Garigliano Nuclear Power Plant was a nuclear power plant located at Sessa Aurunca (Campania), in southern Italy. It was named after the river Garigliano.
Consisting of one 150MWe BWR from General Electric, it operated from 1964 until 1982. First criticality was on 5 June 1963, with grid connection 1 January 1964 and full commercial operation from 1 June in that year. Garigliano was in 1964 the fourth BWR ever worldwide commercial operated, and had the second highest MW-capacity after Dresden Nuclear Power Plant unit 1.
Final shutdown was on 1 March 1982 and the plant was handed to the Italian nuclear decommissioning authority SOGIN on 1 November 1999.[1] Decommissioning is expected to take 27 years, with the total bill expected to reach $432.4 million.[2]
The plant was constructed between November 1, 1959 and January 1, 1963, by Società Elettronucleare Nazionale, taking only four years to build.[3]
On 1 June 1964, the plant began production of energy for commercial use. In 1965, ENEL took control of the structure officially.
In 1978, the reactor was shut down and the production of energy ceased. The reactor was officially switched off on 1 March 1982. During its lifetime, the plant had produced 12,5 billion kWh of electric energy.
In 1987, some of the spent fuel rods were sent to Sellafield, England, to be reprocessed. The remaining fuel rods were kept in storage in Deposito Avogadro and in 2011 were sent to La Hauge, France to be reprocessed also.
In 1999, the property of the plant was transferred to SOGIN, which began to dismantle the plant: the decommissioning is set to end in 2026. Once reached the brown field status in 2026, the sphere and part of the structure will become a museum, in context of industrial archeology.
The radioactive waste will remain on-site until its removal for permanent storage, and the deposits will be demolished.
Because of the need to treat liquid waste produced during the dismantling, between 2014 and 2021 SOGIN built a new radwaste to replace the old one which was used during the plant's operating life. In 2023, the new radwaste was used to treat the radioactive mud stored in tanks of the old radwaste system (tanks T12, T13 and T26).[4]
During the late 1960s, the burial of very low-level radioactive waste produced by the plant (such as contaminated protective clothing) was authorized. Three trenches were filled with waste. In 2014, began the remediation of trench 2 and trench 3. In 2017, the reclamation of trench 1 started also. The clean-up ended in 2021. All of the waste was then moved to the temporary deposit named D1.[5][6]
SOGIN began dismantling the 95-meters-high (312 feet) concrete chimney in March 2014. First, the structure was decontaminated, then it was completely demolished in November 2017.[7] The old chimney has now been replaced with a new 34-meter-high (112 feet) steel chimney.
On October 30, 2023, work began to dismantle the old water tower.[8] The dismantling was completed on February 4, 2024. 1900 metric tons of non-radioactive material (2094 US tons) were produced from the demolition and were later sent to be recycled.[9][10]
Still uncompleted.
Still uncompleted.
Because of the increasing amount of waste generated due the decommissioning, two on-site deposits, realized between 2007 and 2013, were allocated to the mid-term storage of radioactive waste, waiting for its definitive storage in the National Repository of Radioactive Waste (which hasn't been built yet).
A third temporary deposit, named D2, is now being built and it is going to be finished in 2025.[12] Some radioactive waste is being kept in steel drums outside the plant, waiting to be stored in the deposits.
The total amount was 2406 cubic meters in 2022.[13]
