Last year, the Italian cabinet approved a new draft law reintroducing the prospect of returning to nuclear power. \u201cThe government has approved another important measure to ensure clean, safe, low-cost energy that can guarantee energy security and strategic independence,\u201d the Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni announced.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Italy is already surrounded on all sides by nuclear power plants: Slovenia\u2019s Krsko plant is 90 miles away from the border, and there are four French nuclear power plants within 110 miles. Italy is the world\u2019s second-largest importer of electricity, with nuclear power, largely imported from France, making up 5% of its energy basket. Italy also plays host<\/a> to more U.S. nuclear warheads than any other European country. An estimated 35 thermonuclear gravity bombs are stored at two NATO airbases in northern Italy, according<\/a> to the Nuclear Threat Initiative.\u00a0<\/p>\n Now, as data centers spring up in Italy\u2019s industrial north, the country\u2019s energy needs are expected to increase exponentially and the government is turning, albeit cautiously, to a long-held Italian taboo. Since the spring of 1986, when the most serious accident in nuclear history unfolded in Unit 4 of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in northern Ukraine, the Italian population has lived in fear of nuclear energy. It voted to shutter its once-burgeoning nuclear industry in 1987, and in 2011, after the Fukushima nuclear accident, when 94% of voters rejected government plans to revive the industry.\u00a0<\/p>\n It is a fear that has transformed Italy\u2019s energy fortunes, making it reliant on imports and vulnerable to volatility and price shocks.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe international crises of recent years have clearly demonstrated the risk of excessive dependence on imported fossil fuels or vulnerable supply chains,\u201d said Fiorella Corrado, communications chief at Italy\u2019s environment and energy ministry. \u201cThe government approaches this issue with great respect for the country\u2019s history and the democratic choices expressed by citizens. The 1987 and 2011 referendums profoundly impacted the national energy strategy at very different historical moments. Precisely for this reason, the point is not to ignore those choices, but to acknowledge that today\u2019s technological, climatic, industrial, and geopolitical context has radically changed.\u201d<\/p>\n For Meloni\u2019s government, the argument is not so much whether Italy needs to revive its nuclear industry, it\u2019s whether the country is ready to shake its demons, to shake the cultural memory of what happened at Chernobyl forty years ago, a thousand miles away from Rome.\u00a0<\/p>\n In the early hours of April 28, 1986, in the control room of the Latina nuclear power plant south of Rome, a young technician called Ruggero Dell\u2019Aquila was working the night shift. \u201cEverything was perfectly quiet,\u201d he recalled. As morning broke, teletype messages from Northern Europe began to rattle in. A clerk came down from the control room with reports from the Forsmark Nuclear Power Plant in Sweden. Their monitoring stations were registering radiation spikes far above background levels, and no one knew why.\u00a0<\/p>\n That evening, nuclear physicist Sergio Malossi, a director at the Latina plant responsible for monitoring radioactive risk, drove home. His mind was turning over what the clerks had been reporting. \u201cHe came in extremely agitated,\u201d remembers his daughter, Roberta Malossi, who was 16 at the time. \u201cWe knew he was worried about something going wrong at the facility, but we didn\u2019t understand.\u201d Malossi says that her father\u2019s first paranoid thought was that there had been a malfunction in his own plant, that radiation was leaching into the air, and that it was somehow his fault.\u00a0<\/p>\n At 9 p.m. Moscow time \u2014 aperitivo hour in Latina \u2014 the Soviet Union announced there had been an accident at the Chernobyl nuclear plant. In the ensuing days, Italian news was full of dire warnings.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cTelevision was showing these clouds that would soon reach Italy. Everyone was terrified. The only information we got was from state TV, and the news was shocking,\u201d said Monica Tommasi, President of Friends of the Earth Italy, who was a child at the time. Radiation, the news said, would rain down on the population. \u201cThe fear from the sky,\u201d ran one La Repubblica headline. \u201cThe cloud above us, the doubt within us,\u201d ran another.<\/p>\n On the night of April 30, 1986, Italy\u2019s nuclear monitoring stations began recording increases in radioactivity. The cloud moved over the Valley of the Po, and while the government called for calm, the country began to descend into panic. In the minds of the Italian people, the worst had happened, explained Luca Romano, a writer and activist campaigning for the return of nuclear power in Italy. \u201cNuclear annihilation, death by radiation, the radioactive cloud and the nuclear holocaust, had arrived,\u201d he said. Nuclear armageddon was a fear that had gripped the West for decades. This was not a nuclear war, but in the Italian collective consciousness, that didn\u2019t make a difference.