Italy Lifts 40-Year Nuclear Ban

Italy has taken the first political step back towards nuclear power, four decades after voters made it untouchable. On 4 June, the lower house voted 155-86 to reverse the legacy of referendums in 1987 and 2011 that pushed atomic energy out of Italian politics.

Giorgia Meloni’s government wants small modular reactors, or SMRs, operating by 2034. These are compact nuclear plants designed for factory assembly. The difficulty is that no Western country yet produces commercial electricity from them, while France is already using its existing nuclear fleet to win the power-hungry investments Italy wants.

Twelve months before the real decisions

What the Chamber approved was a legge delega: a framework law giving the government 12 months to write the detailed rules (Camera dei Deputati). It does not choose a reactor technology. It does not name sites. It does not rebuild the nuclear safety regulator Italy dismantled in the 1990s. The bill still needs Senate approval before the summer recess.

The pressure behind the move is clear enough. Italian electricity costs more than €105/MWh, almost twice the roughly €60/MWh paid in France, where 56 reactors still supply the backbone of the grid (Élysée, Editoriale Domani). Meloni’s own government says Italy is “completely out of the market on energy prices”. That feeds directly into factory costs, household bills and the race for data centres, which need huge volumes of cheap, constant power.

SMRs are being offered as the answer. The record is thinner than the promise. The most advanced Western project, NuScale’s plant in the United States, was cancelled in 2023 after costs nearly doubled.

Europe’s recent experience with large reactors gives Italy little comfort. Projects in France and Britain have run billions over budget and years behind schedule. Nuclear construction in dense, highly regulated economies has repeatedly cost more and taken longer than governments first said. Italy is now betting it can beat that pattern.

France converts reactors into AI investment

The competitive gap is opening now, not in 2034. At the Choose France 2026 summit, SoftBank committed €45 billion for AI data centres in northern France, drawn by cheap nuclear electricity available all day and all night.

Infrastructure is pulling talent with it. Newcleo, a nuclear energy start-up founded by the Italian physicist Stefano Buono, moved from Italy to France, where it received support through France 2030, the country’s industrial investment programme. Italy is exporting nuclear expertise to the neighbour that already has the reactors.

The World Nuclear Report’s view is unsparing: Italy’s nuclear plans are "irrelevant" for European power flows until at least the mid-2040s.

The financial gamble

Italy’s energy problem is real. Its factories pay almost twice as much for electricity as French competitors. Reducing dependence on imported gas is sensible industrial policy.

The harder question is whether SMRs are the right instrument. New nuclear power typically costs several times more per megawatt-hour than new solar or wind. For a country carrying one of Europe’s heaviest public debt burdens, backing an unproven technology at scale adds a financial wager to an already difficult energy strategy.

The 4 June vote closes the political chapter opened by the referendums of 1987 and 2011. That is no small thing in Italian politics. But it changes little in the economy for at least a decade.

The investments Italy wants, from AI infrastructure to advanced manufacturing and electrified industry, are being made now in countries that can already supply the power. Italy has voted to want nuclear energy again. Building it will mean 15 years of engineering, regulation and spending that no parliamentary majority can compress.