The nuclear debate enters the scene at the seat of national sovereignty. The PP promoted a Senate amendment to impose a revision of the closure calendar agreed in 2019 and allow the useful life of the national nuclear park to be extended.
The issue will force all political groups in the parliament to take a position at a time when the issue is highly topical, given the request that the electricity companies have sent in recent days to extend the permit for the exploitation of Almaraz (Cáceres) from 2027 to 2030.
In this situation, both the electricity companies, main owners of the affected nuclear power plants, and Foment del Treball, the main business association in Catalonia, are putting pressure on Junts and ERC, according to several sources close to the situation, since both parties are crucial in this Thursday’s vote: nuclear energy has a specific weight in Catalonia (the two groups of Ascó and Vandellós are in Tarragona).
Both Iberdrola and Endesa seek to demonstrate the importance of atomic energy for Catalonia. On Tuesday itself, the CEO of Endesa, José Bogas, warned of the risk it entails for Catalonia to give up this generation source, which provides half of the supply where the development of renewables is lagging behind and encounters specific difficulties. Sources close to Iberdrola make the same argument: “For Catalonia, maintaining the nuclear power plants that provide 50% of the energy is essential.”
Sources close to the negotiations also assure that Foment del Treball was involved in getting both Catalan parties to vote on the motion. Here, however, they believe that the energy issue can weigh less than political reasons. Aside from his pro-nuclear profile, Junts has broken ties with the government he supported during the investiture and could align himself with Vox and PP to vote for this amendment to the Sustainable Mobility Law. Podemos and Alianza Verde asked the Congressional Council to veto the amendment, but in the end the PSOE and Sumar admitted it because it had no impact on the budget.
Limited effects
However, both in the business sector and among energy jurists, the importance of the effects that the approval of this amendment could produce is downplayed. It is excluded, as has been suggested, that any construction will lead to the automatic expansion of four nuclear power plants (Almaraz I and II, Ascó I and Cofrentes). “The amendment eliminates the definitive cessation of the use of the ministerial ordinances of 2020 and 2021; however, this does not prevent the elaboration of the extension, on which the CSN must decide and the Government is already elaborating”, specifies an expert in the sector. “This is demonstrated by the fact that power companies have already applied for the extension request for Group I of Almaraz despite the permanent cessation order still being in force,” the source adds.
What they admit is the political value of the amendment. Before the CSN and the Ministry for Ecological Transition decide on the extension of the Almaraz exploitation permit, the Government could find a parliamentary majority in favor of extending the useful life of the plants in Spain.
And the issue is a problem for the Executive. So far he has avoided expressing himself clearly for or against it. The President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, reiterated this Sunday in an interview with EL PAÍS his intention to study the request of the electricity companies to extend Almaraz as long as it does not entail additional costs for citizens.
His electorate is divided on this issue. Nobody knows that there will be elections in Extremadura in December and the extension of Almaraz is a key issue from an electoral point of view there. But most environmentalists disagree with the extension. Not even his investiture partner, Sumar, who spoke out against it and asked the PSOE to respect its investiture commitment to respect the current closure timetable, which runs from 2027 to 2035.
Meanwhile, in the last few hours, personalities relevant to socialism such as Felipe González have also entered the debate and now defend the maintenance of this technology.
Among the Catalan parties, Junts has expressed himself in favor of this energy and Esquerra has also changed the subject. Previously he supported the closure, but now he believes that we must first ensure that there are alternatives on Catalan territory. For the Popular Party and Vox the issue raises fewer doubts. Both are in favor of prolonging the life of the plants despite the fact that it was the PP that decreed the closure of Garoña in Burgos in 2017.
Opinions on nuclear power are changing
Nowadays, public opinion on nuclear energy has changed. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine demonstrated the vulnerability of rejecting this technology as it often means having to draw hydrocarbons from abroad. Gone are the fears that caused the Chernobyl disaster in the Soviet Union or, more recently, the Fukushima catastrophe in Japan. The European Union, strongly influenced by France (one of the countries with the most nuclear energy in the world), has decided to declare this energy green, since it is a technology that does not generate CO2 emissions, the first element to be reduced according to the 2015 Paris climate agreement.
Added to the previous arguments are those who believe that nuclear energy for Spain is also a guarantee to avoid blackouts. However, after the new requirements requested by Red Eléctrica, the Government or the CNMC to avoid the recurrence of an accident like the one on April 28, the electricity companies themselves have already warned that atomic technology is not ideal for containing instability.
However, another of the keys to the debate lies in the fact that, for the expansions of the plants to materialize, there must first be a consensus between the different owners. Iberdrola and Endesa have come out clearly in favor of life extension, but Naturgy has limited its support only to Almaraz, while EDP has warned of problems for investments in renewables generated by uncertainty over the shutdown timetable and has questioned its contribution to avoiding blackouts.
