Italy publishes the 6th Italian National Report on the Safety of Spent Fuel Management and on the Safety of Radioactive Waste Management

Thursday 19 November 2020

Italy publishes the 6th Italian National Report on the Safety of Spent Fuel Management and on the Safety of Radioactive Waste Management

Prepared by ISIN, on behalf of the Government, the sixth National Report on the safety of the management of spent fuel and radioactive waste, provided for by the Joint IAEA Convention. The document provides an update of the national situation, in particular on the relevant issues that emerged during the Sixth Review Conference in 2018.

The Italian Report will be presented at the next Conference which, initially scheduled for spring 2021, has been postponed to June 2022 due to measures to counter the spread of Coronavirus.

The Joint Convention on the Safety of Spent Fuel Management and the Safety of Radioactive Waste Management was adopted by the IAEA in 1997 and entered into force in 2001; Italy, which signed in 1998, ratified its accession in 2006. In October 2020, there are 83 contracting countries.

The objective of the Convention is to favor, worldwide, the achievement and maintenance of a high level of safety in the management of irradiated fuel and radioactive waste, through the strengthening of national measures and international cooperation and to ensure the implementation of safety and radiation protection measures, in order to prevent and mitigate any accidents that may have radiological consequences for workers and the population.

Among the events of particular importance that occurred after the sixth review meeting, the Report highlights the full effectiveness of ISIN, as the competent national regulatory authority in the field of nuclear safety and radiation protection.

Furthermore, the transposition of Directive 59/2013/Euratom on the safety of ionizing radiation (legislative decree 101/2020), which introduces new provisions for the safety of radioactive waste management, addressing, in particular, the issue of traceability is also important.

In December 2019, the Ministries of Environment and Economic Development adopted the National Program for the implementation of the policy for the management of spent fuel and radioactive waste and, in August this year, Italy formally submitted a request to the IAEA for the ARTEMIS peer review mission, to be held in 2023, for the evaluation of the implementation of the National Program.

Another important step in the direction of completing decommissioning in our country was the granting, in May 2020, of the decommissioning license for the Latina nuclear power plant. A strategy that includes a decommissioning plan in two phases: the first aimed at making safe all radioactive waste previous or produced by the dismantling of structures, systems and components of the plant, as well as the conservation of the reactor building (with graphite radioactive inside) and the second, to be implemented only after the location and construction of the National Deposit, which involves the dismantling of all plant structures in order to reach the final state of full reusability of the sites, the so-called "green field ".

With regard to the spent fuel residue to be shipped abroad for reprocessing, negotiations are underway between the French and Italian authorities to complete the program with the transfer to France of the remaining 13 tons stored at the Avogadro depot.

On the construction side, the project for conditioning the exhausted resins of the Caorso plant is also worthy of note. Following an international tender, the heat treatment and conditioning of operational radioactive waste was entrusted to a qualified Slovak operator. The authorization process by the Italian authorities and the Slovak Republic has been completed and the spent resins to be treated are being transferred to Slovakia.

The report is available here:: https://www.isinucleare.it/sites/default/files/contenuto_redazione_isin/joint_convention_on_the_safety_of_spent_fuel_management_and_on_the_safety_of_radioactive_waste_management_2020.pdf

Last update: Thursday 19 November 2020