\u00a0<\/p>\n The reality was, says Barbara Curli, Professor of Contemporary History at the University of Turin, that \u201cItaly was only marginally affected by the cloud.\u201d<\/p>\n The cloud in northern Italy meant radioactivity levels peaked<\/a> briefly, but ten days later they had fallen dramatically back down. Because this spike was short-lived, the total radiation exposure remained low. A United Nations committee report recorded<\/a> that northern Italy received an additional radiation dose of about 380 microsieverts in the year following Chernobyl \u2014 less than a fifth of the normal background radiation humans absorb in a year; equivalent to taking about six transatlantic flights. It was much smaller than the doses received by neighboring countries like Bulgaria, Austria and Greece, and in the south of Italy the dose was lower still.\u00a0<\/p>\n Down by the Latina power plant, though, the community was shaken by events in Chernobyl, and rumors and misinformation began to spread about the fallout. The friends and family of the technician, Ruggero Dell\u2019Aquila, started asking him if a Chernobyl-style disaster could happen at Latina, too. \u201cEveryone was afraid, asking \u2014 \u2018can it explode, can it explode?\u2019\u201d he recalled.\u00a0<\/p>\n The reality was, a Chernobyl-style explosion was not possible at Latina, because its reactor lacked the unstable characteristics of the Soviet design. But this was not such an easy concept to explain.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe problem was that a slew of journalists took over, telling lies,\u201d Malossi said, recalling paranoid rumours about radioactivity causing mutations in nature. People started telling stories, Malossi said, about \u201cfrogs with three heads, animals and fish with four tails. Strange things. When in fact absolutely nothing like that was happening.\u201d<\/p>\n The government advised people to avoid fresh vegetables and dairy products, particularly for children. Farmers destroyed crops and poured away milk. Sergio Malossi ignored the warnings, having measured radiation levels in the air himself. \u201cMy father and others from the plant brought the vegetables home and we ate them,\u201d his daughter recalled.<\/p>\n It was these warnings \u2014 delivered amid a lack of clear information \u2014 that shifted public attitudes toward nuclear energy, said Renzo Colombo, 65, who was just beginning a career in nuclear engineering when the explosion happened. Now a member of Nucleare e Ragione, a nonprofit that promotes a rational approach to nuclear energy in Italy, he recalls how quickly fear took hold. \u201cA real phobia was born, a panic about radioactivity,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd this panic marked the next 25 years.\u201d<\/p>\n The months after the accident were a shadowy, uncertain period for Italians working in the nuclear industry. \u201cI have to be honest, I felt a little guilty,\u201d said Colombo. \u201cAs a nuclear engineer, I thought \u2018what have we done?\u2019 My colleagues and I always thought we were designing something useful for humanity. And at that moment we felt betrayed by our own profession.\u201d<\/p>\n Outside Italy\u2019s nuclear plants, crowds began to gather. A coalition of environmental groups and political parties started pushing for people to vote against nuclear power in an upcoming referendum.<\/p>\n This movement was not new. \u201cMany years before Chernobyl, an environmentalist culture was born \u2014 and it didn\u2019t just concern nuclear power, but risky industry in general,\u201d explained Curli, the Turin historian. The anti-nuclear environmental movement, which spread across Europe in the 1970s, was particularly potent in Italy \u2014 a country rocked by violent political turmoil, organized crime, and corruption scandals. Public fears, explained Curli, were sharpened by the Seveso disaster, an accident at an industrial plant in the north of Italy in 1976 that exposed tens of thousands of people to a toxic cloud of chemicals. Nuclear power, she said, \u201cwas not perceived by public opinion as a credible policy because there\u2019s this underlying distrust in institutions.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n In 1977, almost a decade before Chernobyl, a 10,000-strong crowd of protesters showed up at Montalto di Castro, to protest against a large new nuclear plant that was planned. A Time magazine correspondent described<\/a> the activists as \u201can improbable mix of elegant members of the Italian nobility, radical students in American Indian garb, middle-class citizens and Christian Democratic and Communist politicians.\u201d<\/p>\n In the wake of Chernobyl, Renzo Colombo was working at that very same plant, helping to build the thermohydraulic cycle. By then, the station was nearly complete. \u201cIt was a beautiful plant,\u201d Colombo said. \u201cI loved working there.\u201d<\/p>\n In November 1987, 18 months after the Chernobyl accident, the Italian government held a referendum on nuclear energy. Nearly 80% of Italians voted in favor of measures that would end the country\u2019s use of atomic energy.<\/p>\n One morning, following the referendum, the Montalto di Castro plant\u2019s director called the workers to a meeting. Colombo remembers him saying: \u201c\u2018Ragazzi, gather round, I need to talk to you. I\u2019ve just been to the ministry, and Italy has decided that we are closing all nuclear activity and will focus on coal and gas instead.