The emerging Spanish industry was profoundly disrupted after the Civil War (1936–39) and the autarkic policy implemented by Franco’s dictatorship in the 1940s, which kept Spain apart from the prosperity of the Western world for about two decades. However, the great lack of resources and technological backwardness inevitably led the Spanish decision-makers to seek recourse to foreign capital and skills, even, paradoxically, during the hardest years of economic nationalism . From the early 1950s onwards, while the autarky gave way to a more flexible policy of import substitution, the United States became Spain’s main commercial, financial and technological partner. However, France was able to compete with the world leader in some key sectors of the Spanish economy, such as the nuclear industry , that mobilized enormous human, financial, scientific, technical, business and diplomatic means.

It was not easy to achieve collaboration. Quite the opposite, at the end of the Word War II France had led the international condemnation of Franco’s regime, pressuring other Western countries into breaking relations and excluding Spain from the UN, the Marshall Plan and the Bretton Woods institutions. Furthermore, the French government had unilaterally decreed the closure of the Pyrenean border from 1946 to 1948, obtaining unexpectedly no more than a significant loss of trading and financial positions in the Spanish market to the benefit of Great Britain and the United States.Footnote 1

The rejection towards the Spanish dictatorship decreased as the Cold War tensions increased. France, like the rest of Western powers, ended up placing realism before ideology,Footnote 2 that is, banishing any politico-ideological objection towards Franco’s regime and focusing on the Spanish geographical situation, anticommunism, historical relationships and economic potential for growth. So from 1948 France restored economic relations with Spain, starting with an annual trade agreement and negotiations in the financial, cultural and military fields. Bilateral relations received a strong boost at the end of the 1950s. This resulted directly from General De Gaulle and the Fifth Republic’s arrival in France and the application in Spain of a more liberal economic policy, which would share many traits with French indicative planning.Footnote 3 Since then, French–Spanish economic links progressed rapidly and intensely, as demonstrated by growing commercial exchanges, investment operations, technology transfers, remittances from Spanish migrants working in France and currency from French tourists visiting Spain. As a result, French goods, capital and expertise greatly participated in the Spanish economic miracle of the 1960s, in an often fierce fight against other foreign competitors, mainly, in this order, the United States, West Germany and Great Britain.Footnote 4

During the years of Spanish transition to democracy, after Franco’s death in 1975, political relations between France and Spain weakened, due to the feeble French support for both the entry of Spain in the European Economic Community (EEC) and the extradition of Basque ETA terrorists taking refuge in France. Moreover, the Spanish economy’s growth cycle had almost run its course, giving way to a period of recession marked by industrial decline, bank failures and increasing inflation. Despite all, French–Spanish economic relations continued in progress, being concentrated in the north-to-south exports of capital goods and investments in automobile, large retail, engineering, arms and nuclear sectors.Footnote 5

Academic literature about French nuclear history has hardly dealt with the Spanish case. The international relations of the French government agencies and private or state-owned companies related to nuclear matters have focused on the major world leaders (United States, Great Britain and West Germany ), the countries of the former French colonial empire (like Algeria or Niger ) and current emerging markets (such as China ).Footnote 6 In Spain, the transnational approach, undertaken mainly by technology historians, has targeted Germany , Italy and the United States.Footnote 7 Some progress has been made, nonetheless, in better understanding the construction process of the French–Spanish Vandellós 1 nuclear power plant (NP), located in Spain.Footnote 8

This chapter analyzes France’s contribution to the development of the nuclear industry in Spain from the 1950s to the 1980s, based on unpublished sources from public archives in France and, to a lesser extent, in Spain, along with published records and bibliography. The text is structured in three sections: the first presents a review of the nuclear sector in France from its origins up to the present; the second addresses France’s main nuclear operation in Spain: the construction of the Vandellós NP; and the third analyzes subsequent efforts made by the French government and companies to intensify nuclear cooperation with Spain, attempting to seize projects and market niches from the United States and West Germany . Some conclusions will close the chapter.

France Goes (and Remains) Nuclear: State and Businesses in the French Nuclear Program

The French nuclear program, strongly linked to the State, combined from its beginnings both civil and military dimensions. Producing electricity from nuclear sources and obtaining the atomic bomb were atop the list of aspirations for governments of the Fourth and Fifth Republics, regardless of their political stripes. In 1945, as France was still recovering from World War II, General De Gaulle’s provisional government created a State agency for nuclear energy, the Atomic Energy Commission (Commissariat à l’Energie Atomique, CEA) with the mission of “promoting and coordinating nuclear research in all areas of science, industry and national defense”.Footnote 9 A few years later, the first experimental reactor , named Zoé, began operations alongside reactors of the Marcoule complex (G1, G2 and G3), which were dedicated to generate military-grade plutonium. In 1960, with De Gaulle once again at the helm of the executive, France entered the select club of countries possessing the atomic weapon, together with the United States, Great Britain and the Soviet Union.

