Italy wants to return to the atom once and for all. "We are convinced that, given demand and with a view to decarbonization, we cannot do without a share of nuclear power in our energy production in the future," Italy's minister for the environment and energy security, Gilberto Pichetto Fratin, explained to Le Monde. After having been at the forefront of nuclear power, Italy abandoned it following the Chernobyl disaster in 1986. Since then, a return to the atom has been a recurring theme. It came back into the spotlight with Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and the challenges it posed in terms of energy autonomy.

In a country that used to depend on Moscow for 40% of its gas reserves – the main component of the Italian "mix" – the question of energy supplies has opened up a new debate on nuclear power, and this time the right-wing and far-right government of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni seems determined to forge ahead despite very long-term deadlines and a restive public opinion.

For Rome, it's a question of recovering a heritage that has been put aside for four decades. The homeland of physicist Enrico Fermi (1901-1954), a pioneer of the atom, built its first power plant in 1963 and was for a time the third largest producer of nuclear energy behind the US and the UK. After a boost in the 1970s and intensified efforts to build new plants, in cooperation with France and Germany, the nuclear artisans on the other side of the Alps had to face the growing influence of an unfavorable movement of opinion, from national activism to local resistance.

The Chernobyl disaster subsequently put paid to the industry, with a referendum in 1987 for enforcing a ban, in which 80.6% of voters were against continuing nuclear power production. At the end of the 2000s, the already successful ambitions of a government led by Silvio Berlusconi, very much in favor of a reintroduction of nuclear power, were shattered by the effects on public opinion of a new disaster, that of Fukushima, Japan. A second referendum, in 2011, confirmed the outcome of the previous one and Italy's renunciation of the atom.

"With the necessary move away from fossil fuels, the need to support intermittent renewable energies such as solar and wind power, and for energy security purposes, in connection with the geopolitical context, nuclear power must be considered as a solution," said Fratin. Following a parliamentary vote to this effect, a national platform on sustainable nuclear power was set up by his ministry in September 2023. It is due to deliver its initial conclusions on Italy's prospects in the autumn.

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