Country 'has not turned its back on nuclear' as search continues for national radwaste site

摘要

Italy, which shut down its last commercial power plant in 1990, has said its programme to decommission former nuclear facilities will cost about €7 billion with €3.8 billion spent to return all facilities to "greenfield" status, but no decision has yet been taken on a site for a national radwaste storage facility.Sogin, the state-owned company established in 1999 and responsible for the decommissioning of Italian nuclear plants and the management of radioactive waste, said the relatively small sum of €0.8 billion had been spent on decommissioning nuclear plants, with €1.1 billion on nuclear fuel cycle projects and €1.9 billion for maintaining facilities in safe mode.Financing for the programme is coming from a decommissioning fund accumulated during the operational lifetime of Italy's four commercial nuclear plants and a small, additional charge on electricity bills which is reviewed every three months by the regulatory authority for energy, networks and the environment (Arera).According to Sogin, the decommissioning fund alone did not contain enough money partly because of a government decision to extend the decommissioning programme, originally for nuclear plants, to all nuclear fuel cycle facilities. Sogin also points out that the government decision in 1987 to shut down all nuclear power plants "took the sector by surprise". That decision followed a referendum in the wake of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster and led to the closure of Italy's last commercial nuclear plant in 1990.