Meanwhile, the first plants intended for the civil production of electricity from nuclear power were connected to the grid: Chinon 1 (1963), Chinon 2 (1965), Chinon 3 (1966), Chooz (1967), Saint Laurent des Eaux 1 (1969) and Saint Laurent des Eaux 2 (1971). They were owned and managed by the large public company Électricité de France (EDF) , which since its nationalization in 1946 had formed a monopoly over the generation, transport and sale of electricity in France. Private initiative was not entirely sidelined in the process. In fact, to successfully carry out the massive nuclear mission, EDF and the CEA promoted the creation of big industrial groups such as Indatom (1955), the Groupement Atomique Alsacienne-Atlantique (GAAA, 1959) and the Société d’Études et d’Entreprises Nucléaires (SEEN, 1965) , which were composed of numerous public and private champions nationaux, including prominent examples such as Péchiney , Air Liquide , Saint Gobain Nucléaire , Babcock & Wilcox , Fives-Lille-Cail, Stein & Roubaix , Alsthom , Thomson-Houston , Compagnie Générale de Télégraphie sans Fil and Compagnie Générale d’Électricité.

For nearly two decades, French technology was able to dominate the internal market for nuclear reactors. Unlike the methods of Westinghouse (Pressurized Water Reactor-PWR) and General Electric (Boiling Water reactor-BWR), which were based on the use of enriched uranium and light water, the French process employed natural uranium as fuel, graphite as a moderator and carbon gas as a refrigerant (UNGG technology).Footnote 10 UNGG technology had the support of the CEA and the executive under De Gaulle . Both clung to the national independence provided by the natural uranium available in mainland France and its overseas departments.Footnote 11 Indeed, uranium enrichment remained under the duopoly of the United States and the Soviet Union , which exported the final product to their respective allies at high prices, for strictly civil purposes and under close monitoring. The desire to follow a uniquely French path and not identify with any of the blocks was the main premise of Cold War foreign policy in France, with the double goal of increasing the country’s international stature and gaining clients in the Third World . De Gaulle and the CEA also defended the capacity of UNGG reactors to irradiate large quantities of plutonium (P239), an essential raw material , in the absence of enriched uranium (U235), to sustain the French nuclear armament and a new type of reactor that was under research by the CEA—fast reactors or breeders.Footnote 12 The American technology, for its part, had the support of EDF and other large French companies such as Schneider or Alsthom , which prioritized the lower operating costs of NPs using enriched uranium over the national independence and the policy of “Grandeur” exalted by the Gaullists.Footnote 13 At the end of the 1960s, a succession of events resolved the technological controversy. The first was the launch of a public tender process in 1967 for a new UNGG plant, the Fessenheim NP. EDF, major construction companies, and even some prominent members of the CEA , such as Jules Horowitz, exited the process, citing its expected unprofitability and high opportunity costs. Also in 1967, the French Pierrelatte isotope separation factory produced its first ingot of enriched uranium for military use, breaking the two superpowers’ exclusivity. The following year, France successfully tested the hydrogen (thermonuclear) bomb, which barely used plutonium. Finally, in 1969, Georges Pompidou replaced De Gaulle at the helm of the Fifth Republic, causing greater rapprochement with the United States and NATO, even on sensitive nuclear issues.Footnote 14 As a result of all of this, the French government officially recognized that its national technology had become a cul-de-sac, a “wonderful but costly technology […] which must now be abandoned to clear the way for more profitable pathways”.Footnote 15

In anticipation of this abandonment, the company Franco-Américaine de Constructions Atomiques (Framatome) , under the Schneider group , had purchased PWR licenses from the US firm Westinghouse, which had in turn acquired a minority percentage of shares in Framatome. At the hands of Framatome, PWR technology had won the race against UNGG technology for the French-Belgian reactors at Chooz and Tihange. Finally, Fessenheim would also acquire the reactor patented by Westinghouse. The trend was unstoppable. In 1975, the French government granted Framatome a monopoly on the construction of NPs in France or by France, with the condition that its shares would go progressively to the CEA to the disadvantage of Westinghouse. The PWR procedure, which was the most widely used around the world (for lower costs and superior reliability), ended up equipping also the entire French nuclear park (“frenchified” with own technological upgrades and renamed REP—Réacteur à Eau Pressurisée).Footnote 16 In return for yielding to Framatome the nuclear equipment (l’îlot nucléaire), the CGE-Alsthom group, licensee of General Electric’s BWR technology, got the supply of the conventional equipment (l’îlot classique) to all French NPs to be constructed in France and abroad. Each part would be in charge of recruiting their respective subcontractors, which tended to adopt a ‘cascade’ organization. Therefore, after reaching ten UNGG reactors (one of them in Spain),Footnote 17 France definitively renounced its filière nationale, recognizing the greater economic (though not technological) competitiveness of its rival American technologies.

