Italy is heading back to the nuclear
power era after exiting it after the Chernobyl disaster with the
ministry of the environment and energy security on Wednesday
publishing a list of 51 sites in five regions "suitable for
national nuclear waste storage".
Italy will not build new government-funded fourth-generation
nuclear power plants to aid the green transition but will not
stand in the way of local industrial districts and energy
companies who want to do so, with small reactors, Environment
Minister Gilberto Pichetto Fratin said in a
newspaper interview Monday.
If the districts and companies decide to build the plants, the
government will act as regulator, he told la Repubblica.
The minister said in the interview: "We will never build new
nuclear power plants in Italy.
"It will possibly be the industrial districts or individual
energy companies that will equip themselves with small
fourth-generation reactors.
"The state will merely be a regulator".
Italy left the nuclear energy sector after a 1987 referendum in
the wake of the Chernobyl disaster.
Environmentalists and climate activists are cautiously in favour
of the new generation power plants' role in aiding the
transition from fossil fuels.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED © Copyright ANSA