\u2019\u201d The room went silent. \u201cI was young,\u201d said Colombo. \u201cBut there were people there who were older and had devoted years of their life to the nuclear field. There was just this urge to cry.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n The effect of the referendum was all-encompassing: construction was halted, and over the next three years Italy\u2019s nuclear plants were shut down for good; its nuclear engineers scattered \u2014 many going to work abroad, or, like Colombo, re-training to work in other industries.\u00a0<\/p>\n It was hailed as a victory for Italian environmentalism, says Curli. But the result was that there was a push to \u201cgasify\u201d Italy. That is, she says, \u201cto choose the gas route \u2014 less expensive, and less demanding than nuclear power. But this made Italy almost completely dependent on Russian gas, Libyan gas, Algerian gas.\u201d The Montalto di Castro site was converted into a fossil-fuel powered plant, running on gas and fuel oil.<\/p>\n Decades on from that post-Chernobyl referendum \u2014 and a second referendum in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear accident in 2011 \u2014 Italy remains in the process of dismantling its nuclear power stations, even as it now contemplates a return to nuclear power.<\/p>\n \nIn the vast, cavernous belly of the Latina nuclear power plant, three workers in hazmat suits hammer away at pieces of the shielding cylinders that once protected the rest of the plant from radiation emitted from the reactor. From the viewing gallery, they look tiny in the enormous space, and the vastness of their task feels Sisyphean.\n<\/p>\n Watching them work is Enrico Bastianini, director of operations at the Latina plant. As I walk with Bastianini through the plant, we come to the old control room. When it first opened in 1963, the Latina plant was the largest nuclear power station in Europe \u2014 a feat of Italian and British engineering (the reactor was of UK design) and a symbol of Italy\u2019s post-war industrial growth.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe were emerging from the destruction of the war, and this was progress. And it was what allowed us to escape the economic hardships of war, and have low-cost energy,\u201d Bastianini says.<\/p>\n Now, over 60 years on from when the plant opened, more than half of its existence has been spent being taken apart. Critics of nuclear power often focus on precisely this point: the long and complex process of dismantling nuclear plants, and the problem of managing radioactive waste, some of which takes millennia to decay.\u00a0<\/p>\n There are two phases to the process of taking apart the plant. \u201cThe first phase allows us to dismantle everything that\u2019s nuclear except the reactor. That\u2019s because the reactor contains a huge amount of graphite,\u201d Bastianini explains. \u201cWhen we have a national repository, it can be removed. But for now, it\u2019s safest if it stays in the first phase.\u201d<\/p>\n Bastianini leads me into a deposit room where radioactive material is being stored in steel containers, inside an earthquake-resistant facility. These containers are only for temporary storage.<\/p>\n There were attempts in the early 2000s to establish a national nuclear waste repository at a salt mine in Basilicata in southern Italy, but huge protests forced the government to abandon its plans. Today, SOGIN, the state-owned Italian company in charge of decommissioning nuclear sites, is still actively searching for a suitable location for a permanent repository and faces considerable opposition.\u00a0<\/p>\n Rumours and anxiety swirl around the Latina plant itself \u2014 just as they did in the 1980s, when Malossi heard stories of radioactive fish with four tails. Last April, an article by the Italian magazine L\u2019Espresso published claims that the Latina plant could leach<\/a> radioactive material into the soil. The plant vigorously denies these claims \u2014 a spokesperson for SOGIN said the company periodically checks the quality of vegetables, milk and fodder as well as air, soil and groundwater for radiation and that \u201cas always, the results of the analyses confirm radiologically negligible environmental impacts.\u201d<\/p>\n In the gloaming of a summer evening in Umbria, Monica Tommasi drives me through the twilight-darkened hills surrounding the medieval city of Orvieto. This land is rich in archeological and ecological heritage \u2014 filled with ancient tunnels, Etruscan caves, untapped archeological sites, wild places where wolves and boar roam. Tommasi is the President of Amici Della Terra \u2014 \u201cFriends of the Earth\u201d in Italian \u2014 an organization that was once the Italian chapter of the international Friends of the Earth network before breaking away in 2014. \u201cWe left, because we argued a lot,\u201d she said of the split, describing how the network \u201cwanted to put turbines and panels everywhere, and we couldn\u2019t be in favour of that approach.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n The International Friends of the Earth association was born from the anti-nuclear movement in America, where the group successfully lobbied to shut down two reactors, and has since 1969 made anti-nuclear campaigning a core part of its identity.