The cessation of UNGG technology did not deter French efforts on nuclear matters. Much to the contrary, the oil crisis revived the will for energy independence and justified the need to grant nuclear energy an increasingly important role in the French energy portfolio (Messmer Plan of 1974). This led to a spectacular growth in NPs (from 12 to 25 reactors, from 8000 MWe to 30,000 MWe of installed capacity) and the proliferation of other infrastructures linked to the nuclear cycle (from uranium extraction facilities to high radioactive waste treatment centers).Footnote 18 The fast-breeders in particular absorbed a large amount of funds and resources. They were considered as the wonder-source of energy for the future, given that they functioned by burning plutonium and generating more plutonium than what was burnt, thus multiplying available energy and guaranteeing fuel self-sufficiency. To a large extent, the fast-breeder pathway was conceived as the new French filière after UNGG’s withdrawal. The experimental fast-breeder reactor known as Rapsodie (40 MWe) reached criticality in 1967. It was followed by Phénix (233 MWe) and Superphénix (1200 MWe), which became operational in 1973 and 1985, respectively. Superphénix was closed only a dozen years later, due to some technical failures and, above all, its vast and growing operating costs in comparison to PWR plants: “in brief, Superphénix was too burdensome, too soon, too big and too fast […] Fast-breeder electricity was a bad business”.Footnote 19 The last NP connected to the grid in France was Civaux 2 in 1999. The increase in power demand had been overestimated and the construction of new reactors reached an impasse or “hiver nucléaire”.Footnote 20 Since then, EDF has been holding its activities of electricity generation and distribution; the CEA has focused on research and innovation; and companies related to the atom have ensured the operation and maintenance of the nuclear arsenal, as well as progress in security improvements and dismantling processes. They all work together when performing projects abroad, mainly in emerging economies such us China.

France currently ranks first worldwide in nuclear energy production by population density, and second, behind the United States, by number of NPs. Nuclear industry, the third largest domestic industry after automotive and aeronautics, provides some 400,000 direct jobs, mostly high-skilled, and accounts for 2% of GDP.Footnote 21 Throughout its entire history, the French nuclear sector has maintained strong links to the State, through ministries, research bodies, state or para-state companies, and a powerful corps of government officials (the nucleocrats) .Footnote 22 French antinuclear movement has always been multiform, minoritarian and vague in the whole anti-capitalist movement. Protests by anti-nuclear groups have been limited to the local level and scarcely echoed in the National Assembly , even after the Three Mile Island , Chernobyl and Fuskushima accidents. The only exception was the closure of the Superphénix reactor in 1998, a milestone that Les Verts Ecologist Party achieved during its membership of the Plural Left coalition that governed France from 1997 to 2002.Footnote 23 Hence, French public opinion has generally approved of the nuclear program, whether implicitly or explicitly, considering it a symbol of national independence, technological modernity, and energy stability and savings.Footnote 24 The explanation lies, in large part, in the vast and aggressive public information campaigns organized since its origins by EDF and the CEA, which managed to create a favorable climate towards the nuclear (civil) option. To these should be added the big financial compensations granted to municipalities that host NPs, as well as the rising attention (and funding) devoted to safety and environmental issues.Footnote 25

The Largest Ever French Nuclear Operation in Spain: The Vandellós 1 Plant

The Vandellós 1 NP, located on the coast of Tarragona in the Catalonia region of Northeastern Spain (one of the most developed of the country), was the last instance of UNGG technology and the first and only time it was exported. Fully installed in 1972, it was Spain’s third NP after Zorita (1969) and Santa María de Garoña (1971). The plant’s ownership and production were distributed equally among EDF and three Spanish firms: Fuerzas Eléctricas de Cataluña S.A. (FECSA, private) , Hidroeléctrica de Cataluña S.A. (HECSA, private) and Empresa Nacional Hidroeléctrica del Ribagorzana (ENHER, public).Footnote 26

Contacts between EDF and Spanish electricity producers had been forged in the 1950s due to a series of agreements regarding the bilateral exchange of (hydro)electric energy.Footnote 27 These accords, which would sooner or later involve all of the major Spanish electric companies, made it possible to solve seasonal production deficits in French and Spanish hydrological offer.Footnote 28 They functioned well and were renewed repeatedly. EDF overcame the challenges presented by the multiplicity, dispersion and autonomy of its interlocutors, which were distributed among numerous public and private societies. Not even UNESA, the electricity industry lobby created in 1944, acted as a single interlocutor, given the frequent differences in criteria among its members. The foundation in 1985 of Red Eléctrica de España , a company dedicated exclusively to transportation and operation for the Spanish electrical system, was hence quite welcome. Furthermore, France added to its energy exports some loans to purchase equipment from French companies, which helped large firms like Alsthom or Neyrpic to access and/or consolidate positions in the Iberian market.

