Nuclear power: Senate gives final approval to the enabling bill. Pichetto: ‘A historic day for Italy’

The Chamber has added to this scheme an extension of its scope with industrial implications, covering the use of mini-reactors in the naval and maritime sectors.

On the issue of siting – the real elephant in the room in this dossier – the legislator has introduced a voluntary application mechanism. Local authorities and local consortia will be able to offer themselves voluntarily to host the reactors or the infrastructure for the temporary storage and disposal of radioactive waste, overcoming the rigidity of the maps imposed from above through direct financial compensation and energy subsidies for the host communities.

At the same time, the safeguard clause for domestic and European manufacturing and precision components has been strengthened, with the aim of ensuring that investments result in contracts that promote Italian industrial excellence. The Nuclear Safety Inspectorate is set to become the sole authorising body, supported by formal safeguards for regions with special status and autonomous provinces.

Now that the legislative phase has been concluded, the dossier will enter its purely technical and economic phase from tomorrow.

Over the next 12 months, the Government will, in fact, have to issue the implementing decrees designed to resolve two crucial financial and bureaucratic issues. The first concerns the ‘licence passport’: to reduce the cost of capital for SMRs, the key lies in replicability, and the implementing measures will need to define whether, and to what extent, the ISIN can fast-track the validation of technical certifications already issued by the relevant foreign authorities, thereby preventing years-long approval processes from undermining the modular nature of the project. The second issue concerns the structure of contracts: in this regard, the market is looking for financial risk-mitigation instruments that will enable projects to be brought to fruition.

In short, the real game is just beginning. In the meantime, however, with the Senate’s approval, Italia is laying the foundations for its new energy strategy, as the Minister for the Environment and Energy Security has also emphasised; the ball is now in the court of the bureaucracy and the ability of the implementing decrees to give concrete effect to the regulatory framework.