Italy has taken its biggest step yet towards restoring nuclear power, a technology it walked away from in the late 1980s. On Wednesday the Senate gave final approval to the government’s nuclear energy law by 81 votes to 51, with seven abstentions.
The Chamber of Deputies had already passed the bill, so parliamentary work is complete. But the law is a framework, not a construction order. It does not approve any particular reactor. What it does is give the government the legal authority to build the system under which nuclear generation could return.
What the law does
Ministers now have 12 months to adopt detailed decrees covering the whole nuclear cycle. That includes building and operating plants, licensing, safety rules, spent fuel and radioactive waste, decommissioning and regulatory oversight. The law also sets up a national programme for advanced nuclear technologies and fusion.
Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni welcomed the result. She noted the oddity of Italy importing electricity from nuclear plants in neighbouring countries while being barred from producing any itself.
Environment and Energy Security Minister Gilberto Pichetto Fratin told senators that the terms of the debate had shifted. Volatile energy markets, geopolitical tension and the need to cut fossil-fuel dependence had changed the calculation, he said. He added that the government hopes to finish the decrees by the end of 2026, faster than the legal deadline.
Small reactors, not giant plants
The government is not planning a return to the large plants of Italy’s first nuclear era. It is focused on small modular reactors and other advanced designs.
The appeal is that such reactors are smaller and more standardised, so they could in theory be built in stages rather than in one giant project. The catch is that the technology has not yet been deployed at scale in Europe. Costs, licensing and delivery timelines remain open questions.
Italy is entering a crowded field. Sweden recently picked Rolls-Royce small reactors for new capacity at Ringhals, a sign that Europe’s nuclear revival is turning into a commercial contest among European, American and Asian suppliers.
The energy security argument
Timing helps explain the vote. Italy relies heavily on imported fuels, which leaves its economy exposed to swings in oil and gas prices. Europe as a whole entered the approach to this winter with gas storage at unusually low levels, and disruption to Middle Eastern LNG exports has intensified competition for supplies.
The government presents nuclear energy as part of a plan to reduce that vulnerability as well as cut emissions. Its national energy and climate plan models a scenario in which a conservative amount of nuclear power reaches net-zero goals at a system cost roughly €17 billion lower than a comparable scenario without it. That scenario has nuclear supplying about 11 per cent of the energy mix, with modelling suggesting the economic optimum could eventually be around 22 per cent.
These are modelling scenarios, not commitments. Italy has yet to decide which technologies to allow, where reactors could go, how projects would be financed and how waste would be handled. The last question is a live one. Italy has still not completed a permanent national repository for waste from its former reactors and other nuclear activity.
A broader European shift
Italy’s move is part of a wider change of mood. In March, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said Europe had made a “strategic mistake” in reducing nuclear generation. Nuclear supplied about a third of European electricity in 1990. Today it supplies about 15 per cent.
Sweden is preparing new capacity, Belgium has backed away from its earlier phase-out and France continues to depend heavily on nuclear power. For Italy the shift is especially dramatic, because it currently has no operating reactors at all.
Its nuclear industry ended after referendums in November 1987, held in the wake of the Chernobyl disaster. A second referendum in 2011 blocked a later attempt to revive the sector.
What comes next
Wednesday’s vote changes the law, not the skyline. No reactors will appear soon. The next stage is technical and slow: writing the rules on safety, licensing, waste, oversight and public consultation.
Only after that will Italy be able to decide on specific technologies, sites and projects. The parliamentary decision is done. The much harder work of turning it into power stations is only beginning.
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