Also in the 1950s, the CEA and its Spanish equivalent, the Nuclear Energy Board (Junta de Energía Nuclear, JEN) maintained a constant exchange of information, materials and experts . By virtue of the bilateral accord of 1956 (signed just one year after the Spain-United States agreement within the “Atoms for Peace” campaign), several dozen Spaniards carried out visits, stays and training and specialization courses at the French research centers at Saclay, Orsay and Cadarache and plants at Marcoule , Chinon and Saint Laurent des Eaux.Footnote 29 The main promoters of these programs were José María Otero Navascués (JEN’s Director), Claude Colin (Science and Technology attaché at the French Embassy in Spain) and Antoine Pinay (founder and President of the Comité franco-espagnol d’Échanges Techniques ).Footnote 30 Ministers, diplomats and military officials did the rest, particularly the Spanish Ambassador to France José María de Areilza, the Spanish Industry Minister Gregorio López Bravo , and the French Ministers of Scientific Research and Atomic and Space Issues Gaston Palewski and Alain Peyrefitte. Otero had the idea of building a NP in Spain using French technology. Areilza took charge of sending the project to French officials. And López Bravo , Palewski and Peyrefitte negotiated its putting into operation at the bilateral and domestic fronts.Footnote 31

The decision to build the Vandellós reactor was announced on 2 October 1964 in a joint communiqué that was widely reported on by major media outlets on both sides of the Pyrenees . In the following months, various events were held to strengthen contacts and sell the intergovernmental project to businesses: the first Spanish-French Nuclear Conference (Madrid, 14 to 24 October); the first French Technological Exposition in Spain (Madrid, 13 to 25 October); and a Financial Protocol (25 November) through which France granted 750 million Francs in credit to Spain primarily for the acquisition of nuclear equipment.Footnote 32 López Bravo intervened directly so that the private Catalan firms FECSA and HECSA could participate in the Vandellós project, with a subsidiary role for the public company ENHER.Footnote 33 In January 1965, a bilateral working group was formed, comprising representatives of EDF and the CEA on the French side and FECSA, HECSA, ENHER and the JEN on the Spanish side. The group oversaw studies of the location, financing, fuel cycle, and legal and administrative procedures related to the project. It was given specific instructions from the Spanish Ministry of Industry to: (a) examine whether the French plant could compete with American plants, and (b) ensure a high level of participation for Spanish industry.Footnote 34 An examination of costs was carried out based on a comparative study of gas-cooled graphite moderated reactors and light-water reactors, taking as models the future project of Vandellós and the project underway at Santa María de Garoña. This study revealed that for equal power, the costs of installation and generation using the French technology would be noticeably higher than for the American technology—at least 20% higher. It could only be made equivalent by increasing the power and obtaining exceptional financing conditions, better than those offered by the US Export–Import Bank (Exim Bank) with regard to loans value, interest rates and repayment terms. French authorities did not hesitate:

We must accept these conditions swiftly and without question, given the political and economic importance of this operation […]. It is important to act quickly, as our Spanish interlocutors may be under pressure by more tempting American offers.Footnote 35

The company Hispano-Francesa de Energía Nuclear S.A. (HIFRENSA), founded in Barcelona in 1966, was charged with directing the construction of the Vandellós NP. To “avoid sensitivities and give the glory of the operation to the Spaniards”,Footnote 36 the French granted its presidency to the Catalan businessman and HECSA’s CEO Pere Duran Farell, with EDF’s Deputy Director General Pierre Ailleret serving as vice president. Shortly after its creation, HIFRENSA opened public bidding for the “turnkey project”Footnote 37 to build the plant. It went to the only participant, a group of 25 French construction, engineering and capital goods companiesFootnote 38 gathered at the Société pour l’Industrie Atomique (SOCIA) , which was given the role of industrial architect. The French companies, convinced of the limited commercial life of UNGG reactors, declined to participate alongside the State in financing Vandellós. However, they did not pass up the opportunity to sell their goods and services on the neighboring country in the hopes of acquiring high short- and long-term profits. On the Spanish side, the greatest hesitance was expressed by FECSA, “which does not believe in the viability and commercial use of UNGG technology […,] prefers the American reactors and is in HIFRENSA because it is required to be by López Bravo ”.Footnote 39 Apart from the French companies, SOCIA subcontracted more than 50 Spanish firms, particularly for the civil engineering work, the supply of electrical and mechanical equipment, and the manufacturing of the reactor vessel. The Spanish firms that received the main contracts were large construction companies such as Entrecanales y Távora , La Maquinista, Constructora Pirenaica, Entrepose , Degrémont and Schwartz-Hautmont , most of them subsidiaries or at least technological partners of French multinationals . Additionally, several dozen small and medium-sized local businesses worked on the site. Some were spawned by the nuclear industry , while others adapted to it by diversifying and modernizing their production.Footnote 40 As a whole, participation by Spanish industry reached 42%.Footnote 41 Given the “in-progress” state of French technology, both the French and Spanish enterprises conceived of Vandellós as a valuable exercise in entraînement or learning-by-doing : “experience is the best teacher […] we are all going to learn, to train and be able to train others”.Footnote 42

