"On the nuclear front, the repository is being closed, a process in which transparency is more important than anything else. We're reopening applications, and if there aren't any, there are military areas: I have the Ministry of Defense's availability for some of them. In any case, the single national repository for low- and intermediate-level radioactive waste is the first step and must be closed within a year."
This was stated by the Minister of the Environment and Energy Security, Gilberto Pichetto Fratin, speaking at the annual conference of Confindustria Energia in Rome.
Government representative Meloni referred to the need to complete the never-ending process for the construction of the single waste repository, designed by Sogin, a public company that has been working on the facility for several decades.
The map showing the areas suitable for the depot and technology park has already been drawn up. Eight are in Sardinia, in the territories of Albagiara, Assolo, and Usellus; only Albagiara and Usellus; Mandas and Siurgus Donigala; Segariu and Villamar; Setzu, Tuili, Turri, and Ussaramanna; Nurri; Ortacesus; and Guasila. All the municipalities have said no. Now the possibility of military areas has resurfaced, through Minister Fratin. It should be noted that the exclusion criteria for identifying potential sites included areas " characterized by the presence of industrial activities at risk of major accidents, dams and artificial hydraulic barriers, airports, or operational military firing ranges." That is, among the latter, all the Sardinian firing ranges. But Sogin's documents also state that "during the national analysis, it was possible to make consistent exclusions only for industrial activities at risk of major accidents based on data provided by the Ministry of the Environment, Land, and Sea." Further investigations had been announced for military areas. Furthermore, the island isn't just about firing ranges: the Defense Department's areas are numerous and extensive.
According to the latest inventory by ISIN, the Italian nuclear safety authority, at the end of 2025, approximately 34,606 cubic meters of radioactive waste were present, 2.49% more than the previous year. This waste originates from former nuclear activities, medicine, industry, and research.
Pichetto's announcement sparked initial reactions on the island: "By proposing the storage of waste in military areas, the minister is threatening Sardinia, and there is no technical or geological reason that makes this island more suitable than others," attacks PSD's president, Antonio Moro. "The logic is different, and you can read between the lines: where the land has already been expropriated, the transition is easier. Where civilian use has already been expropriated, subsequent expropriation costs less friction. But the sum doesn't disappear: it accumulates. Sardinia has no debt to repay to the state. On the contrary. It has already given: in hectares, in enclosed seas, in health, in missed opportunities, in decades of silence about what was happening inside those ranges." Raising the risk that it could now also become the repository for the country's nuclear waste, Moro continues, "means telling an island that two-thirds of the national military burden was not enough. Radioactive waste must stay away from Sardinia. The deposit should be sought elsewhere, with genuine candidates, with transparent procedures, with communities that can say yes or no knowing what it entails, not by dragging it into territories that the military constraint has already bent, subtracted and compromised.
