At Italy’s Garigliano NPP, in the Municipality of Sessa Aurunca (Caserta), state-owned Societa Gestione Impianti Nucleari (Sogin) has begun dismantling the old radwaste system, used during the operation of the plant to manage radioactive liquid effluents.
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.
The radwaste system is located in a the RW building on two floors, inside four rooms, and is composed of adduction and discharge pipes, three tanks (already reclaimed in 2023 including the sludge contained inside them) and all the support instrumentation.
Since these are contaminated components, Sogin and its subsidiary Nucleco before starting the work adapted the systems of the premises (electric, ventilation, radiological monitoring), to guarantee safety at every stage of the activity. The work will be carried out for using cutting robots for the more complex parts. The specially designed and manufactured robots will be operated remotely. The operations will be completed before the end of the year.
A total of about 50 tonnes of metal material will be demolished. At the end of the melting and decontamination treatments, it is estimated that only 15 tonnes of radioactive waste will remain. This is in line with the corporate strategy of minimising this waste, which will be stored in the temporary storages of the site pending their subsequent transfer to a National Depository when it becomes available.
To ensure the continuity of the disposal activities underway in the plant, Sogin created and put into operation in 2022 the new treatment system for radioactive liquid effluents.