<\/p>\n But Tommasi remembers precisely when she first began to reconsider nuclear power. \u201cI started thinking about it in 2011, when I began to see that the government was investing heavily in solar and wind power, which would invade and industrialize the natural landscape,\u201d she recalled. Many of these green transition projects have been fraught with problems in Italy \u2014 wind farm companies accused of corruption<\/a> and profiteering<\/a>, of erecting<\/a> wind farms in areas where there\u2019s little wind, and laying waste to nature.\u00a0<\/p>\n For the first time, Tommasi began to think about ways to decarbonize \u201cthat don\u2019t destroy the environment where people live and the landscape around them.\u201d. She became intrigued by the nuclear option. \u201cWe needed to start reasoning and changing our minds,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n Tommasi now advocates for a national conversation about nuclear power. \u201cThis choice must be accompanied by a public debate,\u201d she told me, \u201cbut it isn\u2019t happening because everyone is still afraid.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe future of Italy\u2019s energy sector must lie in nuclear,\u201d she said, adding that if Italy was to continue pursuing solar and wind energy alone, \u201cit means destroying all the natural areas that are still left.\u201d<\/p>\n I asked the government to respond to allegations about how criminality, speculation and land-grabs in the renewable energy sector might be affecting Italians\u2019 opinions on nuclear power.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe do not believe it is appropriate to frame the energy debate by ideologically pitting nuclear power against renewables, nor should we use any administrative or criminal issues in certain sectors to discredit a technology as a whole,\u201d said Fiorella Corrado, communications chief at Italy\u2019s environment and energy ministry. \u201cNuclear power is not an alternative to renewables, but their best ally,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n On a warm autumn day in Rome, several thousand people gathered for an annual \u201cclimate pride\u201d march. They brandished homemade cardboard wind turbines that spun in the breeze. Vincenzo Migliucci, 83, was among them. He worked for more than three decades for ENEL, Italy\u2019s energy corporation, and he\u2019s been anti-nuclear for much of his life. After the Chernobyl accident, he protested outside the nuclear plant under construction in Montalto di Castro almost every day, picketing the workers as they went through the gates.<\/p>\n \u201cThe wrath of God happened,\u201d he said, referring to Chernobyl. \u201cAnd when a true estimate is made, we\u2019ll one day see how many disasters Chernobyl caused.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Migliucci is against nuclear power plants of all types \u2014 arguing for solar panels instead \u2014 and is particularly concerned about what happens to the plants after they become obsolete and must, like the Latina plant, be slowly dismantled over decades. \u201cThe decommissioning costs a fortune; the nuclear waste repositories cost a fortune,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Subscribe to our coda currents newsletter<\/p>\n Insights from the Coda newsroom on the global forces that shape local crises.<\/p>\n He began telling me some of the stories that surround Italy\u2019s shuttered nuclear plants. \u201cNear the Garigliano power plant,\u201d he told me, \u201ca child was born with only one eye.\u201d His own eyes widened as he pressed a finger into the middle of my forehead. \u201cSheep and cattle,\u201d he said, \u201cwere born with six legs, or entirely red in colour. It\u2019s not a myth, it\u2019s real.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Younger generations of Italians don\u2019t have the same collective impressions around nuclear power, nor around Chernobyl or its aftermath, explained Luca Romano, a young pro-nuclear influencer<\/a> with a quarter of a million followers on Instagram. Romano makes videos with his partner, Luiza Munteanu, about the advantages of nuclear power. The main problem he runs up against, he says, is that \u201cwe have a very low scientific literacy, the level of debate is abysmal.\u201d And culturally, he adds, \u201cItaly has always been a country that looks backwards rather than forwards.\u201d<\/p>\n In May, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency visited Italy\u2019s Lombardy region, and signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the governor to cooperate on applying nuclear science for development across the region. The choice of Lombardy was significant. It is home to Milan, and is at the heart of Italy\u2019s digital infrastructure. Speckled with no fewer than 60 data centers, with more cropping up, Lombardy has opened itself up to Silicon Valley. Microsoft is investing<\/a> billions in the area to boost its AI and cloud computing infrastructure. Amazon Web Services has committed<\/a> to spending over $1 billion to expand its data center operations around Milan.<\/p>\n How northern Italy\u2019s growing AI infrastructure will be powered, though, is still a problem to be solved \u2014 one that cuts to the heart of Italy\u2019s energy dependence. Since Giorgia Meloni became prime minister in October 2022 \u2014 which coincided with the launch of ChatGPT a month later \u2014 the Italian government has been broaching the topic of nuclear power as essential to Italy\u2019s energy future. \u201cWorld population and economic growth will significantly increase energy demand,\u201d Meloni said at a sustainability summit in Abu Dhabi. \u201cNot least due to the growing requirements arising from the development of generative artificial intelligence.