The Nuclear Safety Council rejects the construction of the Retortillo uranium plant

The Plenary of

has rejected the application presented by the Australian company

for the construction authorization of the first category radioactive facility for the nuclear fuel cycle "uranium concentrates manufacturing plant in the municipality of Retortillo "(Salamanca).

As reported by the CSN, this is stated in its Proposal for a Technical Opinion that will be sent to the Ministry for the Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge. The result of the vote has been four votes in favor of the Proposal for a Technical Opinion prepared by the Technical Directorate for Radiological Protection and one against, corresponding to the counselor

. Said director, in accordance with article 34 of the CSN Statute, has announced that he will cast a private vote in writing within 48 hours.

The reason for the decision taken is based on the

the radioactive facility in geotechnical and hydrogeological aspects, on which the verification of the adequate behavior of various project parameters depends.

The technical deficiencies identified in the assessment relate mainly to the disposal of very low level radioactive waste, which is part of the first category radioactive facility.

For the CSN, from a regulatory point of view, the information provided does not allow limiting the effective isolation capacity of the barriers that BME proposes to surround the waste, and consequently neither the capacity to minimize the expected concentrations of radionuclides in the potential areas of download.

In this regard, it points out that the evaluations carried out on the documentation that accompanies the application for authorization of the installation have detected numerous deficiencies throughout the evaluation, which has required the maintenance of many technical meetings with the licensee, as well as numerous requests for additional information, in addition to the preparation of a large number of reports and evaluation notes, and the complete review of the documentation by the owner.

The evaluation of the reports of the application for construction authorization has involved 11 technical areas of both technical departments of the CSN, which have addressed the issues of their competence, which group fire protection, systems engineering, mechanical and structural engineering, quality assurance, hydrogeology, seismology and meteorology, radiological protection of workers, radiological impact assessment, environmental radiological surveillance, low and medium level waste, in addition to the cycle and dismantling facilities area and the corresponding project headquarters.

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