Societa Gestione Impianti Nucleari (Sogin) has laid the foundation slab for an interim storage facility at Italy’s Garigliano NPP in the municipality of Sessa Aurunca (Caserta), which closed more than 40 years ago. The DT2 temporary warehouse will accommodate about 1,800 cubic metres of low and medium activity radioactive waste from the dismantling of the plant, pending its transfer to a national repository, when it is available. This will include dismantling of the reactor pressure vessel, which began last December.
The structure, with a floor plan of 70 metres by 18 metres and a height of 13 metres, will have a total capacity of about 16,500 cubic metres. This will include an operational handling area, a servicing centre and a storage area. It will be equipped, among other things, with a bridge crane for the remote handling of radioactive waste containers, in which there will be corridors for their inspection. Civil works should be completed by June 2025, with commissioning expected in the first half of 2026.
Garigliano NPP comprised a 150 MWe boiling water reactor that was connected to the grid in 1964 and shut down in 1982. Italy decided to phase out nuclear power in a referendum that followed the 1986 Chernobyl accident and Sogin was established in 1999 to undertake decommissioning of the nuclear facilities and siting a national waste store.
“This is a significant result for the advancement of the decommissioning and safe management programme of the site’s radioactive waste, which will allow the dismantling of the systems and components of the reactor building of the power plant to be completed,” Sogin said.