The French government’s official announcement that it would abandon UNGG technology did not affect the Vandellós NP, in large part because its construction was too far advanced to turn back: “The Vandellós project has long passed the point of no return […] Certainly, the Spaniards would not have accepted the project if they had known that Vandellós could be the last unit of its kind”.Footnote 43 The construction works were extended over five years.Footnote 44 Minor problems such as the insufficient quality of some Spanish-made parts or delays due to tariff exemptions procedures were easily solved, as was the claim by the UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) regarding the presumed use in Vandellós of CEA-UKAEA joint ownership patents . The plant was connected to the grid in May 1972 and functioned for just 17 years of the 40 years that were initially projected. A fire in the turbines area in 1989Footnote 45 led to its closure in 1990 and the beginning of dismantlement in 1991. The huge requirements in terms of safety made the nuclear facility uneconomic to repair. Its 323 permanent workers could opt to go to other NPs, join the National Radioactive Waste Company ENRESA, or take early retirement on favorable terms.Footnote 46

As all the studies had projected, the cost of the French NP was to be clearly higher than that of its American predecessors, besides that its total final cost exceeded the original estimate by 16.7%: Vandellós 1 absorbed 751 million Francs (US$ 146.7 million) versus $49.3 million for Zorita (153 MWe with a PWR reactor ) and $78.9 million for Santa María de Garoña (300 MWe, BWP reactor).Footnote 47 Why, then, did the project succeed? A combination of reasons went into this decision. First, the government of Charles De Gaulle, a fierce defender of UNGG technology , needed access to foreign markets to demonstrate its maturity and start industrial production. Spain was considered as an excellent destination, given its geographic and cultural proximity, its significant industrial needs and its close and historic ties to France: “if we do not secure anything in this country, which is so close, so interconnected with France and desirous of using its own natural uranium , any other export operation for a French-style plant will be extremely difficult”.Footnote 48 French authorities also believed that the Spanish choice would facilitate the French nuclear exports to countries that were geographically and/or culturally similar to Spain (such as Portugal or Latin American nations), or to countries seeking to “escape the power exercised by the United States through the supply of enriched uranium”.Footnote 49 As a result, France carried out an intense campaign to sell the advantages of the UNGG option to Spain, advantages that, after arduous negotiations, the Spanish evaluated positively, giving the green light to the project. These advantages were as follows:

  1. 1.

    The use of Spanish natural uranium. The JEN and the CEA alleged that Spain’s reserves of natural uranium—then estimated at 11,000 tons (or 3% of the global supply)—guaranteed the domestic supply of fuel, thus reducing dependence on the United States for provisions of enriched uranium and promoting local uranium companies. Even in the unlikely case that the United States would agree to enrich Spanish uranium, Spain would still have to pay large sums of money for the enrichment process, from which French technology was exempt. Thus, even if at any time natural uranium was significantly more expensive than enriched uranium from abroad, it would still have to be privileged.Footnote 50

  2. 2.

    Favorable financing conditions. The French Treasury committed to covering the total cost of the installation of the NP, estimated at 455 million Francs, or 20% of the 2.5 billion Francs budgeted under the Fifth indicative Plan (1966–70) for the exportation of capital goods.Footnote 51 Spain would pay the supplementary expenses, indirect expenses and price hikes, equivalent to some 170 million Francs to be distributed between public and private funding sources. French financing was structured in three parts: 350 million Francs, amortizable in 15 years at 3% interest rate for purchasing materials, equipment and services in France; the equivalent in Pesetas of 60 million Francs at 5.5% interest rate over 15 years for the assembly in situ of the plant; and 45 million Francs (later raised to 84 million)Footnote 52 at a 4% interest rate over 10 years to deal with the first fuel load, following treatment in France of the Spanish mineral. The French Treasury transferred the money to the Spanish Instituto de Crédito a Medio y Largo Plazo, under the Ministry of Finance, and entrusted its management to two public entities: The Crédit National, a representative of the French Treasury, and the Banco de Crédito Industrial , belonging to the Instituto de Crédito a Medio y Largo Plazo . All principal and interest payments would begin six months after the plant entered into service.Footnote 53 In this way, the French government was able to compete with the advantages accorded by Exim Bank for the financing of Zorita and Garoña .Footnote 54 “Messieurs les atomistes, vous avez gagné”, declared the then Prime Minister Pompidou at the Inter-Ministerial Committee meeting on 25 February 1966 to approve public funding for Vandellós. The Spanish part was covered with capital shares and obligations by FECSA , HECSA and ENHER , an international banking credit led by the US firm Smith & Barney , and smaller loans from Bankinter and Banco Urquijo (Table 6.1).

  3. 3.

    Offers of industrial and political compensation. France guaranteed a high percentage of participation for Spanish industry in the plant construction, 5–10% higher than in American NPs. Some Spanish companies could even participate in operations with a high technological content , which would be viable because Vandellós 1 was going to be nearly an exact replica of the Saint Laurent des Eaux 1 NP , which was under construction on the shores of the Loire River . In any case, EDF, the CEA and the construction firms would regularly send technicians for on-site supervision of the assembly and functioning of the equipment, and for quality control checks for all the parts manufactured in Spain. In the political realm, France committed to backing Spain’s entry into the EEC, which the Franco government had been aspiring to join since 1962. The French nuclear option would mean strengthening ties with the industrialized nations of Western Europe , or at least with France, one of the most prominent ones, and hence would undoubtedly facilitate the path towards European integration.Footnote 55

  4. 4.

