In 1964, France's President De Gaulle agreed with
Spain's General Franco that France could export nuclear reactors and
technology to Spain. The joint French-Spanish company Hifrensa was
formed to build and operate the 500 MWe reactor located 40 km from
Tarragona, a 'sister' plant to the French Saint-Laurent-des-Eaux A2
gas graphite reactor in the Loire Valley. French state power utility
EDF had a 25% stake in the joint venture.
According to Pedro Duran Farell, former head
of Hifrensa, Vandellós-1 had been built only because of the military
interests of France. The main goal was not to produce power but to
produce plutonium- 239 for military purposes. Sñr Farell, now member
of the Club of Rome, said that Vandellós was "the best plutonium factory
in Spain".
Vandellós-1 was connected to the grid in 1972.
Ironically Vandellós-1 was the only Spanish nuclear plant to get a
full operating licence, all the others operating under provisional
licenses. After some 10 years of operation, the reactor began to suffer
increasing operating problems. From 1982-1989 reports record that
62 significant incidents were registered. Concerns were raised that
the reactor had design similarities to the Chernobyl reactor after
the 1986 accident. The Spanish Nuclear Safety Council (CSN) ordered
that five basic changes concerning the cooling system and safety (especially
fire protection) had to be implemented immediately. But little was
done. Then on 19 October 1989 a serious accident occurred in the turbine
room when a fire broke out. The plant's operating licence was suspended
pending the outcome of an inquiry.
When it reported in April 1990, the CSN called
for 15 further radical modifications of the plant. On 30 May 1990,
the Industry minister announced the final closure of Vandellós-1.
It was said this was due to economic reasons, the projected cost of
back-fitting the required upgrade in safety equipment being too much,
but critics said it was shut for political reasons, a chronic loss
of confidence in the nuclear industry. Whatever the reasons, it was
a popular decision locally, producing a celebratory fiesta.
Even before the accident, Vandellós had become
a focus of public and political attention when it became known that
Vandellós fuel was reprocessed in the French military nuclear plant
UP1 at Marcoule, near Avignon. So secrecy surrounded the fate of both
the plutonium and the safety arrangements that had gone so wrong at
Vandellós. Pilar Bravo, head of the civil protection department, declared
in spite of herself: "I'm not allowed to say more, except that the
danger is big, humm... was big".
On closure, Vandellós contained about 450
MT of spent fuel. Contracts with Cogema, operators of Marcoule, guaranteed
reprocessing capacity to be available until 2003. The defuelling strategy
thus became an important issue. The 1986 national waste plan had estimated
the cost of reprocessing Vandellós-1 fuel at 79.8 billion pesetas,
out of a total planned waste management budget of 753 billion ptas.
A letter from the CSN to Greenpeace in February
1996 said that 186,756 irradiated fuel elements were sent to Marcoule
from Vandellós-1, the final shipment taking place in November 1994.
This would result in about 170Êm3 of high level reprocessing waste
being returned to Spain, but no date was fixed for its return.
At the time of the signing of the reprocessing
agreement with France, neither country was party to the Nuclear Non
Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Spain signed up in 1988, France in 1992.
The 1981 safeguards agreement covering exported Vandellós-1 fuel stopped
at the French border. In May 1999 ENRESA initiated the second stage
of Vandellós-1 decommissioning.
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