Italy formally reopens the door to atomic energy. With the final green light coming from the Senate Chamber, with 81 votes in favor, 51 against and 7 abstentions, the draft law for the return to sustainable nuclear power completes the parliamentary process and becomes state law. "Historic day for Italy", is the comment of the Minister of the Environment and Energy Security, Gilberto Pichetto Fratin, who signed the provision. Palazzo Madama has thus armored the text approved in recent months by the Chamber, handing over the mandate to draw up the operational rules to the ministry led by the representative of Forza Italia. From today, therefore, a tight twelve-month countdown will begin within which the implementing legislative decrees will be placed, the only true perimeter capable of making future projects bankable and realizable.
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If the original framework traced by Via Cristoforo Colombo aimed to reinsert the atom into the decarbonisation mix by 2050, the passage between the Commissions and the Chambers of Montecitorio and Palazzo Madama has enriched the delegation of key elements for the impact on the economic and territorial system. The provision strictly excludes large traditional power plants and limits the exclusive scope of action to small and medium-sized modular reactors, small modular reactors (Smr) and advanced modular reactors (AMR), in addition to the long-term perspective on fusion. To this system the Chamber has added an application extension with industrial impact for the use of mini-reactors in the naval and maritime sector.
On the localization front, the real cornerstone of the dossier, the legislator has introduced a voluntary application mechanism. Local municipalities and consortia will be able to volunteer to host reactors or temporary storage and disposal infrastructures for radioactive waste, overcoming the rigidity of maps imposed from above through direct economic compensation and energy refreshments for welcoming communities. At the same time, the safeguard clause for national and European precision manufacturing and components was strengthened, with the aim of ensuring that investments translate into contracts for Italian industrial excellence. The Nuclear Safety Inspectorate is on its way to becoming the sole authorization hub, supported by formal protections for the Regions with special statutes and the autonomous provinces.
With the legislative chapter closed, from tomorrow the dossier will enter its purely technical and economic phase. In the next twelve months the Government will, in fact, have to approve the implementing decrees which will have to resolve two crucial financial and bureaucratic issues. The first concerns the licensing passport: to reduce the cost of capital of the SMRs, the key is replicability, and the implementation pieces will have to define whether and within what limits the Isin will be able to validate on an accelerated basis the technical certifications already issued by the competent foreign authorities, avoiding that years-long investigation procedures nullify the modular nature of the work. The second issue concerns the architecture of the contracts: on this front, the market is waiting for financial derisking tools that allow the projects to be grounded.
In short, the real game begins now. But in the meantime, with the green light from the Senate, Italy is establishing the foundations of its new energy course, as also reiterated by the Minister of the Environment and Energy Security, Gilberto Pichetto Fratin, who underlined that the ball is now in the court of bureaucracy and the ability of the implementing decrees to give concrete follow-up to the regulatory framework.
