Giampiero Godio: Piedmont's nuclear waste
(14:16)

Piedmont is a radioactive region. Thanks to the centres at Saluggia, Trino and Bosco Marengo, Piedmont holds the Italian record for the amount of radioactive waste, with 85% of all the nuclear waste. An absolutely unassailable record. There is an old saying that states that “rubbish attracts more rubbish” (just try dropping a plastic bag in the street and, as if by miracle, very soon it will be joined by another ten), the Piedmontese radioactive waste will attract more such waste. The objective is 99%. As a company, Sogin deals with nuclear waste products and should therefore find a far safer location for the Piedmont’s existing nuclear waste products, which are located close to built up areas, to the Dora Baltea River and to certain underground water sources. Instead, Sogin has decided to double their capacity. The Company decided to build a new nuclear waste storage site at Bosco Marengo. The residents associations block Sogin’s plans by lodging a complaint with the Regional Administrative Court. Sogin approaches the Council of State. The members of the associations asked me for help and for some exposure on this Blog. If Bosco Marengo wins, then no nuclear waste storage site will ever again be built in Italy without the consent of local residents. This is an important battle. They may never give up (is it in their interests?), but neither will we.

Interview with Giampiero Godio:

The legacy of the first nuclear period

Nuclear waste along the rivers and underground water sources

The nuclear emergency at Bosco Marengo

The legacy of the first nuclear period

"My name is Giampiero Godio and I am in charge of Legambiete Association’s energy sector in here in Piedmont, where a very real nuclear emergency has come about. Unfortunately, Piedmont doesn’t need to look up the definition on “nuclear” in some dictionary because the real mark that nuclear power leaves on any territory is already clearly evident, and that goes for other parts of Italy as well as for the Piedmont Region. Following our Country’s previous foray into the field of nuclear power generation, namely during the 70’s and 80’s, Piedmont was left with its legacy in return for a certain number of kilowatt-hours of electricity that was generated, and relatively few kilowatt-hours at that. The amount in question may well have run a few billion kilowatt-hours, but this was nevertheless only equivalent to a few weeks worth in terms of our Country’s electricity consumption. In return for what was effectively very little electricity, Piedmont was left with extremely large amounts of radioactive waste products and as a result on circumstance and destiny, Piedmont now finds itself storing 85% of all of Italy’s radioactive waste products. Consequently, when we talk about nuclear power, we run into one of its major disadvantages, namely that in return for what is essentially a modest amount of electricity generated, a disproportionately large amount of toxic radioactive material is produced, which is extremely dangerous and remains so for a very long period of time, namely tens of thousands of years.
I must say, therefore, that all in all we are very fortunate that these alarm bells have been sounded in that this has enabled us to assess the benefits and the risks of nuclear power and, at least in Piedmont, we have done our homework in this regard. What we have discovered is that in return for every kilowatt-hour of electricity generated in our nuclear power station, one kilowatt-hour being the amount of electricity required to bake a cake in an electric oven, assuming an electricity consumption of one kilowatt and assuming it takes an hour to bake, and remembering that all the other nuclear power stations work in precisely the same manner, that kilowatt-hour of electricity generated results in the production of some 50 million becquerel of radioactive substances, not in the event of an accident occurring, but produced during the normal operation of the power station.
You may well be asking yourself whether 50 million becquerel is a lot or a little for only one kilowatt-hour of electricity? In Chernobyl, the site of the accident with the worst consequences in the entire history of nuclear energy, the Ukrainian Government, which is not anti-nuclear power, issued a decree creating a 30-kilometre exclusion zone around the reactor that exploded, an exclusion zone where access is prohibited. The radioactive contamination in that exclusion zone is some one million becquerel per square metre. What this means is that for every one kilowatt-hour of electricity we generate, we also produce 50 million becquerel of radioactive contamination and create the equivalent of 50 square metres of the most radioactive contaminated ground on earth. Seen in this light, it is difficult to judge whether it is all worthwhile after all. In actual fact, the answer is pretty obvious. Although no one can deny that nuclear power is an alternative to fossil fuels, it is the most dangerous of all the available alternatives and the one with the greatest emission of hazardous substances, so when it comes to nuclear fission, we certainly don’t need to look anything up in the dictionary, as we have learned to our cost here in Piedmont. We either create nuclear fission by-products because we are splitting the nucleus of the Uranium atom, which releases the radioactive nucleus fragments, namely the millions of becquerel of radioactive contamination, or we don’t split the nucleus, but rather, the neutron is captured, the nucleus expands and the fuel is converted from Uranium into Plutonium, which is even more radioactively toxic than the fission by-products that I mentioned earlier. And that’s not all, because this material can be used to manufacture nuclear weapons and nuclear bombs, so it is doubly dangerous.