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Artificial intelligence is a \u201chighly relevant topic,\u201d said Corrado, the communications chief at Italy\u2019s environment and energy ministry. \u201cAs more things run on electricity, the economy goes digital, and data centers and AI expand, demand for steady, low-emissions power will rise. Nuclear energy can help as a reliable, controllable source that works alongside renewables.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n In August, it emerged that the government had set aside \u20ac7.5 million purely for pro-nuclear communication and information campaigns directed at regions where new plants may be built. One focus of the Meloni administration is on the prospect of building small modular reactors, sometimes called \u201cmini nukes.\u201d They are compact fission plants, a fraction of the size of the traditional, cathedral-like nuclear power stations. They have a smaller core, and proponents argue their safety features mean there\u2019s minimal chance of an epic, Chernobyl-scale nuclear disaster, something the government is keen to get across to voters.\u00a0<\/p>\n Currently, only China and Russia have these small reactors up and running, but mini nuclear plants have attracted significant attention in Silicon Valley. OpenAI\u2019s Sam Altman was chairman of Oklo, a nuclear startup focused on SMRs, while U.S. nuclear startup Kairos has signed an agreement with Google to develop these reactors to power its data centers. This month, the European Commission unveiled<\/a> a strategy for rolling out small modular reactors and bringing them \u201conline\u201d by the 2030s.<\/p>\n Soon, Italy may take the first steps towards the reconstruction of a nuclear industry that has been abandoned for decades. \u201cI believe it won\u2019t be easy to relaunch nuclear energy,\u201d said Barbara Curli, the Turin historian. \u201cKnowing a little about the history of nuclear power in Italy and its political dimension, I\u2019d be quite skeptical about the possibility of relaunching nuclear power here in Italy \u2014 but let\u2019s see.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n A little under 1,500 miles away, in the Chernobyl exclusion zone, among wild boar, birds, and deer, radiation levels in some areas have dipped below around 0.3 microsieverts per hour, lower than background radiation levels in many European cities. Not least the eternal city of Rome.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/04_Latina_Anzio_porto_scambiatori-1664x1200.jpg\")
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\nThe Latina nuclear power plant during its construction in the late \u201950s and early \u201960s. Photos courtesy of SOGIN.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/1963-1699x1200.jpg\")
Inside the control room of the Latina power plant, 1963. Photo courtesy of Pionieri Del Nucleare.jpg<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/GettyImages-506214396.jpg\")
On April 30, 1986, Soviet television aired this image of the Chernobyl plant, claiming there was \u201cno destruction, no major fires, and no mass casualties.\u201d
\u00a0AFP via Getty Images.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/IMG-20230711-WA0006-1052x1200.jpg\")
Nuclear Physicist Sergio Malossi, Long-time Director of the Department of Medical Physics at the Latina Nuclear plant. Photo courtesy of Pionieri del Nucleare di Latina.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/1237-61osa-primo-strato-grafite-del-nocciolo-1468x1200.jpg\")
Workers at Latina nuclear plant during its construction in 1961. Photo courtesy Pionieri del Nucleare di Latina.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/GettyImages-2267396657-1800x1200.jpg\")
Workers in protective suits clean up the land and homes contaminated by the industrial accident at Seveso chemical manufacturing plant in 1976. Alberto Roveri\/Archivio Alberto Roveri\/Mondadori Portfolio via Getty Images.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/GettyImages-472142650-1794x1200.jpg\")
Demonstrators taking part in an anti-nuclear demonstration. Turin, 1980s. Alberto RoveriMondadori via Getty Images.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/GettyImages-1487057023-785x1200.jpg\")
Anti-nuclear protest, Milan, 1980s. Universal Archive \/ Universal Images Group via Getty Images.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/GettyImages-1487057037-1636x1200.jpg\")
Anti-nuclear protest, Rome, 1980s.\u00a0Universal Archive \/ Universal Images Group via Getty Images.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Sala-Controllo-Latina.jpg\")
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\nThe old control room of the Latina nuclear plant. Photos courtesy of SOGIN<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/GettyImages-2177100247-1713x1200.jpg\")
Wind turbines and solar panels near Cagliari, Sardinia, 2024. The island relies largely on coal but must phase it out by 2028 as Italy transitions to cleaner energy. Giovanni Grezzi \/ AFP via Getty Images.<\/p>\n![\"currents\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/CODA-CURRENTS-250x250.jpg\")
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