Felipe González: “I stopped nuclear weapons in Spain and we need nuclear weapons now in Spain, it’s curious”
Felipe González has been in favor of nuclear energy as “a clean energy” in the middle of the political debate over the extension of the useful life of the Almaraz plant (Cáceres), which has two of the seven reactors in Spain and whose closure is scheduled for 2027. “I stopped nuclear energy in Spain and we need nuclear energy now in Spain, it is curious,” observed the former president of the Government in the first edition of Los Desayunos del Campo at the Mandarin Oriental Ritz Hotel in Madrid, in which has recognized that it has “certain dangers” but “is clean from the point of view [medio]environmental”, ignoring the treatment of the radioactive waste it generates.
“We have recognized without believing it that nuclear is a clean energy and now nuclear development is much more perfect than before,” said González, who has recognized that a nuclear accident cannot be ruled out despite technological advances and improvements in safety measures. The former president, who has also declared himself “in favor” of renewables although he does not consider them perfect either: “We have waste from renewable energies, they have not yet been sufficiently studied. If you have a useful life of 40 years, what will happen to that at 40 years? These things must be foreseen.”
Pedro Sánchez has opened the door to the extension of Almaraz until 2030 as sought by Ibedrola, Naturgy and Endesa, the companies that own the plant. “The Government does not have a dogmatic position at all, but rather a pragmatic one. If the owners of the nuclear power plants guarantee the security of the territories and the energy supply, and do not ask us Spaniards to pay more taxes so they can make money, then we are willing to study what their alternative is, what their proposal is. But they have to comply with those three demands that, in my opinion, are pure common sense,” he stated in an interview in EL PAÍS. The spokesperson in the Sumar Congress, Verónica Martínez Barbero, said this Tuesday that “the closure of the nuclear power plants is a government agreement and the PSOE has to comply with it.” Last week the Senate approved a PP amendment to the sustainable mobility law, on which the disbursement of 10,000 million euros from Brussels depends, which postpones the date of definitive cessation of exploitation of Almaraz, Ascó I (Tarragona) and Cofrentes (Valencia).