    Additional risks assumed by EDF and the CEA. The unit capacity of Vandellós rose to 480 MWe to compensate for investment costs and resist comparisons to American NPs. This oversizing foresaw a major energy surplus during its first years of operation. EDF committed, for a maximum of nine years, to buying all the excess energy that could not be absorbed by the Spanish market, and also to cover any possible deficits or interruptions in supply at Vandellós with energy from France. The provision of energy in both directions was carried out through the Rubí–La Gaudière interconnection line (380 KV), built under previous agreements.Footnote 56 For its part, the CEA, recognizing that the risks assumed by the builders “would far exceed those commonly accepted by French industries”, signed various insurance policies with the support of the French government to cover possible technical issues and price variations.Footnote 57

  5. 5.

    The civil and military possibilities of plutonium. The UNGG reactors produced a much larger volume of plutonium than light-water reactors and were also outside of the aegis of the United States and the IAEA. France and Spain agreed that the waste from the Vandellós reactor (some 400 kg per year) would be sent to France (Marcoule and La Hague sites) for reprocessing and recovering plutonium. The CEA would be in charge of removing and transporting the waste in exchange for part of the plutonium, and the rest would be sent to Spain. Spanish authorities could use their share of the plutonium freely as long as they did not offer it to third countries and allowed a certain amount of supervision by the CEA.Footnote 58 None of the contracts for Vandellós included any commitment to the (peaceful or military) use of plutonium, which France promoted as among the advantages of the UNGG reactor. In addition, the CEA intentionally exercised little control in an effort to avoid sensitivities and possible requests for reciprocal inspection.Footnote 59 As in France, both economic and political-military objectives had motivated Spain’s prompt nuclear adventure.Footnote 60 Afterwards, Spanish military leaders repeatedly admitted that Spain had the technological capability to manufacture bombs and did not want to renounce it in advance in order to leave the possibility open to having someday its own nuclear arsenal.Footnote 61 Certainly, manufacturing bombs with plutonium recovered from Vandellós 1, either directly of following reprocessing abroad, seemed to be one of its best options.Footnote 62 Due to this intention, Spain avoided signing the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty of 1968 despite repeated pressure from the United States.Footnote 63

Table 6.1 French and Spanish financing for Vandellós 1 nuclear plant
Full size table

The Vandellós 1 NP was an important source of employment and income for the municipality of Vandellós i Hospitalet de l’Infant, which saw annual population growth of 3.7% between 1967 and 1975 and a 20-point increase in the rate of economic growth.Footnote 64 The majority of the Spanish staff lived in Poblat d’Hifrensa, a modern industrial village designed by the rationalist architect Antoni Bonet Castellana with a marked social hierarchy: apartments for workers, row houses for technicians, and separate chalets for engineers and managers.Footnote 65 The French technicians and engineers resided in their own complexes, which were built and equipped for that purpose and graced with all the necessary comforts “to welcome them in the most agreeable conditions possible”.Footnote 66 The French personnel in Spain were instructed not to act superior to their Spanish colleagues: “The Spanish are proud and vulnerable […] The engineers must be treated as equals, as first-rate engineers, and not dispatched with generalities or smooth talk”.Footnote 67 During construction and first years of operation, local opposition to Vandellós was minimal, concentrated among a few fishermen and tourism promoters.Footnote 68 France hurried to placate them with studies based on EDF and CEA data demonstrating that all safety procedures had been followed and that the only possible drawback was thermal pollution due to the use of seawater as coolant, which caused the water temperature to rise by a maximum of 6 degrees centigrade.Footnote 69

Vandellós 1, Starting or End Point?

Vandellós 1 served as an example and source of motivation for France to intensify nuclear ties with Spain. First, there was the need to ensure the profitability of a project to which huge financial, industrial and political efforts had been dedicated. Second, cooperation in the field of nuclear energy would benefit the whole of industrial and scientific-technological cooperation. Finally, the outlook was promising: Spain’s 1975 Energy Plan projected a nuclear capacity of 23,000–25,000 MWe by 1985, i.e. 55–60% of total electricity production, a sum of 21 cumulative GWe. France aspired to play a prominent role in that nuclear boom, extending its participation to the entire fuel cycle, from uranium mining prospecting to spent fuel storage and reprocessing.Footnote 70

