MADRID - Advertisements will appear in newspapers across Spain on Thursday offering towns the chance to become the site for a new centralised nuclear waste store, a government source said on Wednesday.
It is an offer that many may refuse but the state-owned nuclear waste company Enresa is hoping to overcome people's reservations about nuclear waste by holding out jobs and investment as an enticement.
Spent fuel is currently stored in pools of water at Spain's six nuclear plants, and there is one central site for low level waste in the southern province of Cordoba.
The government wants to set up a new centralised store for spent fuel and any other high level waste. The store is billed as temporary, until a more permanent solution like reprocessing, or burying deep underground, is found.
Enresa has already posted details on its web page (www.enresa.es) of what it requires, and of the investment and jobs it is offering in return.
The new store needs to have space for 6,700 tonnes of spent fuel, plus radioactive material from the eventual closure of all Spain's reactors.
"It requires a minimum of about 25 hectares (63 acres), committed in principle for a period of 60 years," Enresa says.
Construction of the store would provide 300 jobs, and the plant would need 110 workers to run it. The project has a budget of 600 million euros (US$755 million) and a target date of 2011.
There have been a handful of initial enquiries from towns, an Industry Ministry source said, but declined to name them.
Nuclear power provides 20 percent of Spain's electricity and the country now has eight reactors grouped in six plants. One reactor was decommissioned years ago, and another old one shut down earlier this year.
The government opposes building any new nuclear plants, but has not ruled out extending the life of existing ones, most of which were built in the 1980s.
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
