The National Court will study the appeal filed by Ecologistas en Acción to stop the cleanup of land contaminated with americium and plutonium in Palomares (Almería) in order to decide whether to order and give a deadline to the Ministry of Ecological Transition (Miteco) for the execution of the rehabilitation plan in the area.
In a ruling, the judicial body accepts jurisdiction to hear this appeal after the Central Court of Administrative Litigation number 8 decided to elevate the proceedings last April, taking into account the criteria of the Public Prosecutor’s Office versus the position of the State Attorney’s Office, which granted jurisdiction to the High Court of Justice of Madrid (TJSM).
First Section Judge Nieves Buisán thus agreed to continue the proceedings, giving the parties five days to file an appeal if they do not agree with the decision.
The Central Administrative Court has already agreed with the opinion of the Public Prosecutor’s Office, which considers the Ministry’s Secretary of State for Energy to be in charge of “developing” the remediation of the radioactive soil in Palomares with the temporary storage of 6,000 cubic metres of waste.
In this regard, Judge Celestino Salgado pointed out an article of the law on nuclear energy included in the Royal Decree adopting urgent measures within the framework of the National Plan for response to the economic and social consequences of the war in Ukraine, which establishes that Miteco, through the Secretary of State for Energy and following a report from the Nuclear Safety Council, may declare a soil or land as radiologically contaminated.
“Since the object of the appeal is the rejection due to administrative silence of a request on a matter whose resolution is the responsibility of a Secretary of State, the jurisdiction falls to the Administrative Litigation Chamber of the National Court,” determined the magistrate-judge.
The body has asked the Ministry to forward the administrative file on the cleanup of contaminated soil on several occasions in order to decide on this issue of competence, even going so far as to issue a warning to the authority or official responsible for failure to do so.
The conservation group took the initiative last February, 58 years after four thermonuclear bombs accidentally fell on the hamlet after two US Air Force aircraft collided in the air and faced with evidence that “everything remains the same.”
The decision to refer the situation of “inaction” that has continued over time to the courts is motivated by the “silence” on the part of the Ministry of Ecological Transition and Demographic Challenge to the requests of Ecologists in Action to “set a deadline” to “carry out” the Rehabilitation Plan for the area that the Government has always maintained should be executed by the US administration.
This is the second time that the National Court (AN) has been asked to set a deadline for carrying out the cleanup and to order that, while waiting for a definitive storage for the radioactive material to be found, the approximately 6,000 cubic metres of waste obtained after the treatment of the 50,000 cubic metres of land planned by Ciemat and the Nuclear Safety Council (CSN) be temporarily deposited.
The first time, the court ruled in 2019 that the CSN “did not have the authority” to execute the requests of the environmental organization, although it did not specify which body should do so.
CLAIM BEFORE STRASBOURG
In parallel, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) also announced that it will study the lawsuit that Ecologistas en Acción filed against Spain for the “lack of a solution” to the “radiological emergency” that has been experienced in Palomares since 1958 and the “inaction” of “successive governments” to end a “situation so prolonged” in time that it has put “people’s lives at risk.”
The Registry of the Strasbourg Court opened a file to study the claim at the beginning of June, which will be examined “as soon as possible” based on the documents and information provided by the conservation group last February.
The group claims that the inhabitants of Palomares have been “subjected” to “scientific experiments without their consent” and claims that they have been “allowed to ingest and inhale radioactive particles” with the “objective of investigating” the consequences of “plutonium on health” until “the year 2009”, within the framework of the ‘Índalo’ project agreed between Spain and the USA, which it describes as “degrading treatment”.
“Radioactive contamination in Palomares is a unique case in the history of Spain. It is still pending resolution and no Spanish government has adopted any palliative measures, the only one being the fencing of a large part of the affected area which was completed in 2011, although to this day there are still contaminated areas outside the fence where people and livestock move freely,” they said.
The lawsuit asks the ECHR to address the “heart of the problem” in Palomares, recognising this point, and also asks it to revoke the ruling of the National Court, confirmed by the Supreme Court (TS) in November 2022, which considered that the Nuclear Safety Council (CSN) was not competent to carry out the cleanup of radioactivity in the area without determining which body was responsible.