Framatome participated in all the public bidding processes for the construction of new PWR reactors in Spain. To pave the way, it created the subsidiary Framatome Proyectos Industriales S.A. and courted alliances with local partners, such as the group of engineering companies Empresarios Agrupados S.A. , the construction firm Equipos Nucleares S.A. , and the Fierro family’s Banco Ibérico .Footnote 71 Framatome had the support of French representatives from all areas. Diplomats, businesspeople and engineers recognized the benefits of nuclear cooperation and insisted to the Spanish on the need to limit the “excessive and exclusive” presence of the United States and lend greater weight to the European alternative. They also stressed the resulting possibilities for Spanish industry, which could participate in the construction of plants (nuclear or conventional) in Spain, France and other countries (primarily in the Middle East , Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa ).Footnote 72 The French also agreed to submit the newly constructed NPs to IAEA and Euratom supervision if requested by the Spanish. Cooperation with Spain was not usually proposed in strictly bilateral terms. On the contrary, the door was left open for other European powers, as this was considered the only way to compete with the major US firms. Collaboration with West Germany was especially desirable, given its increasing industrial and political influence in Spain.Footnote 73

In the 1970s, the possible construction of fast-breeders, capable of producing their own fuel and generate up to 70 times more energy than ordinary reactors, spurred great interest among French and Spanish experts . In successive meetings organized alternately in Madrid and Paris,Footnote 74 French authorities examined the prospect of selling a reactor like the Phénix (maximum 450 MWe) or Superphénix (from 1200 to 2000 MWe) to Spain. The first had already been connected to the grid in France, and the second was in the study phase within the CEA . For its sale domestically and abroad, the firm Groupement pour les Neutrons Rapides had been created under the coordination of Alsthom and Fives-Cail-Babcock . The JEN in Spain already possessed an experimental fast reactor at zero capacity, the Coral I, but wanted a commercial reactor that, in addition to producing energy, could recycle, at least partially, the irradiated plutonium coming from NPs in operation.Footnote 75 As with Vandellós 1, French leaders considered the possibilities of ceding the “turnkey” technology, building a mixed working group to study the modalities of the installation, and founding a joint participation society to lead the construction project. Meanwhile, various French firms led by Saint Gobain Techniques Nouvelles offered their assistance to the spent fuel treatment plant that the JEN planned to build in the province of Soria .Footnote 76 Indeed, the plutonium reprocessing technologies and the functioning of fast-breeders were too complex and expensive to be addressed alone, no matter how much the Spanish economy had grown.

Another front of cooperation was uranium enrichment in Europe . Spain was part of the European consortium Eurodif , founded in 1973 as an initiative of EDF with the threefold aim to face the growing demand for enriched uranium, guarantee the security and stability of prices, and diversify supply sources (that is, to get out from under the control of the United States). Using technology patented by the CEA , Eurodif built a facility for uranium enrichment through gaseous diffusion in Tricastin , France, that would equip all member countries based on their participation in the share capital.Footnote 77 Spain, through the Empresa Nacional del Uranio S.A. (ENUSA) , under the public holding Instituto Nacional de Industria (INI) , acquired 11.11% of shares, obtaining a volume of enriched uranium that covered 20% of national demand.Footnote 78 In the mining sector, ENUSA and its French counterpart, the Compagnie Générale des Matières Nucléaires (COGEMA) , linked to the CEA , signed a series of accords for the joint exploitation of natural uranium in Niger (the deposits at Akouta and Akokan) . On the other hand, EDF negotiated new exchange agreements with the Spanish firms Red Eléctrica, Endesa and Iberdrola , which guaranteed the continued transfer of electricity between France and Spain, the construction of new interconnection lines through the Pyrenees , and various forms of cross-participation at electrical plants. Moreover, the CEA , EDF, Framatome and their respective subsidiaries carried out studies and provided technical assistance to some Spanish companies. An example is the assistance delivered by the engineering company SOFRELEC to Spanish firms participating in trans-Pyrenean power lines, as well as EDF’s assistance to ASELÉCTRICA , the embryo of Red Eléctrica, to adapt the Spanish NPs to the electrical grid. In 1982 the EDF-CEA framework agreement of 1956 was renewed in attempting to relaunch cooperation. All these accords entailed many visits by top politicians and managers, exchanges by students and professors, and stays by experts at plants and research centers in both countries. The French government typically accepted all the conditions proposed by its interlocutors. It only declined to proceed with the request by the Spanish Ministry of Marine Affairs to collaborate on building nuclear-propelled attack submarines and helicopter carriers—something it would later lament not approving, as this would have increased opportunities for French industry in Spain.Footnote 79

Much to its regret, after Vandellós 1, France would not complete another ambitious operation in the Spanish nuclear program. All major projects failed. The second- and third-generation Spanish NPs, such as Vandellós 2 and Trillo 2, were attributed to the United States and West Germany . Working against France were the greater financing advantages offered by American and German banks and the deterioration of French–Spanish political relations during the first years of Spanish transition to democracy .Footnote 80 Subsequently, the nuclear moratorium (announced in 1983) prevented the projects of Regodola and Vandellós 3 NPs, which France had seen as “its last opportunity”.Footnote 81 Similarly, it stopped the construction of fast-breeders, the progress on the irradiated fuel treatment plant, and the supply of enriched uranium as part of Eurodif . As a result, offers to collaborate on building reactors in other countries also failed to materialize. All these projects remained suspended for several years but were not directly annulled due to vagueness on Spanish authorities, who in conversation with their French counterparts displayed great optimism, promising the stoppage was merely temporary and so the nuclear program would be soon re-launched, “as soon as the lack of financial means and some local resistances (Lemoniz NP) have been resolved”.Footnote 82

