The government of Spain rejects the possibility of reopening the Garoña nuclear power plant

The Minister for the Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge of the Government of Spain, Theresa Riverahe has refused next Tuesday the possibility of reopen Garoña . nuclear power plant. Ribera made this statement in the Senate, in response to a question from EH Senator Bildu Idurre Bideguren, who has expressed concern to the Spanish minister over the idea, which she considers “crazy”.

Faced with the energy crisis, Brussels’ consideration of nuclear energy investments as “green” and the Junta de Castilla y León’s proposal to study the reopening of the Garoña plant, Bideguren asked the Spanish government if “it sees any possibility to nuclear plant shutdown schedule”, and if she believes that the reopening of Garoña is possible “with the same technology or with an alternative”, to which the minister has responded by rejecting that idea. The third vice president of the government of Spain has struck out the proposal of the government of Castilla y León as an “ideological event”, in a nod to “the terminology of the far right”, and something that is “impossible and unfeasible”. “.

In response to @EHBilduCongressthe Spanish government closes the door on the reopening of Garoña, which it calls an “unachievable ideological event”.@IdurreBideguren: “The solution to the energy crisis should not be a proposal anchored in an outdated model such as nuclear energy”. pic.twitter.com/czOzgq2qAD

— EH Bildu (@ehbildu) September 20, 2022

Ribera has accused the Junta de Castilla y León of “wasting money from the government budget, which they have neither for forest firefighters, nor for firefighting equipment, nor to support the people, nor to open the health centers of Castilla y León, in the order a report that the Nuclear Safety Council would have given him for free”, as well as Nuclenor, the head of Garoña, and which, according to the minister, “would have shown that it makes no sense”.

This plant, 50% owned by Endesa and Iberdrola, has a plan “for the dismantling and possible rehabilitation of the area”, Ribera recalled, also pointing out that the government “has strengthened its commitment ” that Garoña as one of the “just transition zones”, where the neighbors have already faced a situation of “absolute neglect” in recent years.

Ribera lamented that in “all these years” the residents of Santa María de Garoña, in Burgos, had no plan to dismantle the factory, “neither care, nor prevention, nor any kind of alternative measure”.

“We don’t have the slightest intention of proposing the revision of a calendar that has already been agreed by all the owners of the nuclear power plants,” stressed the minister, in a country that “fortunately has enormously powerful indigenous resources, not only to produce electrons and green molecules, but to of key drivers for job creation, services, innovation and industry, such as renewable energy sources”.

Bideguren has appreciated the vice president’s strength and has rejected the position of those who propose the “outdated and unrealistic” commitment to nuclear energy as a solution to the current crisis. The senator added that the reopening of the nuclear power plant ten years after its closure is a “crazy and irresponsible idea, not only because of the enormous risk involved, but also because it is not even economically and technically feasible”.

According to him, the solution to the current energy situation is to deploy renewable energy sources with public control, transparency, an environmental and social vision and, in the specific case of Garoña, to promote the economic and social reactivation of the region.