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Italian Industry Minister Claudio Scajola gave a speech May 22 in which he asserted that Italy will seek to begin construction on a nuclear power reactor by 2013. If true, the decision would mark a reversal of a 20-year-old ban on nuclear power in Italy.
Although many European countries took their nuclear power systems offline in the two decades following Chernobyl, the energy perspective across the continent is changing. Higher oil and natural gas prices and the desire to wean themselves from Russian energy supplies are causing more countries to look for energy alternatives — of which nuclear power is one of the best candidates.
Following World War II, Italy was an early adopter of nuclear power technology. Construction of the first reactor began in 1958. At the height of Italian nuclear energy in the early 1980s, the country had four reactors online. After the Chernobyl disaster, in 1987, Italians voted in a referendum to ban the use of nuclear energy and the sector remained dormant for more than a decade. There is also an indefinite ban on the construction of new nuclear plants.
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