Italy breaks ‘taboo’ with push to revive nuclear

Italy’s cupboard opened the door Friday to a return to nuclear energy, aiming to overturn almost 40 years of opposition—although specialists say any revival is at the least a decade away.

Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s hard-right authorities says nuclear might play a key function in rising vitality safety, in addition to slashing Italy’s carbon emissions and sky-high electrical energy costs.

Vitality Minister Gilberto Pichetto Fratin has set a 2026 deadline to attract up a legal framework for every thing from conventional reactors to next-generation applied sciences.

“With the latest generation of nuclear powertogether with renewables, we will be able to achieve the objectives of decarbonization, guaranteeing the country’s full energy security,” Pichetto Fratin stated on Friday.

However opponents say nuclear is way more expensive than different low-carbon energies, takes years to implement and offers policymakers an alibi to sluggish the phase-out of gasoline, a fossil gasoline driving climate change.

In neighboring France, which boasts one of many globe’s largest nuclear energy applications, the most recent, new-generation plant price 4 occasions the preliminary estimate and got here on-line 12 years not on time.

Luca Bergamaschi from Italy’s ECCO local weather assume tank informed AFP that “in the best-case scenario, Italy could not have nuclear power before 2035”.

‘Taboo’

Italy was once a pioneer in nuclear energy however Italians voted overwhelmingly towards it after the 1986 Chernobyl catastrophe, triggering a phase-out.

The final reactors shut in 1990 and makes an attempt by Rome to revive the sector had been stymied by one other referendum in 2011 following the Fukushima accident.

Nor does Italy have a nationwide repository for nuclear wasteas over 50 proposed websites have refused to host it.

Vitality marketing consultant Simona Benedettini welcomed strikes to interrupt the “taboo” round nuclear and stated Italy nonetheless boasts top-class researchers within the discipline it might draw on.

Along with overlaying conventional fission reactors, the brand new authorized framework can even cowl analysis, improvement and use of fusion vitality.

It is going to additionally cowl the dismantling of outdated vegetation, administration of radioactive waste and spent nuclear fuel.

Italy had 4 nuclear reactors, all of which have been defueled and are being decommissioned.

No particular new websites or initiatives have been recognized however the vitality minister says nuclear energy would even be used for hydrogen manufacturing, to assist decarbonize Italy’s most energy-intensive sectors, akin to metal.

The ministry will fund investments to the tune of 20 million euros ($21 million) a 12 months from 2027 to 2029, Pichetto Fratin stated.

Talks are already underway between vitality group Enel, engineering firm Ansaldo and protection firm Leonardo to arrange state-backed firm to construct small modular reactors (SMRs), he stated.

SMRs are superior nuclear reactors which have about one-third of the producing capability of a standard nuclear energy reactor.

Designed to be in-built factories, they provide the promise of being cheaper to supply and fast to construct, however are nonetheless experimental.

‘Geopolitical threat’

Italy shouldn’t be alone in flirting with nuclear energy once more. Since gasoline costs spiked with the Ukraine struggle, international curiosity within the sector is at its highest because the oil crises within the Nineteen Seventies, in keeping with the Worldwide Vitality Company.

Britain stated in February it was altering legal guidelines to hurry up the nation’s rollout of mini-nuclear reactors.

However Beatrice Petrovich, senior vitality analyst at local weather assume tank Ember, stated specializing in nuclear in Italy “risks being counterproductive”.

New nuclear “is more expensive than wind and solar and takes longer to commission and install”, whereas policymakers must be taking a look at storage and enhanced energy grids for renewables as an alternative, she stated.

“Nuclear would also introduce an additional reliance on foreign fuel”, specifically uranium, “which could pose real geopolitical risk”, she informed AFP.

Some 81 % of Italians are nonetheless anti-nuclear, in keeping with an Ipsos ballot from November—and critics are already mobilizing help for a possible new referendum.

However companies hope it might be a technique to slash electrical energy prices, that are a lot increased in Italy than a few of its EU neighbors, partly as a consequence of its reliance on gasoline.

Simply over 50 % of Italy’s electrical energy technology combine in 2024 was fossil energy, in keeping with Ember.

In a 10-year vitality and local weather plan revealed final 12 months, Rome stated it goals to put in sufficient nuclear capability by 2050 to generate between 11 % and 22 % of the ability it makes use of.

It stated that might be executed utilizing primarily SMRs, but in addition fusion energy vegetation—a know-how Meloni has stated is a “game changer”, however which continues to be extremely experimental.

‘Greenwashing’

Emanuele Orsini, the top of Italy’s enterprise foyer Confindustria, has referred to as for outdated reactors to be “reactivated”.

He has additionally steered native communities’ opposition to new websites might be bypassed by corporations housing SMRs in-house.

However Bergamaschi, from the ECCO assume tank, stated there have been so many authorized, technical and political hurdles to nuclear energy that “it will most likely never arrive” in Italy.

He stated the narrative of reviving nuclear was being pushed by corporations that need authorities help to develop and promote new applied sciences.

The concept additionally advantages those that “want to slow down the deployment of cheaper renewable generation, storage and grid in the power sector, to protect the market share and profits of gas”.

Meloni’s hard-right authorities has proved lukewarm on renewables, as an alternative in search of to remodel Italy right into a “gas hub” for the Mediterranean.

Specializing in nuclear allowed ministers to seem dedicated to low-carbon vitality whereas sticking with fossil fuelsBergamaschi argued, saying that “as far as Italy is concerned, for all practical reasons, nuclear power is greenwashing”.

© 2025 AFP