The Diplomat
The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) is going to 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 (Almería) since 1958 and the “inaction” of “successive governments” to “end” a “situation so prolonged” over time that it has put “people’s lives at risk.”
The Secretariat of the Court of Strasbourg has opened a file to study the claim, which will be submitted to examination “as soon as possible” based on the documents and information provided by the conservation group last February, according to the notification made by the international body consulted by Europa Press.
In this sense, it urges the group to await the decisions that the court may adopt, as well as to forward any decision that may be related to the process during which the same body could request the personal appearance of the complainants if necessary. .
The group indicated in its complaint that the inhabitants of Palomares have been “subjected” to “scientific experiments without their consent” and stated that they have been “allowed to ingest and inhale radioactive particles” with the “objective of investigating” the consequences of “plutonium.” in health” until “2009”, within the framework of the ‘Indalo’ project agreed between Spain and the US, which he describes as “degrading treatment”.
“The radioactive contamination in Palomares is a unique case in the history of Spain, it is still pending resolution and no Spanish government adopted any palliative measure, the only one being the fencing of a large part of the affected area that culminated in 2011 although as of today There are still contaminated lands outside the fence where people and livestock move freely,” the complaint indicates.
The lawsuit asks the ECHR to go into the “bottom of the problem” that occurs in Palomares, recognizing this point, and also asks it to revoke the ruling of the Supreme Court (TS) of November 2022 that considered that the Nuclear Safety Council (CSN) was not competent to carry out the cleanup of radioactivity in the area, but did not determine which organization was responsible.
Ecologistas en Acción argues that the accident in the district of Palomares, of which “the recovery phase provided for in the law still remains to be resolved”, was “poorly managed” from the beginning, “hiding the situation and using the population, domestic fauna and wild and open-air laboratory environment in general.
He highlights in the lawsuit that the “successive” governments in Spain since 1966 have used “as an excuse” for not rehabilitating the area the need to have a suitable and definitive nuclear warehouse to store the long-lived radioactive material resulting from the cleaning and He questions why “no government” has considered it “necessary to build an individualized temporary warehouse in Palomares.”
“They prefer to use as an excuse for not cleaning the lack of a definitive nuclear warehouse and the lack of interest of the US in taking the plutonium,” he emphasizes, adding that the US carried out a “simulated” cleanup with the transfer of “1,000” cubic meters of earth “that contained a few tens of grams of plutonium”, while “new remaining kilos” were “scattered throughout the area” along with two “ditches”, one of “3,000 and another of 1,000” cubic meters, in which “radioactive material was deposited.”
