That radioactive waste shouldn't even have left. Instead they were intercepted in the port, in Sardinia, before arriving at their final destination: the Portovesme Srl factory.

For this reason, the request comes to the Minister of the Environment, Gilberto Pichetto Fratin, to know if he does not «consider it necessary and urgent to activate, also making use of the national system for the protection of the environment, a preventive control system for waste that could potentially have significant levels of radioactivity, in order to avoid their transportation, with enormous safety risks along the entire route and with enormous management problems for the destination territory".

The question was presented by the deputies of the 5 Star Movement Emiliano Fenu, Sergio Costa and Ilaria Fontana, who together with their Senate colleagues Valentina Barzotti, Sabrina Licheri and Elena Sironi signed a joint statement. "We are seriously concerned by what emerged following checks carried out on containers of waste arriving in Sardinia in recent weeks," we read.

It should have been normal industrial dust destined for the Portovesme Srl plant of the Glencore International group, currently the only producer of zinc and lead in Italy. « Instead, 8 out of 20 containers were found to be contaminated by radioactive substances, in particular by Cesium 137 , a real medium-term biological-radioactive danger, with devastating effects on human health."

It even seems "that this is not an isolated case", the parliamentarians continue, "but radioactive waste has already arrived on Sardinian territory in similar ways on other occasions".

Hence the questions: «But is it possible that there are no adequate controls on such dangerous waste, with enormous risks to safety? Is it possible that there is no preventive control system for potentially radioactive waste, in order to avoid their transportation?". Also because «the enormous management problems, once transported, fall on the destination territory, as in this case Sardinia».

Awaiting clarifications from the minister addressed by the question.

(Unioneonline/E.Fr.)

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