Between January and December 2023, the nuclear power station of Ascó (Tarragona) notified at least 19 incidents to the Nuclear Safety Council (CSN). Not far from there, the Vandellós II power plant There have been six other events reported so far this year. «We have not found events of great importance for security individually, but it is true that there are some accumulation “which has occurred in a short period of time,” the president of the CSN, Juan Carlos Lentijo, acknowledged this Wednesday. The nuclear regulator is working with the owner of the plants to «identify if there are causes to explain it and correct these causes,” he assured.
During his appearance at the Congressional Ecological Transition Commission, Lentijo gave an account of the CSN’s activity in 2023, where Sumar’s deputy, Eloi Badia, questioned why these plants have more incidents than the rest and “if there are a structural pathology» in the plants that date back to the mid-late 80s. Lentijo, however, was optimistic about the future of the plants. There is, he said, a program underway that “will give good results.”
Regarding the future, the president of the CSN was optimistic in the field of fusion energy, on which Spain will need to update its current regulation. “It has to evolve,” he said. It is a field in which it is already working, with its sights set on the United States, where facilities dedicated to fusion will be governed as radioactive facilities and not as nuclear facilities. “We must lay the foundations,” said Lentijo, to facilitate the development of the activity in safe conditions but “without putting obstacles” to its development. “Surely it will give us joy in the future that we have to digest,” he ventured.
About creating a Deep Geological Storage (AGP)which must accommodate long-term radioactive waste from power plantsacknowledged that the planned times are very long (expected for 2073). But it is not up to the CSN to modify the calendar, he said. However, he slipped that Enresa recognizes that they have been “prudent” in establishing the times, so perhaps there is room to advance the election and construction from the warehouse. In any case, with more or fewer power plants, Spain needs to create an AGP, he said.
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