Material for the Engineered Barrier System under Development for the LLW Repository in Italy
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ressive, flexural and tensile strength; carbonation tests; chloride diffusion.
INTRODUCTION In Italy a considerable amount of radioactive wastes has been produced during the about thirty years of R&D and commercial nuclear activities. These activities include the operation of four power stations by ENEL, the national producer of electricity, and several laboratories and pilot plants, included two reprocessing pilot plants, operated by ENEA, the former Commission for Nuclear Energy of Italy, now known as the Agency for Energy and Environment. From 1990, all the operational nuclear activities have concentrated on the conditioning of the stored wastes.
Since 1996, a major effort is being made to provide the country with a repository for LLW. Following a governmental decision, the LLW Repository site will also be co-located with a storage facility for the spent fuel along with the vitrified HLW which will be returned to Italy from the reprocessing at Sellafield (UK). A near surface LLW Repository based on a vault concept has been considered. The total inventory should be around 100,000 cubic meters of LLW conditioned wastes, mostly coming from dismantling of the power stations. The inventory of HLW accounts for about 4000 cubic meters of solid wastes and 300 canisters of vitrified wastes produced from the reprocessing of spent fuel in UK and in the vitrification campaign planned to be carried out in Italy from 2002. Two initial choices of the site, belonging to governmental establishments, have been investigated in the past two years. These preliminary performance assessments have shown an acceptable consistency with the safety requirements. Some anthropic features of the two sites, however, may lead to adverse impact on the local populations. Consequently, a vast site selection activity was been initiated at the beginning of 1997. The criteria for site selection are based on the LLW Repository location. In order to acquire consensus, the Ministry of Industry, which is in charge of the matter, has decided to promote a procedure based on voluntary candidatures for the site selection. An institutional table, including representatives of the government, all the Italian regions and provinces, unions, environmental associations, and representatives of ENEA, ENEL and the National Environmental Protection Agency, has been set up to consider this further. A package of general and site-oriented benefits provided by the State to the candidate site has been anticipated and developed for discussion at this institutional table. No prejudicial opposition to these developments has manifested itself to date. Consistency with this policy requires the identification of at least one site from all of the Italian potentially suitable regions. This will allow to the government to implement a technical discussion with the available region, or to present at the institutional table a short list of suitable areas with a targeted package of benefits. THE DISPOSAL MODULAR CONCEPT Along with the development of the site selection process, the desi
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