Nearly 40 years after the closure of nuclear power plants in the 1987 referendum, Italy has a law to reopen them. The Senate definitively approved Pichetto's enabling bill on sustainable nuclear power. The aim of the new law is to restore nuclear legislation to the country, regulating the construction and operation of nuclear power plants. Prime Minister Meloni called it "a courageous and common-sense choice," while the opposition called it a "tool of distraction" and an "election campaign product."
According to Minister of the Environment and Energy Security, Gilberto Pichetto Fratin, the father of the law, Italy could have nuclear power plants back in 2033-2034. The new law empowers the government to issue decrees regulating the matter and defines the areas of intervention: construction and operation of power plants, management of radioactive waste and safety, establishment of supervisory bodies, and hydrogen production through nuclear energy . "We are already working on drafting the implementing decrees," Minister Pichetto stated. "We will certainly do so by the end of the year." For Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, nuclear power "means greater energy security for families and businesses, less dependence on foreign countries and less exposure to international crises, stable, low-emission energy, and a concrete response to the demand for electricity that will grow with data centers and artificial intelligence." "This is an important step for the country's strategic autonomy," commented Minister of Enterprise and Made in Italy, Adolfo Urso, "and is essential for ensuring a sustainable and competitive energy mix in the coming years. Italy is returning to the future."
The government aims to bring back to Italy not large, traditional power plants, like those in France, but small modular reactors (SMRs). These are essentially submarine engines enclosed in a steel tube. They are built in a factory and transported to the power plant, installed in series of four or more. They are cost-effective and safer than traditional reactors. The most modern versions burn waste from older power plants and are cooled with liquid lead: in the event of a failure, the reactor shuts down and does not explode. SMRs are still in the experimental phase, but manufacturers expect to bring them to market in the first half of the 2030s.
Parliamentarians from the majority unanimously applaud the passage of the law, but the opposition is stubborn (except for Carlo Calenda's Azione, which voted for the measure). For AVS MP Angelo Bonelli, "after four and a half years of government, with Italy having among the highest energy costs in Europe, Meloni has pulled SMRs out of her hat, a technology that currently has no commercial application anywhere in the world. It's a distraction to cover up the incompetence of a government that has held back renewables and favored large energy companies and their profits." "The sustainable nuclear power they're telling us about doesn't exist anywhere on the planet," declares Five Star Movement MP Sergio Costa. "It's an election campaign product." For the environmental NGOs Greenpeace Italy, Legambiente, WWF Italy, and Kyoto Club, "nuclear power doesn't solve any of the many problems Italy faces today, in the midst of its second energy crisis in the last four years."
(Unioneonline)
