The Spanish nuclear regulator Nuclear Safety Council (Consejo de Seguridad Nuclear, CSN) has given a conditional approval for the restart and continued operation of the 447 MW Garoña nuclear power plant, which has been shut down since December 2012.
Nuclenor, the joint venture of Endesa and Iberdrola in charge of the operation of the Garoña plant, submitted plans to Nuclear Safety Council (Consejo de Seguridad Nuclear, CSN) to restart the facility in 2014. The company had decided to shut down the plant earlier than planned to avoid paying a full year of retroactive taxes (about €153m) on nuclear power plants operating on 1 January 2013. However, its operating licence ran until 6 July 2013 and new regulatory changes allowed the company to apply for a licence renewal until 6 July 2014; in June 2014, Nuclenor requested a renewal of the operating license of the plant until 2031, which would extend the plant's lifetime to 60 years.
Garoña was commissioned in 1971 and was expected to stop operations in 2019.
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