If there is a legally irrelevant order, it is the one that has been at the center of attention this week: the one approved on 23 July 2020 by the Government which established (and establishes) that the extension requested by the owners of the Almaraz nuclear power plant (Iberdrola, Endesa and Naturgy) for the Extremadura plant would be “the last and definitive”. In reality, the ministerial ordinance, which the People’s Party wanted to repeal with cannon fire through an amendment to the draft Law on Sustainable Mobility, was drafted by the electricity companies themselves. More precisely, the ordinance was issued within the terms requested by the companies following the closure calendar of the Spanish atomic park (between 2027 and 2035) which they themselves signed with the National Company for Radioactive Waste (Enresa) through the non-binding memorandum of 26 March 2019.
The irrelevance of the ordinance is demonstrated by the fact that, with it in force, they have asked the Ministry of Ecological Transition for its extension until 2030 and that the department led by Sara Aagesen will most likely accept (after perhaps becoming “the interesting one”). And it will be like this, since companies have given up on the tax cuts they had asked for and which the Ministry considered “a red line”.
This mention of the “definitive” nature of the renewal granted in 2020 did not prevent us from requesting its renewal because the date of cessation of exploitation is not included in any regulation. And the controversial ordinance is not a law, “but an administrative act”, recall legal sources, and the owners of Almaraz knew this well. In reality, the request for extension had been presented to the Ministry long before the mess generated by the amendment in question and the process will not be changed because the ordinance remains in force after Junts’ abstention thwarted the PP’s initiative.
Political sources assure that the amendment was a proposal from the Extremaduran government when it was not yet clear whether the electricity companies would request the expansion of Almaraz or not. But if this aroused so much journalistic interest it was for political reasons: it was the first test for Junts after his public break with the government. The Catalan independentists, despite the null consequences that the amendment would have had, did not want to risk with a pro-nuclear message which is the idea of the PP, despite defending the continuity of Ascó and Vandellós, whose turn will come in a few years.
With their request, the owners admitted what they had denied and turned into a myth, that is, that they would not have been able to request the extension if the ministry had not first repealed the ordinance in question. The reason is elementary, and this is how the political sources express it: “A subsequent ordinance can annul the provisions of the previous one if it is favorable to the interested party.” The ministry, in fact, after the opinion of the Nuclear Safety Council (CSN), would express its approval for Almaraz with another ordinance.
2030, the great soap opera
Considering that the wind farm closure timetable is no longer useful and after the experience with the Santa María de Garoña plant, a soap opera that lasted 10 years and starred by the dominant companies (Endesa and Iberdrola, 50%) and the PP government, in addition to what has now happened with Almaraz, everything suggests that the future closure of each of Spain’s nuclear power plants will have its own film.
The extension of the life of the Extremadura plant until 2030 will coincide in time (atomic coincidence?) with the end of the operating permit of Cofrentes and Ascó I, which, obviously, is included in two ministerial decrees of 2021 twins of that of Almaraz which the PP also wanted to revoke in its amendment.
But these future films, which will surely arrive, will be interpreted separately by Iberdrola, a company that controls 100% of the Valencian nuclear company, and by Endesa, with 100% of Ascó. In these cases they will be able to fight their battles alone, for closure or continuity, without interference from their partners. The centers are constituted as communities of goods, whose decisions must be adopted unanimously. In fact, Naturgy’s refusal to ask for Almaraz to be extended beyond 2030, or to fully renegotiate the closure timetable, was decisive so that the companies were finally limited to requesting just three years for Almaraz.
But just as the capital of nuclear companies will remain in the same hands, the unknown is which government they will have to deal with at that point; yes, as happened with Garoña, with one more pronuclear, or with another willing to maintain the closure. In any case, the first word belongs to the CSN, the second to the Executive and, in the event that the latter says yes, the last word will always belong to the companies.
