Nuclear energy in Spain

In Spain, the nuclear energy is the second type of electrical producer most used. It is just
overcome by the increasing of the renewable energies, such as solar, wind or hydraulics, that
have an important 42% of the electrical production, compare with the 21% of the nuclear ones.
Due to the climates conditions that our country have.

Despite this high percentage, and as we studied in class, this energies cannot be precisely
estimated, so Spain need other reliable supports just in case this predictions fail, and there is
where nuclear energy plays a really important role in electric supply.

Spain has 9 nuclear plants in his territory of which five are working, and have seven reactors
distributed among them. The other 4 have been being close due to several and different
reasons.
From Vandellos I, closed in 1989 because of a fire and being dismantled yet, the one called
Jose Cabrera-Zorita closed in 2006, or the Santa Maria de Garoa which activity is
indefinitely ceased since 2012, but right now there is some speculation that may be open again.
There is also a fabric of nuclear fuel in Juzbado, that is also included in the nuclear installations
, reaching the level of 10 in the whole country. In the following picture we can see the actives
ones in purple, the dismantled in green, and the yellow ones are those who were a project of
construction that never came up. The red one is a nuclear graveyard.

Waste treatment
95% of radioactive waste produced in Spain are low and medium level activity and the other 5%
is high activity

High activity

10 years ago There werent storage of high level waste in Spain, so during normal activity of
nuclear plants such waste was temporarily stored in pools located in its own facilities and
should be transferred to warehouses in other countries such as the UK, who returned to Spain
in 2010; and France, coming back in 2011. If Spain hadnt accept the return of this waste for lack
of an appropriate place, it should take fines of up to 60,000 per day. (80 million won)
La Hague site in
Beaumont-Hague
(France), where
much of the highlevel waste generated
in Spain are sent.

For that purpose the government developed a project to create a centralized storage of high
level waste in Cuenca (Spain).
This project was an installation in surface designed to save up to 13000 cubic meters of dry
waste. The isolation of these are made by three walls. A stainless steel capsule, a stainless
steel storage and a concrete structure almost two meters thick, impenetrable by radiation
-

Low and intermediate level

Waste of low and medium activity are conditioned by the plants themselves and must meet the
acceptance criteria for disposal in Cabril (Crdoba). which is estimated to have capacity until
2030.

In Spain nuclear development was starting around 1940 when the civil war ended. However,
during this years, the tendency has been to change this energy for the renewables that we have
been developing too.
As we can see in the following webpage, the demanding of energy in Spain is calculated
everyday and is also estimated the amount of electrical service that the renewables energies
can give per hour. Depending on that estimation nuclear power plants are on or off that day but
sometimes is cheaper to the country to buy electrical supply from others( because power plants
required a lot to be switch on).
But nevertheless, and as said, it is an estimation an only power plant supply is the reliable one.
https://demanda.ree.es/demanda.html