Italy’s Chamber of Deputies, the lower lawmaking body, has voted in favor of a motion that calls on the country’s center-right ruling coalition, led by Giorgia Meloni, to “examine the opportunity to include nuclear in the national energy mix as an alternative and clean source of energy production” to “accelerate Italy’s decarbonization process.”
The motion, approved on Tuesday, May 9th, with the support of Fratelli d’Italia (FdI), Lega, Forza Italia (FI), and the liberal opposition parliamentary group Azione-Italia Viva, calls on the government to, among other things, “consider fourth-generation, small modular reactors for nuclear power generation,” to provide incentives for technological research on “innovative nuclear fission reactors” and to “participate actively at European and international level in any appropriate initiative aimed at encouraging the development of new nuclear technologies.”
Furthermore, the motion directs the center-right coalition to facilitate “the development of agreements between Italian companies and companies that manage nuclear production in other countries in order to meet Italy’s energy needs.”
The approved text also urges the government to “evaluate in which territories outside Italy the production of nuclear energy can satisfy the national need for decarbonized energy.”
Secretary of the Presidency of the Chamber Riccardo Zucconi (FdI) welcomed lawmakers’ approval of the motion, calling the decision “a breaking point with the governments of the last 10 years that have not been able to implement energy strategies aimed at energy independence of our nation.” The objective of the motion is to start the production of nuclear energy as early as 2030.
MP Alessandro Cattaneo (FI), the first signatory of the motion, also hailed the lower house’s decision, saying: “The green light from the Chamber to the motion on nuclear power, as an alternative and clean source for the production of energy, is the clearest response to the demagoguery of the left.”
Minister of the Environment and Energy Security Gilberto Pichetto Fratin (FI), another one of the key signatories of the motion, asserted: “Research and experimentation have made enormous strides in recent decades,” adding that “fourth-generation nuclear power is as safe as it is clean, according to scientists.”
Italy’s move toward nuclear energy comes just weeks after a Polish state-owned energy company secured a $4 billion loan from two U.S. government financial institutions for the development of up to 20 new nuclear reactors as Poland too seeks to reduce its heavy dependence on coal, oil, and natural gas.
The steps taken to develop nuclear power plants by the national-conservative governments of Italy and Poland stand in sharp contrast to Germany’s left-liberal government’s move to shut down the last of its operating nuclear power plants in April.
