Civil construction of replacement Trino waste store completed

Work on the 41-metre-long, 19-metre-wide, and 8.5-metre-high facility, which began in November 2024, involved demolishing the old storage facility and rebuilding it on the same site, with a volume equal to that of the dismantled building.

The new facility - referred to as the No 2 storage facility - will house both legacy waste, currently stored in storage facility No 1 and the "buffer test tank", as well as waste generated by upcoming decommissioning operations.

At the same time, the characterisation and disposal of materials resulting from the demolition work, consisting primarily of iron, concrete, and excavated soil, has been completed.

The next stage of the project involves the installation of electrical, fire-prevention, and radiological monitoring systems, which will be completed by the first half of this year. Commissioning, following testing, is scheduled for early 2027.

Societa Gestione Impianti Nucleari SpA (Sogin) - established in 1999 to take responsibility for decommissioning Italy's former nuclear power sites and locating a national waste store - said the new facility will bring the Trino plant (also referred to as the Enrico Fermi plant) "up to the latest regulatory safety standards".

Upon completion, Sogin will begin work to upgrade the other repository on the site, No 1, as part of the programme to optimise the storage space for radioactive waste generated by the plant's operation and the ongoing decommissioning work, with a view to its subsequent transfer to the national repository, once available.

Trino - comprising a single 270 MWe pressurised water reactor - was Italy's first commercial nuclear power plant. Its construction began in 1961 and the plant started generating electricity in 1964. As a result of a referendum held in 1987 in the wake of the Chernobyl accident, Italy decided to shut down its four nuclear power plants. Trino was subsequently permanently shut down in 1990. Sogin took over ownership of the plant from utility Enel in 1999 and is responsible for its decommissioning.