The third vice president of the Government and minister for the Ecological Transition, Teresa Ribera, has announced her intention to raise the so-called ‘Enresa Rate’ intended to cover the costs of managing nuclear waste by 30% to 10.31 euros/MWh. A fee that the electrical owners of nuclear power plants must pay to the public company Enresa in charge of radioactive remains. Specifically, the department of Ribera has put out to public consultation the royal decree that regulates this figure.
The new proposal that the Ecological Transition has put on the table represents a reduction of 10 percentage points compared to the one initially proposed, which set the rate at 11.14 euros/MWh and which was withdrawn due to allegations, among them from the nuclear sector, that He asked for more time to study the text.
“What have we done? We have made, I believe, a great effort and we have also been beneficiaries of the excellent management that Enresa is doing,” said Ribera, who specified that until now the rate has allowed the company to accumulate in fund more than 8,000 million euros and that the proposed update now represents almost 3 euros less than what was recommended in the 2018 expert commission report drawn up when the PSOE came to government.
For Ribera, waste management through Enresa “is the most efficient model available.” “In France this management is much more expensive, because each owner has to be responsible for his waste, while here this common system reduces costs,” she assured. In this sense, he has also pointed out that it is easier to manage waste in those municipalities where work has been done for a long time with a nuclear plant, than not to look for a site, a different location.
About Villar de Cañas and the ‘nuclear blackout’
In this way, it has argued that the VII General Waste Plan (PGR) has ruled out the construction of a Centralized Temporary Warehouse (ATC) planned in Villar de Cañas (Cuenca) and contemplates the construction of seven individualized temporary warehouses in each of the (ATD), which, according to the nuclear sector, represents “extra costs that they are not willing to assume.” The vice president has also stressed that the calendar for closing nuclear power plants by 2035 is a calendar in which all companies that own nuclear power plants participate and are committed.
The third vice president explained that “my impression is that it is a very good calendar for Spain, for the Spanish people, for the owners of the plants, for the electrical system and for the enormous professionals in the nuclear sector in Spain,” she assured. Asked if there will be no nuclear power plants in Spain in 2035, the minister stressed that this is her “impression.”