Nuclear waste along the rivers and underground water sources

But why are we so concerned about all of this worry us today? We are concerned because the Government and part of the scientific community wants to go back to nuclear power. All good and well, but we cannot even reasonably guarantee the safety of the leftovers of our last foray into nuclear power. Here in Piedmont we are sitting with 85% of this radioactive waste, which is roughly split between three sites: 1) the most hazardous site overall is the Saluggia site, which has had the misfortune of being one of the installations where the spent fuel rods were taken, namely the fuel elements from which Plutonium was recovered. Over the years, a large number of these fuel rods were accumulated at this site because it was believed that, in time, we could recover increased amounts of Plutonium, which is a strategically important material.
This project continued for some time, until the referendum that was held in 1987, where the Italian people elected to drop this hazardous technology in the light of what had occurred at Chernobyl, however, the materials that they were working on at the time were left behind, hence the 5 kilograms of Plutonium and the 84 of the 85% of the nuclear waste that we are holding in Piedmont, unfortunately in one of the most unsuitable areas that could have been selected because of the close proximity to the Dora Baltea River, one of the largest rivers in the Piedmont region and certainly the largest tributary of the Po River, as well as being, paradoxically, just one and a half kilometres upstream from Piedmont’s largest aqueduct, whose wells are situated right there, just downstream from these nuclear installations. So Saluggia calls for vengeance, calls for vengeance I tell you, and it’s not only legambiente that is saying so, nor only “Pro Natura”, not only “Medicina Democratica”, not only the various committees, but absolutely everyone, including Nobel prize winner Carlo Rubbia, who technically owned the radioactive materials in question while he held the post of President of Enea and who said: there is only one place on earth with such a high level of danger, and the place he was talking abut was Saluggia.
Then there is a second site, at Trino, where the nuclear power station itself was located and where, along the banks of the Po River, there is a smaller, but nevertheless unhappily large quantity of radioactive material, as well as the core of the power station itself.
That is the second site, and the third site is at Bosco Marengo, which, during the 70’s and 80’s, was the location of a fuel production site. At this site, the Uranium was enriched and turned into pellets that were then loaded into the fuel rods that were subsequently used in the power station. Having done its job, this material was eventually stockpiled as radioactive waste, consisting mainly of natural Uranium and enriched Uranium but not the by-products of fission because no nuclear fission was ever undertaken at that site. It was simply a site where the fuel was prepared and so, as regards the numbers of bequerel and the amount of radioactivity, Bosco Marengo has less than the other two sites in Piedmont.

