One of the big unsolved problems of nuclear power generation is the disposal of the spent nuclear fuel assemblies. In the U.S., the federal government was supposed to have a permanent spent nuclear fuel repository in Nevada at a Yucca Mountain salt mine. That project was finally cancelled in 2009 because of geological problems and the best guess for a new site being developed and opened is around 2005. The spent nuclear fuel pools at U.S. reactors are filling up and temporary storage either onsite or offsite will have to be constructed soon. Other countries are working on their own temporary nuclear waste storage facilities.
In 2006, Spain approved the Sixth General Radioactive Waste Plan (SGRWP). This plan lays out Spain’s national policy and strategy for managing spent nuclear fuel and other radioactive wastes. The plan states that construction of a temporary storage facility for intermediate and high-level radioactive waste must be a priority. In 2009, fourteen localities including the small town of Villar de Cañas in the Cuenca province expressed an interest in hosting the disposal site. Villar de Cañas was selected as the official site in 2011.
The Nuclear Safety Council in Spain has just voted to approve of a report that officially states Villar de Cañas would be a suitable site for the construction of a temporary nuclear waste storage facility. The report states that the Villar de Cañas location is suitable from a safety point of view because of the features of the terrain and the fact that the engineering design features of the barriers to be constructed are standard in the world of nuclear facilities. The report said that the site had “The technical evaluation noted that the proposed site has no exclusive phenomena.”
The CSN report states that with respect to the regulations on nuclear and radioactive facilities, “prior authorization or official recognition that a chosen site is considered suitable” provides authorization for the licensee to start preliminary work on the facility concurrent with the regulatory approval process. This allows the licensee for the Villar de Cañas site, a decommissioning firm named Enresa, to build external infrastructure such as access roads to the site during the approval process.
The CSN will submit the report to the Ministry of Industry, Energy and Tourism which has final authority to approve a license for the facility. CSN has requested that more techincal studies and analyses be carried out before it makes a final decision on Villar de Cañas.
If the facility is approve and constructed, it will accept transport casks of spent nuclear fuel or vitrified radioactive wastes that are currently in temporary storage at Spain’s nuclear power plants. The wastes will be removed from their transport casks and put in smaller containers. The new containers will be placed in a dry store which will be cooled by the passive circulation of air. Almost seventeen thousand cubic yards of radioactive waste can be stored at the facility for sixty years. It is hoped that by the end of that period, there will be a permanent geological repository available.
Artist’s concept of Villar de Cañas nuclear waste disposal facility:
