Italy ends 40-year nuclear ban

Italy's lower house voted on 4 June to lift a nuclear ban that has shaped its energy policy for four decades. The 155-86 vote overturns the political taboo created by the 1987 and 2011 referendums. Giorgia Meloni's government wants small modular reactors, compact nuclear plants built for factory assembly, operating by 2034. No such reactor is producing commercial electricity anywhere in the West, while France is already using its existing nuclear fleet to attract the energy-heavy investment Italy wants.

Twelve months before the real decisions

What the Chamber approved is a legge delega: a framework law giving the government 12 months to draft the actual implementing rules (Camera dei Deputati). No reactor model has been chosen. No sites have been named. Italy abolished its nuclear safety regulator in the 1990s and has not rebuilt it. The bill still needs Senate approval before the summer recess.

The pressure behind the vote is easy to understand, including from Malta, where Italian energy choices are never just a foreign story. Italian electricity costs more than €105/MWh, almost double the roughly €60/MWh paid in France because of its 56 operating reactors (Élysée, Editoriale Domani). Meloni's own government says Italy is "completely out of the market on energy prices." That gap feeds into factory costs, household bills and the country's ability to attract data centres, which need enormous volumes of cheap, stable electricity.

SMRs are being sold as the way through this. The difficulty is that no Western country is yet running one commercially. The most advanced Western project, NuScale's plant in the United States, was cancelled in 2023 after costs nearly doubled. Large reactor projects in France and Britain have repeatedly ended up billions over budget and around a decade late. Nuclear plants in complex regulatory systems cost more and take longer than promised. Italy is now betting that it can beat that record.

France converts reactors into AI investment

The split is already visible, not waiting for 2034. At the Choose France 2026 summit, SoftBank committed €45 billion for AI data centres in northern France, powered by nuclear electricity that runs cheaply and round the clock.

The skills are moving with the infrastructure. Newcleo, a nuclear energy start-up founded by 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 competitor that already has the reactors.

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

The financial gamble

Italy has a real energy cost problem. Its factories pay nearly twice as much for electricity as their French competitors. Reducing dependence on imported gas makes economic sense.

Whether SMRs are the right instrument is another matter. New nuclear power normally 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 means adding a financial gamble to an energy strategy.

The 4 June vote closes the political chapter opened by the 1987 and 2011 referendums. That matters in Rome. It does not change the economics for at least a decade. The investments Italy wants, from AI infrastructure to advanced manufacturing and electrified industry, are being decided now in countries that already have the power to supply them. Italy has voted to want nuclear energy. Building it means 15 years of engineering, regulation and public money, and no parliamentary vote can compress that timetable.