The Deal

When the train of dangerous wastes crossed the Canfranc station towards South, it was a humid and cold early morning of February. The huge containers were painted dark black and didn’t carry any identification. The convoy won’t stop for hours, and just a handful of villagers were able to see it pass.

Officially, it came from the nuclear central of Brennilis, in the Northwest of France, and its destination was somewhere in the central plateau of Spain.

That travel was the last step of a complex treaty between France and Spain, in which the regime were trying to improve its recent openness. The visit from Nixon and Kissinger was close, so this was a perfect chance to improve the relations with France. Spain, interested in improve their nuclear technology, would take care of 40 tons of nuclear wastes from France. In the meantime, the French government would provide them with relevant information to build advanced nuclear power stations and would talk in their behalf at the UN.

Obviously this treaty was absolutely secret, and the population couldn’t, under any circumstance, know that Spain was accepting, without any trouble, wastes that could be very dangerous.

Two days later, in the middle of Castilla La Mancha (central Spain), and under a light rain, the last truck with the containers parked next to a huge pitch. It was the darkest hour of the night, but a handful of lights that were close could light the scene: there was a hole of 100 x 50 meters, and around 50 meters deep.

Don Pierre Victor Auger, expert in nuclear energy, had been sent from Paris to be the leader of this mission, and with a very strong French accent, gave the last orders to the workers and kept playing with a Geiger counter:

• “Good work, gentlemen. Let’s do this the right way. Remember, those containers can’t suffer any damage, for any reason. They are full of wastes from a nuclear power plant, so the radiation could kill all of us in seconds. If the containers are good, everything is good and everybody is safe. Remember the security instructions and the order of each container. When we have all of them in this pitch, you have to start to fill it with the mixture you were instructed. Gentlemen, stay awake and everything will be okay”.

The works ended as expected. After 48 hours the only lead about what happened there, was the wheel marks of dozens of heavy vehicles. The rains and the plants would cover any evidence very soon. The exact spot was in the middle of a small valley, surrounded by hills covered by forests. An old path crossed the hillside and ended in an old village road. After 4 kilometers there was a small town of poor people who never wondered what were the lights that they saw in the valley, two days before. And after another two kilometers, you could see in the horizon a huge lake of silvery waters.