Once Saligny is up and running, the next decommissioning priority for Romania will be to identify a final repository for high-level waste.

By Jason Deign

Romanian decommissioning plans look set to scale up a notch or two as the country prepares to licence a new waste disposal site in 2016.

The Saligny site, 169 km east of Bucharest, will initially cost around €40m, according to the country’s National Agency for Radioactive Waste (Agenţia Nucleară şi pentru Deşeuri Radioactive or ANDR in Romanian).

It is being built to accommodate low and intermediate-level waste (LILW) over the 30 to 40-year lifespan of each of the two 655MW Candu Energy heavy water reactors at Romania’s Cernavoda nuclear power plant (NPP), which is only about 10 km away, on the Danube River.

Saligny is due to open for business from 2020, ahead of the possible decommissioning of Cernavoda’s first reactor by around 2026. The initial investment will allow for the creation of eight far-underground, concrete-covered storage modules at the facility.

Over time, however, there are plans to extend the site to cover 40 hectares, with 64 modules, at a total cost of €400m.

Private investment

The money for the project will come from a fund based on a €2 per megawatt-hour levy on nuclear power production imposed on Nuclearelectrica, Cernavoda’s operator, potentially along with private investment.

The facility, which could operate until around 2110, should be big enough to take all the waste from both of Cernavoda’s current units, plus that to come from two new planned reactors, says Alice Mariana Dima, ANDR’s deputy general manager.

Romania already has a nuclear waste repository, an old uranium mine at Baita Bihor, 510 km to the north west of Bucharest.

However, this is only licensed to take short-lived and some long-lived LILW (LILW-SL and LILW-LL, respectively) from institutional sources, and is due to shut down sometime between 2020 and 2025.

“The government of Romania decided to have two disposal facilities for LILW-SL waste,” says Daniel Ionescu, general secretary of the National Commission for Nuclear Activities Control (Comisia Nationala pentru Controlul Activitatilor Nucleare or CNCAN in Romanian).
 

Two licensees
 

“The two repositories could work independently. There will be two licensees,” says Ionescu.

As part of the preparatory work for the Saligny plant, in October 2014 ANDR signed a four-year memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Amec Foster Wheeler, a nuclear services supplier that has been active in the Romanian market since 2006.

“Amec Foster Wheeler and ANDR are well known to each other and have been working together on projects for a number of years,” explains Andy White, vice president of Amec Foster Wheeler's Nuclear Services business.

“The MoU focuses on Amec Foster Wheeler supporting ANDR in their mission to deliver safe storage and disposal of radioactive waste and spent nuclear fuel on behalf of the Romanian government.”

According to White: “Specific areas of support cover developing strategies for safe and sustainable radioactive waste management and disposal. Signing the MoU will provide further opportunities to develop this target market as we continue to grow our nuclear business.”
 

Potential sites

Dima says Saligny was selected from a long-list of 37 potential sites and a shortlist of three.

The location, which has been under development since 2006, is now being exhaustively tested, as once licensed by the regulator it will have to be able to offer protection from radiation for up to 300 years.

The project could create up to 200 temporary and 32 permanent jobs at Saligny, according to the Black Sea Trust for Regional Cooperation.

Once Saligny is up and running, the next decommissioning priority for Romania will be to identify a final repository for high-level waste. Initially the administration is proposing to use Candu’s MACSTOR system to store high-level waste close to the Cernavoda plant.

That could provide storage for up to 100 years, Dima says, although in any case there is a legal requirement for Romania to have a final repository in place by 2055.
 

Geological repository

“There is in plan the development of a preliminary programme for establishing a geological repository, as required by the radioactive waste council directive,” confirms Ionescu.

The developments show Romania is making good progress towards dealing with waste. The country has had a nuclear programme in place since 1970 and its first commercial reactor, Cernavoda’s Unit 1, was connected to the grid in 1996. A second unit came online in May 2007.

These two units at Cernavoda are based on Candu 6 technology and were built by Atomic Energy of Canada Limited, Ansaldo Nucleare and GE.

They provide about 20% of Romania’s electricity, making nuclear the country’s third-largest source of grid power generation after coal and hydro.

Cernavoda was originally intended to house four reactors, but the fate of units 3 and 4 has been subject to a number of ups and downs over the years.

Nevertheless, in 2014 it appeared the future of the new reactors might finally have been secured thanks to a tie-up with China Nuclear Power Engineering Company.