Identifying remaining socio-technical challenges at the national level: Spain

On 29 December 2009, the Spanish government launched a site selection process to host a centralised interim storage facility for spent fuel and high-level radioactive waste. It was an unprecedented call for voluntarism among Spanish municipalities to site a controversial facility. Two nuclear municipalities, amongst a total of thirteen municipalities from five different regions, presented their candidatures to host the facility in their territories. For two years the government did not make a decision. All regional governments with candidate municipalities willing to host the centralised interim storage facility publicly opposed to the siting of the facility. Only in November 30, 2011, the new government elected on 20 November 2011, officially selected a non-nuclear municipality, Villar de Cañas, for hosting this facility. This paper focuses on describing and analysing the process of siting the centralised interim storage facility in Spain. This process, as it will be shown, has been one of the most important challenges in the radioactive waste management strategy in Spain over the last years. Research on and strategies for the disposal of high level waste and spent fuel seems to have been hindered by the urgent priority to site the storage facility first. As a result, planning radioactive waste disposal seems to be currently lacking.