Italy seeks partners to develop nuclear reactors, says minister

Alberto Brambilla

Rome: Italy is looking to build nuclear reactors by creating a new company in partnership with a foreign investor, the Ansa newswire reported, citing Industry Minister Adolfo Urso.

“We are working on an Italian Newco, with a foreign technological partnership, which will allow advanced, third-generation nuclear power to be produced shortly in Italy,” Urso said at the Ambrosetti Forum in Cernobbio, on Lake Como, according to Ansa.

The production and use of atomic energy on Italian soil would mark a shift: nuclear power was banned by popular votes in referendums in 1987 and again in 2011.

The government is also working on a legislative measure that aims to reintroduce the use of nuclear energy with the latest available technologies later this year, Energy Minister Gilberto Pichetto Fratin said on Saturday.