| Decommissioning in Italy (The Decommissioning and Dismantling of Nuclear Facilities in OECD/NEA Member Countries - Italian National fact sheet by ANPA)
1 - Present Status of the Italian nuclear installations
2 - Legal and Regulatory Framework 3 - The initial strategy 4 - Government strategy change and the role of SOGIN 5 - Current programs and main issues 6 - The management of radioactive wastes and spent fuel 7 - The National repository 8 - Funding
3. The initial strategy
When the Interministerial Committee for the Economical Planning (CIPE), a Governmental Body in charge of the strategic decisions on NPP’s, decided the definitive closure of all NPP’s, at the same time it instructed their owner and licensee, i.e. the National Electric Company ENEL, to start the actions for their decommissioning, according to the "Safe Enclosure" strategy.
However, all necessary consequent acts to support this strategy, and specifically funding mechanisms were not in place.
Other fundamental problems were not solved (and they are not yet solved):
– a national site for the disposal of low and intermediate level waste;
– a centralised interim storage facility for spent fuel and high level waste. Another difficulty was the uncertainty in the definition of the rules for the management of very low level waste (clearance levels).
A substantial novelty in the field was the Legislative Decree no. 230, issued only in 1995, including new, specific rules on the decommissioning of nuclear plants.
In this situation the decommissioning operations on shut down power plants underwent significant delays and all nuclear installations were practically maintained in safe conditions only for several years. Meanwhile consideration has been given to the possibility of a change of strategy, taking into account: - he lack of significant occupational dose advantages in deferring decommissioning for decades, after the initial decay;
- the risk of losing the necessary specific competences in a country without an active nuclear program for energy generation
- the possibility of site reuse for industrial purposes, claimed also by many Local Authorities.
At the same time ENEA, the Italian State Agency for Research in the nuclear field among others, started with the conditioning of the existing wastes in the Nuclear Fuel Cycle installations, plagued by the financial problems, since funds have not been accumulated for their decommissioning. Therefore the most important issues were not addressed with the necessary emphasis. | 
The only national site for collection of nuclear wastes in Italy,
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