The José Cabrera Nuclear Power Station (also known as Zorita
) was a
nuclear power station
A nuclear power plant (NPP), also known as a nuclear power station (NPS), nuclear generating station (NGS) or atomic power station (APS) is a thermal power station in which the heat source is a nuclear reactor. As is typical of thermal power st ...
in
Almonacid de Zorita, east of
Madrid
Madrid ( ; ) is the capital and List of largest cities in Spain, most populous municipality of Spain. It has almost 3.5 million inhabitants and a Madrid metropolitan area, metropolitan area population of approximately 7 million. It i ...
,
Spain
Spain, or the Kingdom of Spain, is a country in Southern Europe, Southern and Western Europe with territories in North Africa. Featuring the Punta de Tarifa, southernmost point of continental Europe, it is the largest country in Southern Eur ...
.
The power plant consisted of one single-loop
PWR of 160 MWe, built by
Zachry Construction Corporation for the
Westinghouse Electric Company
Westinghouse Electric Company LLC is an American nuclear power company formed in 1999 from the nuclear power division of the original Westinghouse Electric Corporation. It offers nuclear products and services to utilities internationally, includ ...
. It was operated by
Unión Fenosa
''Unión Fenosa, S.A.'' was, until its acquisition by '' Gas Natural'' in 2009, a large Spanish company dedicated to the production and distribution of gas and electricity.
It installed capacity of 11,120 megawatts of power and 8.9 million custo ...
.
History
Construction of the power station started in 1964. It was commissioned in 1968 to
Zachry Construction Corporation, and it operated from 1968 until 2006. In 2006, it was closed by ministerial order.
[
On 11 February 2010, Unión Fenosa transferred the site's ownership to Enresa, a Spanish company responsible for decommissioning the power station. Enresa planned to clear the site by the end of 2015.][
In 2010, Westinghouse won a contract to dismantle the reactor internals, and another contract in 2013 to dismantle the ]reactor pressure vessel
A reactor pressure vessel (RPV) in a nuclear power plant is the pressure vessel containing the nuclear reactor coolant, core shroud, and the reactor core.
Classification of nuclear power reactors
Russian Soviet era RBMK reactors have each fu ...
. In November 2019, dismantling of the containment building began, and by June 2022 the turbine building was also dismantled. By September 2023, the containment building void was filled with of soil. A final phase of site clean-up and testing will be carried out before declaration of the end of decommissioning.
2003 incident
The Spanish Nuclear Safety Council
The Nuclear Safety Council (Spanish language, Spanish: ''Consejo de Seguridad Nuclear''; CSN) is the independent Spanish institution of the General State Administration, whose main purpose is to ensure nuclear safety and the radiation protection of ...
has investigated the plant's deficient safety system and a missing screw that prevented the reactor from resuming operations after a month-long refueling operation in December 2003.
See also
*List of commercial nuclear reactors
This is a list of all the commercial nuclear reactors in the world, sorted by country, with operational status. The list only includes civilian nuclear power reactors used to generate electricity for a power grid. All commercial nuclear reacto ...
*Nuclear power in Spain
Spain has five active nuclear power plants with seven reactors producing 20% of the country's electricity as of 2023.
A nuclear power moratorium was enacted by the Socialist government in 1983. For a time the country had a policy of phasing o ...
References
External links
Plant information summary
(in Spanish).
(in Spanish) and site photo.
IMDB
entry for the 1969 film.
Nuclear power stations in Spain
Buildings and structures in the Province of Guadalajara
Nuclear power stations using pressurized water reactors
Energy in Castilla–La Mancha
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