Spain extends Almaraz operating licence to 2030, delaying phase-out

Spain has officially renewed the operating licence of the two-unit Almaraz nuclear power plant until June 2030, overriding phase-out shutdown dates of October 2027 and October 2028. It is the first concrete retreat from the closure calendar Spain agreed in 2019 — even as the government insists the 2035 end date for the whole fleet still stands.

Key facts

• A ministerial order from MITECO was published in the Official State Gazette on August 14, 2026, granting the licence renewal to June 2030.
• Under the 2019 phase-out schedule, Unit 1 was to close in October 2027 and Unit 2 in October 2028.
• Spain's Nuclear Safety Council (CSN) issued a favourable report last month, concluding the plant can operate safely until June 2030.
• Almaraz supplies more than 7% of Spain's electricity — about 4 million homes — and employs roughly 4,000 people.
• The ministry says the extension does not alter the 2035 closing date for Spain's entire nuclear park.

What happened

The Ministry for Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge (MITECO) published the renewal order after a process that began on October 30, 2025, when the board of operator Centrales Nucleares Almaraz-Trillo (CNAT) — acting for owners Iberdrola, Endesa and Naturgy — formally requested the extension. MITECO asked the Nuclear Safety Council for its mandatory report in November; the CSN's favourable conclusion arrived in July, finding the plant meets the conditions to operate safely until June 2030.

The government's stated rationale is explicitly economic and geopolitical. The ministry cited "uncertainty in international energy markets" caused by the armed conflict in the Middle East and the continuing war in Ukraine, and said the "limited and temporary extension may help to moderate the exposure of Spanish consumers to previously unforeseen price spikes" while renewables and storage continue to deploy as the structural answer.

The technical groundwork was already in place: when the CSN renewed Almaraz's licence in June 2020, it approved operation until June 2030 — standard ten-year terms — and the earlier 2027/2028 dates were a political overlay from the phase-out agreement, not a safety boundary.

Why it matters

Spain's seven reactors generate about 20% of its electricity. The 2019 phase-out plan front-loaded the pain: four reactors, including both Almaraz units, were to close by the end of 2030. Moving Almaraz's dates is therefore not a rounding error — it defers the single largest early tranche of retirements in the schedule.

It also lands in a European context where firm capacity is being repriced in real time. This week NNN covered Cernavoda shutting both reactors over Danube cooling constraints while Hungary spends to keep Paks running — governments are discovering how expensive it is to lose dispatchable baseload at the wrong moment. Madrid's own framing — consumer price exposure, imported-fuel dependence — reads as an admission that the phase-out calendar was written for a different energy market.

Industry is treating the door as open, not ajar. Foro Nuclear president Marta Ugalde called for a review of "the regulatory, economic, and tax conditions" for continued nuclear operation, and World Nuclear Association Director General Sama Bilbao y León said she hopes this is "the first step" toward extending Almaraz and the rest of the fleet to 60 years of operation.

Background

Almaraz Units 1 and 2 are pressurized water reactors of 1,011 MWe and 1,006 MWe net, in commercial operation since 1983 and 1984. The 2019 closure protocol — agreed between the government and the utilities — set a staggered national exit: Almaraz first, then Ascó, Cofrentes, Trillo and Vandellós II, with the last unit off the grid by 2035. The utilities' October 2025 extension request was the first formal crack in that protocol, and the CSN's July report removed the safety argument against it.

What's next

Three markers will show whether June 2030 is a ceiling or a floor. First, whether CNAT's owners file for operation beyond 2030 — the CSN's ten-year licence logic and the industry's 60-year ambitions point that way. Second, whether Ascó, whose closure dates come next in the calendar, follows the Almaraz playbook. Third, whether the government's "2035 stands" line survives the next price spike: the same energy-security reasoning it used for this order applies to every reactor in the fleet. The phase-out is still official policy — but as of August 14, its dates are negotiable.