Italy inches towards reversing a nuclear energy ban

Italy plans to draft, by early 2025, rules to allow the use of new nuclear power technologies, the energy minister said on Saturday, signalling a potential reversal of the country's current ban on nuclear power production.

"By the end of the year (the energy ministry's legal adviser Professor Giovanni) Guzzetta and his team will produce a comprehensive analysis on nuclear, and what kind of laws we need to introduce," Energy Minister Gilberto Pichetto Fratin said on the sidelines of the TEHA business forum in Cernobbio.

He added he hoped parliament would be able to approve the draft legislation in the course of 2025.

Nuclear fission as a source of energy is a controversial topic in Italy, were nuclear-fired power plants are banned following referendums in 1987 and 2011.

Pichetto has recently appointed Guzzetta to study how power stations based on new nuclear technology including small modular reactors (SMRs) and advanced modular reactors (AMRs), which the government believes could support its green energy transition, could be exempted from the prohibition.

"Italy's demand for electricity will almost double by 2050 to 583 Terawatt hour (Twh)," Pichetto told reporters. "Such a boost cannot simply be met with an increase in renewable energy capacity."

In its energy and climate plan (PNIEC), Giorgia Meloni's right-wing government estimates nuclear power could meet up to 11% of domestic energy demand in 2050.

Despite the ban, Italy has retained key expertise in the sector. State-controlled utility Enel ENEL operates nuclear power stations in Spain and energy major Eni ENI is investing in a project to develop a nuclear fusion reactor in the United States.

"There is for sure an interest in studying the potential of nuclear technologies of third and fourth generations, including small modular reactors," Enel's grid business head Gianni Vittorio Armani said at the same conference.

Utility Edison EDNR, the Italian subsidiary of French nuclear group EDF, has recently expressed an interest in building a small nuclear reactor in Italy. Pichetto said SMRs could be introduced in Italy as soon as 2035.

According to a study compiled by Edison, state-backed Ansaldo Nucleare and economic think-tank The European House Ambrosetti, the adoption of new nuclear technologies in Italy could add more than 50 billion euros to the country's economy.