Zapatero confirms the commitment to phase out nuclear energy in Spain

31 mei 2006 | Bron: persmededeling Greenpeace

In the annual Debate in the Spanish Parliament about the State of the Nation
The nuclear industry is the great defeated: the Government has not echoed any of his absurd proposals


Greenpeace celebrates that the president of Government, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, has confirmed in the Debate of State of the Nation that the Government maintains his commitment, gathered in the electoral program of the PSOE and in the speech of investiture, to leave the nuclear energy in Spain and its announcement to make specific it so before this legislature finalizes, as environmental NGOs called for.

In fact, on the past 20 of May, the practical totality of the antinuclear groups of the Spanish State met in Madrid to write up a manifesto by means of which they asked to President Zapatero and the PSOE to fulfill the commitment to leave the nuclear energy in Spain starting, in this same legislature, the engaged plan for closing all the nuclear power stations. This plan has to start with the nuclear station of Santa María de Garoña (Burgos, Spain), the only power station in Spain still remaining of the so called “first generation” that is in a burden state of security.

Greenepace also celebrates the enormous setback suffered by the lobby of the nuclear industry in this Debate of the State of the Nation: the Government has not made preopposed echo of its absurd proposals. It's important to remember that the Forum of the Spanish Nuclear Industry, the organization who groups and defends the interests of the companies of the nuclear sector, raised the necessity to construct 10 new power stations in Spain and to prolong several decades the life of the 8 existing power stations, in spite of its problems of security.

“The debate about the benefit of betting or not on the nuclear energy ended with the overwhelming victory of the truely clean energies: renewable energies and the energy efficiency. The nuclear industry has left clearly defeated, in spite of all the pressure that has made in these last months” declared Juan López de Uralde, Greenpeace Spain Executve Director.

“We congratulated President Zapatero to have assumed that clean energies must be the base of the power model that demands our society and that they are the keys of a sustainable and competitive economy”, stated Carlos Bravo, Nuclear energy campainer at Greenpeace Spain.

Another important aspect that Greenepace emphasizes about the intervention of Zapatero in Debate of the State of the Nation is that he recognizes that will not be possible to solve the problem of the management of the radioactive waste generated by the nuclear stations without a wide social consensus that must incorporate the environmental NGOs.

It is possible to leave the nuclear energy in Spain in a progressive but urgent way, from a power and economic point of view. More over it is desirable from the point of view of the security and the environmental and health protection. It is mainly a question of political will.

President Zapatero has declared to have that will. In effect, the PSOE and its General Secretary, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, gained the general elections of the 14 of March of 2004 thanks - between other elements - to a series of promises as the one to close the nuclear power stations in a progressive way and to replace its power contribution by “cleaner, safer and less expensive energies”, as says its electoral program to General Elections 2004 and as it is reflexed in the Programmatic Agreement between PSOE and the Green party.

This electoral commitment is, in addition, a Government commitment because the same President Zapatero reaffirmed it in his speech of investiture in the presence of the Congress of the Deputies and in the speech at the Presidency of Government on 16 February 2005 to celebrate the coming into force of the Kyoto Protocol, as well as in the Debate of State of the Nation of May 2005.

“The announcement of President Zapatero in the Debate of the State of the Nation has been coherent with the things previously expressed by him. Now he musts pass to the facts without no more delay”, added Bravo.