Ansaldo Nucleare will secure the Trisaia waste

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The Ansaldo Newclear consortium, made up of Ansaldo Nucleare, Ansaldo Energia and Monsud (supplier company of the Genoese group controlled by CDP), was awarded the contract to secure the liquid waste of the former Trisaia radioactivity research center in Rotondella (Matera). The tender, worth 43 million euros, was initiated by Sogin, the state-owned company responsible for the decommissioning of Italian nuclear plants and the management of radioactive waste, last February and, in recent days, the award has arrived. It is “a work – explains Riccardo Casale, CEO of Ansaldo Nucleare – which we had been waiting for for years (a tender had been made and then withdrawn and a tender had gone deserted, ed) and that Sogin, under commissioner management, has unblocked as it has done for many others ». A trend that suggests that the government’s intention is to give new impetus to the nuclear issue in Italy.

Trisaia was, in the 70s and 80s, a very advanced research center, especially on fuel, and produced a series of radioactive wastes. Using ad hoc machinery, Newclear will transform the centre’s liquid radioactive waste into solid concrete through a chemical process, which will then be isolated in special drums to make it inert. «Liquid radioactive waste – explains Casale – are potentially the most dangerous of all. There is a risk, for example, that they could infiltrate the ground. Our plant will condition them, solidifying them through a particular cementation and making them easily treatable and storable in total safety”.

The unblocking of this tender, however, appears to be one more step towards the national repository for radioactive waste, another Italian project that has been awaiting completion for decades. «The national deposit – says Casale – would be the most important environmental infrastructure in the country; not doing so means leaving increasingly complicated situations to manage and potentially significant risks to future generations. Acting now corresponds to definitively securing all the radioactive waste present on the national territory and saving huge economic resources”.

On nuclear power, Casale adds, «the world has never stopped; instead, Europe and, even earlier, Italy and other countries had stopped. Now we are witnessing a rapid restart, linked to three elements of insecurity. The first is environmental: we cannot continue to emit CO2; The second concerns supplies: we cannot depend on unstable countries; the third is economic: stable and reasonable price scenarios are needed for large energy consumers. Nuclear power contributes, together with the sustainable development of renewables, with which it is perfectly complementary, to overturning these insecurities».

Even the European taxonomy includes nuclear power in the energy transition, recalls Casale. It is no coincidence that the Belgian parliament, which is reviewing its plan to exit the sector, summoned Ansaldo Nucleare for a hearing at the end of May. «They invited us – says Casale – together with EDF and Westinghouse, as part of the assessments on whether or not to exit nuclear power and we brought the point of view of the industrial companies. Ansaldo works with the French and Americans on many fronts; the most innovative ones are, with Edf and Edison, lo small modular reactor Next generation Nuward and, with the Americans and others, the lead fast reactor generation IV (pimobo-cooled reactor, ed). In 2030, or perhaps earlier, the construction of Neuward should start, a small reactor that is also ideal for the production of hydrogen and cogeneration».