en.Wedoany.com Reported - Societa Gestione Impianti Nucleari (Sogin), Italy's nuclear plant management company, has begun repackaging the remaining 64 uranium-thorium cycle irradiated fuel elements at the Rotondella facility. Between 1968 and 1970, 84 uranium-thorium cycle irradiated fuel elements from the Elk River experimental reactor in Minnesota, USA, arrived at the plant as part of a thorium fuel cycle research program.

Previously, between 1975 and 1978, 20 of these elements underwent nuclear testing activities, producing three different types of radioactive liquid products. One of these, known as the "final product," consists of recovered fuel and fission elements dissolved in a nitric acid-based solution. Currently, these liquid radioactive wastes are safely stored in a steel tank housed within a thick reinforced concrete structure.

This repackaging operation involves transferring each fuel element from its current sealed container to a new container suitable for loading into two special packages that have already arrived on site. The fuel will then be loaded "dry" into these two packages and safely stored in the temporary storage facility at the Rotondella site, pending final transfer to the national radioactive waste repository (once available).

These operations will be carried out within the plant's fuel storage pool, where the fuel is submerged underwater to utilize the water layer for natural radiation shielding. The activities are executed according to specific engineering procedures designed to ensure safety at all operational stages and allow visual inspection of all elements to verify their structural integrity. The entire repackaging operation is scheduled for completion by mid-2027.

Sogin stated that the launch of the repackaging operation marks a significant milestone in the "dry" storage process for this fuel, a key objective of the decommissioning plan for the facility located in Basilicata. In June 2023, Sogin signed a contract worth €43 million ($49 million) with a consortium comprising Ansaldo Nucleare and construction company Monsud SpA for the construction of the Final Product Cementation Plant (ICPF) at the Itrec facility. This facility is designed to cement about 3 cubic meters of liquid uranium-thorium solution, known as the "final product," derived from experimental reprocessing operations conducted on fuel during the operation of the Rotondella plant.

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