing nuclear fuel is 700 million.
Enresa has begun to study the design of a large new concrete building in an already chosen location where a geotechnical study is being carried out to safely house radioactive waste. It will be at the Vandellòs I site, which is near the sea, on the Costa Daurada. The green building that protects the reactor box of the old plant, still in the dormant phase, is clearly visible.
The Vandellòs I nuclear warehouse will be on temporary paper. The waste will remain next to the Tarragona plant until the Spanish Government undertakes the construction of the large centralized, geological and deep nuclear warehouse, in the year 2073.
The head of Enresa also explained that in 2030 they hope to be able to begin the last phase of dismantling of Vandellòs I. It has not been able to start yet because Enresa is studying how to undertake the last dismantling process with the help of nuclear experts, especially from France.
“It was a graphite gas plant that, unlike other more modern plants where dismantling does not pose any problems, here the treatment of the irradiated graphite material poses technical complications,” Navarro admitted. “We have to finish deciding how we treat and condition this waste, which is why we have not been able to undertake the third phase and finish the dismantling,” Navarro added.
The president of Enresa has presented an exhibition that will remain permanently at the Vandellòs I site on radiological protection throughout history. The exhibition, The Sixth Sense, is open to arranged visits, especially from schools and institutes, with fifty devices related to the detection of ionizing radiation for the protection of people in the health and industrial field.
