Quercus stressed that the Spanish plant is located close to the Tagus river, around 100 kilometres from the border, and has had its activity prolonged for another ten years even though “not all of the risk factors have been considered nor tests carried out”, the agency said.
It added that “there is a worrying risk with Spanish power platns in as much as not all risk factors have been considered nor tests carried out” and “nor do they contemplate the risk of external attacks, such as bombings or plane crashes.”
Other risks like natural disasters, from earthquakes to flooding, are also not contemplated in the plants’ risk assessments, the Portuguese association warns, nor are external rescue management systems.
Therefore, Quercus stressed, it is important to keep warning about the risks that this particular type of energy entails, “so that Portugal and the world are free from nuclear dangers.”
History, it elaborated, “has shown that it is very difficult to foresee how events like those at Chernobyl would play out.”
The problems, the environmentalists alerted, are at the beginning of the cycle, in uranium exploration, which causes environmental and serious health problems worldwide, and in Portugal, several decades after the end of exploration “the problems have not been fully diagnosed and, therefore, are still far from being solved.”
“There are more than sixty abandoned mines that continue to pollute the water and soil and affect neighbouring populations,” Quercus argues, while highlighting the lack of a stable and safe destination for nuclear waste.