The Missing Decision. Nuclear Decommissioning and the Issue of the Waste Repository in Late Twentieth-Century Italy

This study – which employs the methodology of archive-based historiography – focuses on the awkward elaboration of an Italian «roadmap» to deal with nuclear waste and, notably, the crucial role of a national repository. Drawing on a number of unpublished archival sources, but crucially on uncatalogued original documents of ENEA – then the Italian nuclear authority – the study investigates the specific contribution of experts and scientists, and their relationship with political decision-makers. Preliminary conclusions: in the Seventies, the basic assumption was that nuclear waste would be reprocessed in a single national facility, but against the ever-decreasing perspective for nuclear power in Italy, an open-cycle approach was adopted. By 1984 ENEA had prepared definite proposals on the possible repository sites, considering the issue of low- and medium-activity waste urgent. However, it received no acknowledgment of any kind by the Ministry of Industry in spite of repeated urgings. After Chernobyl the issue was buried, and eventually resurrected only in mid-Nineties. After 2001 political elections, the «roadmap» devised with great difficulty was turned upside down by favouring a top-down approach to the siting issue which would eventually backfire.