Nuclear waste

The Spanish government has a long list of demands for the 25-hectare-site.

It needs to be protected, yet remote, not threatened by earthquakes or floods, not in a nature reserve or near an airport, but close to a railway.

The nine communities still being considered are either located close to one of the country's eight operational nuclear power stations, or near one of those which has already been shut down.

One advantage of these areas is that they have already undergone geological and environmental assessments. Another is the willingness of the local mayors. And the little town of Villar de Canas, about an hour's drive south of Madrid, is a case in point.

Officially it has 460 inhabitants, but many of them only go there during the holidays or to escape city-life at the weekends. What was once a hive of human activity is now more akin to a ghost town. With their shuttered windows, the sleepy streets paint a tired picture of village life, a picture that mayor Jose Maria Saiz bitterly laments.

"Closed, closed, closed," he told Deutsche Welle as he pointed to the buildings around the deserted main square. Six in ten houses in the village are closed off.

"There's no work here so people have gone to the big cities, to Madrid or to Valencia."

A shadow of things past

Back in the sixties and seventies, there were 2000 people living in the village, the little school was bursting at the seams with children. These days there are just 15 pupils on the register and that figure could drop even further unless something is done to put some of the color back into Villar de Canas.

"We have put in a bid for the repository because we saw it as a way of injecting life into our town again," Jose Maria Saiz said. "In addition to that, when you look into the matter and you find out that the repository doesn't put the population or the environment at risk, of course, you accept it to save your town."

And it is certainly an attractive package. The winning bid for the 700 million euro project is expected to generate work for some 500 people over a five-year construction period. And once the site is up and running, it will create 140 permanent jobs and offer many opportunities for locals to provide support services.

Pros and cons

According to Jose Maria Saiz, nearly all Villar de Canas residents are in favor of the project. In the town's only open cafe that day, the locals all voice their support, but murmurs of apprehension can be found.

"I would like them to build it here, because it is a small town and it is dying, but there is a lack of information," said the woman at the bakery counter of the local supermarket, who identified herself as Canatanaz.

"Of course they are not going to put a bomb in our backyard, but there are always risks and doubts."

But not for Alvaro Rodriguez Beceiro, the chief engineer at Enresa in Madrid, the state-owned company that is scheduled to build the nuclear storage facility once the location has been decided upon. He thinks locals have nothing to fear.

"I know for sure that we are providing a very safe installation," he said, comparing the facilities to others he described as 'standard' across Europe. "The main general objective of the design of the installation will be to protect the people and the environment."

Environmental fears

But environmental organizations like Greenpeace are not convinced. Carlos Bravo, head of the energy department at Greenpeace Spain, would prefer to see Spain's nuclear waste retained at the nuclear power plants where it is produced.

"Centralized storage is a dangerous installation that has a lot of risks of accidents, he said.

Greenpeace is concerned that a centralized nuclear waste dump would expose the community to a greater risk of accidents, because of the increased amount of transportation of nuclear materials involved, and because the final site would prove a tempting target for terrorists.

"You can imagine in the case of a plane crash for instance, it could be disastrous," he said.

In all the Spanish regions where towns have volunteered to house the repository, neighboring towns and regional governments have criticized the decision and there have been popular demonstrations against the plans. But protest have done nothing to shake the resolve of the mayor of Villar de Canas.

"This is all politics…no one, not technicians not politicians not anybody, has demonstrated to me that this would endanger the population, much less the environment," Jose Maria Saiz said.

Madrid says it will make its final decision in the coming months. For better or for worse, the project will no doubt change the prospects of one sleepy Spanish town.

Author: Mikkel Larsen / tkw
Editor: Nathan Witkop