Spain has formally extended the operating licences of both units at the Almaraz nuclear power station until 8th June 2030, retaining a major source of low-carbon electricity as disruption in the Middle East increases the cost and risk of dependence on imported gas.
The decision took legal effect through Order TED/864/2026 in Spain’s official gazette, published on 14th August. Unit I had previously been authorised until November 2027 and Unit II until October 2028.
The order grants the operator’s requested common end date after a favourable assessment by the Nuclear Safety Council. It does not abandon Spain’s plan to close the wider nuclear fleet by 2035, a distinction made explicitly in the government’s reasoning.
What has changed is the timetable for Almaraz and the policy calculation supporting it. Madrid now argues that a limited nuclear extension can reduce exposure to gas volatility without materially derailing renewable-energy goals.
A narrow extension with a large signal
The government describes the additional operating periods as approximately 31 months for Unit I and 19 months for Unit II. In the context of a nuclear station’s life, these are limited extensions rather than a decision to keep Almaraz running indefinitely.
Their importance is nevertheless greater than their duration. Spain has long presented renewables, storage and electrification as the structural answer to imported fossil-fuel dependence. The order maintains that strategy but acknowledges that the transition needs additional firm generation during a period of exceptional geopolitical risk.
The operator, Centrales Nucleares Almaraz-Trillo, applied for the change in October 2025. The Nuclear Safety Council delivered a favourable report on 16 July 2026, subject to the limits and conditions attached to the new authorisation.
The approval therefore rests on both an energy-policy judgment and a nuclear-safety process. The changed gas outlook may explain why the government accepted the extension, but it does not replace the regulator’s technical requirements.
Middle East crisis enters Spanish licensing policy
The order directly cites the Middle East crisis, disruption to global energy markets and greater volatility in fossil-fuel prices, including natural gas. It says damage to production and export infrastructure has extended uncertainty into the coming years.
That is a notable admission. Energy-transition schedules are normally built around projections for demand, renewable deployment, storage, interconnection and fuel costs. A prolonged interruption to a major supply region can make those assumptions obsolete before replacement capacity is ready.
EU Today recently reported that European power prices had risen sharply as heat, reduced nuclear availability and weak wind tightened supply. The Almaraz decision addresses a different question—plant licensing rather than a daily market move—but it reflects the same value placed on available dispatchable capacity when the system is under strain.
Spain has substantial liquefied-natural-gas import infrastructure and a rapidly growing renewable fleet. Even so, higher international gas prices affect the cost of gas-fired generation and can influence wholesale electricity prices when combined-cycle plants set the marginal price.
The government’s own trade-off
Madrid’s sensitivity analysis estimates that extending Almaraz would reduce gas-fired generation in combined-cycle plants by about 7 per cent in 2030 compared with the national energy and climate plan scenario.
The same analysis projects renewable generation to be about 1.4 per cent lower than in that scenario. Nuclear power therefore displaces some renewable output as well as gas, although the government describes the renewable effect as limited and within the variability normally caused by weather, outages and interconnection conditions.
The order says Spain would remain above the EU threshold for renewable energy in final consumption. It also states that the extension does not remove the need to continue investment in storage, networks and other measures needed for system stability.
This is the central trade-off. Keeping Almaraz open provides firm low-carbon output and reduces gas exposure, but it can also reduce the number of hours in which renewable generators supply the system. The policy case depends on whether the security and price benefits outweigh that modest displacement during the transition.
Waste, decommissioning and local employment
The national radioactive-waste company Enresa advised that the additional waste created by the extension would be small and would not require expansion of existing or planned storage facilities. The order says no additional costs are expected to fall on consumers or the state budget for that reason.
The government also links the extra operating period to industrial and employment planning around the plant. It says the owners should use the time to deepen social dialogue and develop alternative employment and industrial activity in the surrounding area.
That matters because a closure date is not only an electricity-market event. Nuclear stations support specialised workforces, suppliers and municipal revenue. A short extension postpones the adjustment; it does not eliminate the need for a credible transition plan.
Physical-protection authorisations also require attention. The existing protection approvals retain their earlier expiry dates unless renewed through the prescribed procedure, even though the operating licences now run to 2030.
Not a reversal of the 2035 phase-out
The original Reuters report describes the decision as a response to the changed energy environment. It should not be broadened into a claim that Spain has cancelled its nuclear exit.
The official order repeatedly limits the decision to Almaraz and says the remaining closure calendar, including the final 2035 date for the fleet, is unchanged. A future government could revisit that policy, but this order does not do so.
It does, however, make the existing timetable less politically rigid. Once a government accepts that geopolitical conditions justify revising one closure date, operators of other plants may argue that their own cases should be reassessed against the same security-of-supply test.
For Madrid, the immediate decision is pragmatic: retain safe nuclear output for a little longer while renewable and storage capacity expands. For Europe’s energy debate, the larger lesson is that transition calendars written under one set of fuel-security assumptions may not survive a prolonged disruption under another.
Source: EU Today