The nuclear emergency at Bosco Marengo

So why then are we here today, discussing a nuclear emergency precisely at Bosco Marengo? Well, perhaps because, of the three cases of previous nuclear experiences in Piedmont, Bosco Marengo is the simplest and least disturbing. That is where Sogin’s strategy revealed itself, the very same public company that is responsible for and that should be looking after nuclear power generation in Italy and none other than the company that is responsible for and that should be looking after all of the existing radioactive waste products, and what does Sogin do? What they should be saying is: “Well, we have all these radioactive waste products sitting at Trino, Saluggia and Bosco Marengo, in places that are entirely unsuitable, so let’s look for a more suitable place and never mind, after all, this waste was produced, so let’s try to locate the new site in a more logical place, certainly not as near to a river like Saluggia and Trino were, or on a densely populated plateau with highly vulnerable underground water sources, as is case in the Alessandria area and Bosco Marengo.
Although it will be a tortuous and difficult exercise, let’s identify a site that is, objectively speaking, a little safer, even though I don’t believe there is any such thing as a safe place to store nuclear material and that is the reason why I am against nuclear power. This is the real problem and certainly, as regards the existing nuclear waste materials, we need to find a solution that is as appropriate as possible, but what does Sogin go and do instead? They don’t bother with this phase of research on a national or even international level in order to ensure greater, or at least relatively greater safety, no, they decide to deposit more nuclear waste at those sites where there is already a stockpile of similar material, sites that were located in a highly irresponsible manner some 30 or 40 years ago, at a time when the true hazards of nuclear waste were relatively unknown. So the company decides to create new nuclear waste disposal sites within the existing Bosco Marengo, Trino and Saluggia sites, right near the rivers, etc, etc. However, given that an Environmental Impact Assessment would have been required for both the Saluggia and the Trino sites due to the quantity and type of waste to be disposed of, Sogin decided to focus on the Bosco Marengo site, which, according to Sogin, required no such Assessment because the situation there was far less complex, relatively speaking, and the site already had a valid authorisation to proceed, so Sogin has already begun work without us even being aware of what was going on since no one bothered to inform the residents and , as an association, we only found out once the work was already underway at the Bosco Marengo site. So we improvised and, together with the local residents and the few associations that are active in Piedmont, we instituted legal proceedings, asking that this illegal work be stopped, illegal because the current legislation stipulates that in Italy, in order to store radioactive waste, a centralised place must be identified where the safety of the material can be guaranteed. It also stipulates that such storage site, or the so-called national depot, had to be identified by no later than 2008. Instead of doing what they were required to do in terms of their mandate, Sogin instead simply began to create the aforesaid depot at Bosco Marengo. So we approached the Regional Administrative Court and explained our reasons, stating that: if the company is allowed to create the depot in that place, it will be more hazardous that any other place in Italy that has been even slightly more intelligently selected, so why build there and thus increase the risk and, even though these radioactive materials are already there and these materials in fact need to be stored somewhere, who is going to be responsible for them? The Regional Administrative Court ruled in our favour and suspended all operations involved in the creation of this depot at Bosco Marengo, so obviously Sogin reacted. Firstly they appointed the best attorney they could lay their hands on and then they proceeded to appeal to the Council of State, which is where we stand at the moment, having to state our case. While the Council of State is a legitimate source of justice, you are forced to bring along your lawyers in order to state your case and this is a very expensive exercise. We are talking about many tens of thousands Euro, a sum that is out of the question for associations such as Legambiente, Pro Natura and Medicina Democratica, who already battled to scrape together the few thousand Euro required for the appeal to the Regional Administrative Court.
And so we launched an appeal to anyone who may be interested in helping us and who realised that they would not only be helping to save Bosco Marengo, but also helping us to establish the basic principle of awareness regarding the wrongful conversion of these sites. I have an article here from the international press, which reported in December, when the authorisation was issued, regarding the first example of disposal, of “decommissioning” in Italy. Bosco Marengo is the first case of decommissioning in Italy. However, it is a fake decommissioning because decommissioning is defined as the removal of all signs of radioactive contamination. No Gentlemen, the site is not being cleared of all signs of radioactive contamination because, on top of this site, they are about to build an entire depot where radioactive materials will be stored!
Anything but the green fields that are supposedly the objective, in decommissioning jargon, green fields are all that would be left behind. No Gentlemen, a new term has been coined here, namely brown fields, because the site will simply be converted to something that will remain there forever and be condemned to everlasting radioactivity.
So these are our official reasons. We cannot allow this mentality to gain the upper hand, because if it does so in the case of Bosco Marengo, it will do the same in the case of Trino and in the case of Saluggia, Latina, Sessa Aurunca, Rotondelle and Caorso, as well as every other nuclear power site. What we would like to see instead of a centralised depot, not selected on the same basis as was done at Scanzano or rather attempted to do at Scanzano, but selected rationally, objectively and democratically, where we will land up with fifteen different sites spread throughout Italy rather than one site, which will certainly make Sogin happy, but not those who are concerned about the return to nuclear power and what has to be done to overcome this problem. It would be far better not to provide them with fifteen sites. So what we would like to see is that those people who are pushing for nuclear power in Italy be forced to first explain how we are going to resolve the problem of the nuclear waste left over from our earlier foray into the nuclear energy field so as to ensure at least a reasonable level of safety. Starting in this manner is the worst possible form of betrayal and this way of addressing the problem is totally irresponsible.
We did not know what to do, but fortunately the appeal that we launched got to Beppe Grillo and he not only expressed his willingness to become involved, but also made a substantial contribution. We cannot but be extremely happy that our family, a family made up of individual citizens, committees and environmental associations and that has responded so well to Sogin’s provocation is able to count on the support of such a well-known, important and famous personality as Beppe Grillo, to whom I would like to give my heartfelt thanks. With the family thus expanding to include more qualified people, I also believe that this problem will be more easily overcome and that Sogin will be facing a few additional problems, and so, together, we will have demonstrated that the problems of nuclear power are yet to be resolved and indeed we cannot go into the future with the same lack of consideration that is being displayed at present." Giampiero Godio, Legambiente

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Reason for the deposit: nucleare Alessandria
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