"In the beginning, 85% of the community was against the Deposit. We feared health risks and damage to the economy. Comparison and experience dispelled all our fears. The national deposit is today accepted by the population as the safest way to manage the radioactive waste of a country and a driving force for the development of the territory that welcomes it ". So' Philippe Dallemagne, Vice President of the Aube Department and Mayor of Soulaines-Dhuys. And the manager who in France solved the problem of depositing waste from nuclear power plants. Those of the older generation, of course.
Dallemagne spoke at the national Sogin seminar on the Italian depot to be built. In fact, the first of nine meetings was held with a highly qualified parterre which, one by one, will affect the areas potentially suitable for hosting the future national structure. It is known that the Regions involved in the complicated project are: Piedmont, Tuscany, Lazio, Puglia, Basilicata, Sicily, Sardinia. All will be called to discuss an energy and environmental problem that has accompanied Italian industrial history for more than 30 years. The ecological transition, approved by the Draghi government, has not neglected the issue, which is notoriously very divisive.
The Seminar which, in addition to Emmanuel Fontani, Chief Executive Officer of Sogin, was also attended by Vannia Gava, Undersecretary to the Ministry of Ecological Transition, it will end on December 15th. Weeks of debates and comparisons that should end with a new approach to waste management from old plants. Doubts and perplexities abound in this regard. Suffice it to recall that after a long time only last January was the National Charter of Potentially Suitable Areas (CNAPI) published to accommodate what has become a business in France.
Here, the technical and procedural aspects are all open. All accompanied by oppositions, fears, campaigns against. Sogin has opened the doors of the sites, it dialogues with the territories that preserve the waste, but collective persuasion is a delicate exercise. The optimism of the Mayor of Soulaines-Dhuys, so to speak, in the first session encountered 14 direct-answer questions on what and how to do. But we know that it was enough for Minister Cingolani to pronounce the word nuclear a few days ago to reopen controversies that have never completely died down Nuclear power also unites and divides in Cernobbio .
The waste from the old sites will, however, have to find a definitive arrangement. According to the interventions, it seems that the organization of the Seminar itself contemplates a solution far in time. “This path Fontani said. it is part of the first public consultation in Italy on an infrastructure of national importance that will allow the country to close the Italian nuclear cycle and to optimize the management of radioactive waste in a sustainable and safe way”. Of course, the international requirements established by the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) and the national ones of the ISIN (National Inspectorate for Nuclear Safety and Radiation Protection) will be respected. Undersecretary Vannia Gava, on behalf of the government, specified that the location of the Deposit will only result “downstream of a largely participatory procedure, which includes the concerted evaluation of each element radiological, territorial and environmental useful to select the site in an optimal way”. Very clear. When ? Nobody says it.