By the early 1980s, French leaders admitted that current nuclear ties with Spain were modest and disappointing. Geographic proximity, historic relations and the ambition of both nuclear programs ought to have produced more satisfactory results.Footnote 83 After Vandellós 1, no other large-scale State project was established. Nuclear cooperation became increasingly restricted to academic and business arenas, expressed in assistance agreements signed between private or specific institutions. However, the shadow of Vandellós 1 would hang over French and Spanish relations for a long time. Despite the initial contract, France supplied 80% of the natural uranium utilized both in the first load and in subsequent refueling of the reactor, for it was noticeably cheaper than natural uranium from Spain. Meanwhile, the combined impact of devaluations of the Peseta and cycles of inflation following the 1970s oil crisis exacerbated and prolonged Spain’s debts with France, even though these eventualities had been partially foreseen in the financing contracts and would later be in part offset by the devaluation of the Franc . Finally, successive commitments were renewed up through the present day for the storage and treatment of plutonium from Vandellós at the French complexes of Marcoule and La Hague,Footnote 84 in exchange for no small sum of money. These payments, which the government and electric companies pass on to Spanish citizens in their electricity bill, will continue until Spain builds the controversial Centralized Temporary Storage Facility (currently on hold) or, failing this, Temporary Individual Storage Units at each NP. The nuclear stoppage did not, however, affect the bilateral exchange of energy, which redoubled with the construction of new interconnection lines across the Pyrenees , the latest in 2015.

Concluding Remarks

Not many sectors have absorbed so many endeavors and resources as the nuclear sector. The Spanish nuclear program, a tremendously ambitious task for a still developing country, led to the deployment of colossal efforts to acquire knowledge, capital and high-tech equipment from the main Westerns powers, particularly, in this order, the United States, France and West Germany . Consequently, a country with a dictatorship and a lagging economy became in less than two decades one of the worldwide nuclear first-comers, achieving a nuclear power capacity not far behind the main nuclear leaders. On the other hand, France, involved for a long time in its own (and not always successful) nuclear research, entered in the postwar period the group of major nuclear powers, just behind the United States and the Soviet Union . Willing to export its national technology, the French government offered Spain exceptional compensations: advantageous loans, a high participation for domestic industries, a relatively free use of the spent fuel , and stronger supports to industrial and political projects. The French State, represented by EDF and the CEA, accepted virtually all of their partners’ requirements, justifying every unilateral concession and assuming exceptional risks and liabilities. Only in this way, Spain agreed to purchase an obviously costly and obsolete technology. On top of this, military purposes cannot be excluded, even if it is difficult, if not impossible, to find solid and reliable evidence to investigate it.

Among all the nuclear reactors planned (over 40) and finally connected to the grid (10) in Spain, only the Vandellós 1 reactor was French. It was the third NP installed in Spain and above all represented a unique case: it was the last implementation of the French UNGG technology and its first and only export; it was also the first Spanish NP to be dismantled after the most serious nuclear incident that has ever occured in the country. Besides, Vandellós 1 witnessed the setting for confrontation between, on one side, the national pride and military engineerism represented by the CEA, the JEN and the INI, and, on the other side, the dominant commercial approach of EDF and the Spanish private companies. Given the size of the public sector in France, the private initiative did not play in Vandellós 1 a role as relevant as in the American or German reactors built in Spain. French and Spanish governments, led by their respective nuclear agencies, subordinated the economic rationality to the politico-military advantages, that is, the ability of French UNGG NPs to avoid the American omnipresence and facilitate new industrial, military and political projects. In the end, the spectacular growth of US NPs in the international market (most with PWR-Westinghouse technology) exhausted the commercial possibilities of the French technology. France itself had no option but to waive its filière nationale and adopt the American procedure. Therefore, the French alternative route could not be a reality, since it could not differentiate from a European route that was required to cooperate with the United States.

On balance, Vandellós 1 was more a political-military decision than an economic, scientific or technological one. At any rate, by building the facility, France encouraged the development of the Spanish infrastructure and business fabric, enhanced local capabilities, and thus gave new impetus to the Spanish industrial modernization. The plant became a magnificent training school for Spaniards and foreigners, and a place where economic and political prospective partnerships were forged. Last but not least, access to French capital, goods and technology allowed Spain to diversify its economic and foreign policy options, reducing its heavy dependency on the United States and paving the way towards greater interrelations with European governments and businesses. In this respect, the French route became not an alternative but a complementary route, unable to replace the United States but able to break monopolies and diversify offerings.