Radioactive waste management

Radioactive waste, left as a legacy from past nuclear activities, is still stored at the respective production sites (nuclear power plants and experimental research facilities on the nuclear fuel cycle). In addition, there is waste generated by research, medical and industrial activities, currently stored in temporary storage facilities at authorized national operators.

Numerous activities are currently underway or planned to increase the safety level of the management of this waste, which concern both conditioning operations, since 70% of the waste is still in the state in which it was produced, and the construction of new and adequate temporary storage facilities, pending their transfer to the National Repository.

In this context, ISIN has repeatedly formulated and reiterated in various venues what are the critical issues and fundamental objectives to be pursued in the management of radioactive waste, particularly in the long term, trying to raise awareness among the competent administrations to undertake appropriate actions to quickly achieve the creation of a national repository that can accommodate in conditions of maximum safety the radioactive waste still held in the various plants as well as the waste generated by the reprocessing abroad of irradiated fuel destined to return to Italy, also to fulfill the obligations arising from Directive 2011/70/Euratom, which requires all Member States to manage all radioactive waste until the definitive solution, i.e. safe disposal.

ISIN annually updates the "National Inventory of Radioactive Waste". The document also includes spent fuel and decommissioned sources, is processed with data relating to volumes, masses, physical, chemical and radiological characteristics, characteristics of containers and waste storage conditions and is prepared on the basis of data that the various operators, who have primary responsibility for the safe detention and management of the waste, transmit annually to the Inspectorate's IT system called STRIMS (System for the Traceability of Radioactive Waste, Radioactive Materials and Sources of Ionizing Radiation).

The data from the ISIN National Inventory of Radioactive Waste are also used for:

- the database that the Inspectorate provides to the Ministry of the Environment and Energy Security for the purposes of the three-yearly update of the National Programme for the management of spent fuel and radioactive waste;
- the preparation, pursuant to art. 105, paragraph 4, of Legislative Decree no. 101/2020, of the report on the implementation of Directive 2011/70/Euratom to be transmitted to the European Commission;
- the preparation of the National Reports required by the Joint Convention on the Safety of Spent Fuel Management and the Safety of Radioactive Waste Management (Joint Convention, adopted in Vienna on 5 September 1997);
- the national contribution to the Spent Fuel and Radioactive Waste Information System (SRIS) of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

Installations in the Italian territory that currently produce and hold radioactive waste, spent fuel, decommissioned sources and nuclear materials.

In terms of national obligations with international organizations and the European Commission on the subject of the safety of radioactive waste management, ISIN is responsible for preparing the national reports required by the Joint Convention on the Safety of Radioactive Waste Management and the Safety of Irradiated Fuel Management, ratified by Italy with Law 16 December 2005, no. 282, participating, on behalf of Italy, in the periodic review conferences required by the Convention itself. ISIN is responsible for preparing the periodic national report on the implementation of Directive 2011/70/EURATOM establishing a Community framework for the responsible and safe management of spent nuclear fuel and radioactive waste.

[1] Nucleco S.p.A. is identified as the operator of the “Complex for the treatment, conditioning, storage and disposal of radioactive waste” at the CRE Casaccia in Rome. ENEA, the license holder, is, instead, the operator.
[2] The inventory relating to the CEMERAD Deposit is provided by Sogin S.p.A., as the entity implementing the site remediation.