Italy’s Senate Approves Return to Nuclear Power After 39-Year Ban

Italy’s Senate gave final approval on Wednesday to legislation that restarts the country’s nuclear power programme, voting 81 to 51 with seven abstentions to end a ban that has stood since a 1987 referendum. The bill had already cleared the lower Chamber of Deputies and now becomes law, giving Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s government 12 months to write the implementing decrees needed to actually license and build a reactor.

A Senate vote ends a four-decade freeze

Italy shut down its four operating reactors after the 1987 vote, held in the aftermath of the Chernobyl disaster. The country has run without domestic nuclear generation ever since, even as it continued to consume nuclear-generated power: roughly 5% of the electricity Italy uses today is nuclear, all of it imported, mainly from France and Switzerland via cross-border interconnectors. Wednesday’s law does not reopen the old plants — those sites were decommissioned years ago — it instead creates a legal framework under which new reactors could eventually be licensed.

Betting on next-generation designs, not 1980s-style plants

The legislation is explicitly framed around advanced and modular reactor technology rather than the large pressurised-water plants Italy operated before 1987. That distinction matters for the politics of the bill: proponents argued that smaller, factory-built modular reactors carry a different safety and siting profile than the full-scale stations rejected by voters nearly 40 years ago, which is part of why the government believes it can move forward through parliament rather than calling another referendum. Under the new law, the government has a year to publish decrees covering licensing, siting and safety oversight — meaning no construction can start until that regulatory architecture exists.

The energy-security calculus behind Rome’s shift

Italy’s push comes against a backdrop that helps explain its timing. Over the twelve months to May 2026, fossil fuels supplied slightly more than 42% of Italian electricity, with natural gas alone accounting for almost 39%; low-carbon sources — solar, hydro, wind, biofuels and geothermal combined — made up just over 40%. Net imports covered around 16% of electricity consumption. That gas-heavy mix has left Italy exposed to the price swings that followed renewed conflict in the Middle East, and Meloni’s government has cited the resulting cost pressure as a central reason to diversify the country’s generation base and reduce its dependence on imported fuel and imported power alike.

What has to happen before a reactor is built

Passing a law is the easy part. Italy will need to stand up a nuclear safety regulator with the technical capacity to license unfamiliar reactor designs, agree on siting with local communities and regions that have spent decades without a domestic nuclear industry, and attract the capital and supply chains needed to build first-of-a-kind plants. None of that happens within the 12-month decree window; it starts there. Italy’s shift also lands as several other European governments revisit nuclear power amid the same post-2022 push for energy security, giving Rome a pool of regulatory and technical experience — and potential reactor vendors — to draw on as it builds out its own framework from scratch.

Sources: World Nuclear News, “Italy’s Senate approves a return to nuclear power,” Sept. 24, 2026, world-nuclear-news.org — vote count and legislative process; Associated Press, “Italy’s parliament paves the way for a return to nuclear energy,” Sept. 23-24, 2026, via ABC News/US News — referendum history, government rationale and 12-month decree timeline; IEA, Italy energy mix data — electricity generation shares; Our World in Data / World Nuclear Association, nuclear power in Italy — current import share of nuclear electricity.

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Illustrative image. Photo: A.Savin, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons — source