Nuclear, Picket:“Evaluations for the return to Parliament for examination in 2025”

The Minister of the Environment and Energy Security outlines the path that will bring Italy back among the countries that use nuclear energy

ROME - “A draft text for the enabling law by the end of 2024” which brings nuclear power back among the sources of the Italian bouquet with the bill "subjected to parliamentary scrutiny in the first months of 2025".

The Minister of the Environment and Energy Security, Gilberto Pichetto, traces the path that will bring Italy back among the countries that use nuclear energy.

At the hearing of the joint Environment and Productive Activities commissions of the Chamber as part of the fact-finding investigation on the role of nuclear energy in the energy transition and in the decarbonisation process, he recalled that he had given a mandate to the Professor Giovanni Guzzetta, professor of public law institutions at the Tor Vergata University of Rome, to coordinate a working group with the aim of "reorganizing the sector legislation, defining the legislative proposals and a framework of actions to be undertaken, which take into account the development of innovative nuclear technologies at a global level and the indications of international agencies, in order to allow the production of energy from sustainable nuclear sources in Italy".

The first step of the expert group will be “present by the end of 2024 a draft text for the enabling law that can enable production from nuclear sources through new sustainable nuclear technologies such as SMRs, AMRs and microreactors”, informs the owner of MASE.

“This delegation law will therefore be subjected to parliamentary scrutiny in the first months of 2025”, specifies Pichetto.The delegation and the legislative decrees linked to it "must necessarily also concern the entire governance system, proceeding with a review and reorganization of the skills and functions currently existing in the country", reports the minister.The outcome of the work of the National Platform for Sustainable Nuclear Energy is expected "by the end of October".

The Government also wants to evaluate "nuclear sources in a scientific and non-ideological way" among the sources to achieve the decarbonisation of electricity production, explains the owner of MASE, "in addition to the 2030 targets we also looked at 2040 and 2050".To make a choice “the Government has decided to provide technical and scientific bases” aiming to “avoid placing the debate on ideological and preconceived positions”, explains.This is why the platform was created in which "the most important stakeholders are participating", says the minister, "covering the main nuclear sectors", that said "the results of the platform's work are expected by the end of October and represent an objective database and technical, not political evaluations".

Pichetto underlines that "the final reports of the platform will be the solid basis for the development and possible adoption by the government of a national program for sustainable nuclear power, both for the medium term in the field of small modular reactors and in the long term for fusion."

In any case, the minister specifies, "we are not evaluating the return of large 1st and 2nd generation nuclear power plants to Italy".With the inclusion of nuclear technology "along with all other energy sources", the model underlying the analyzes "considered nuclear technologies both economically and energetically more convenient to support the base load of the energy system, in support of intermittent renewables" and "there was no political choice on the preference for a share of nuclear”, reports the minister.

“The scenario was developed with a specific model of the national energy system which, given the objectives, identifies the optimal trajectory of minimum overall cost of the entire system to achieve them”, he specifies.The result of the exercise "showed that the estimated development potential of nuclear plants would be fully used in all the years considered", reports the minister.

That said, "I would like to reiterate the concept once again - underlines Pichetto - there was no political choice on the preference for a share of nuclear power, but it was the scenario model used for all sources, both renewable and non-renewable renewable, resulting in a preference for the nuclear option for a share between 11% and 22% of the total energy required by 2050, at an estimated cost of at least 17 billion euros lower than the cost of the scenario without nuclear power" .

Finally, a share of nuclear energy in the Italian energy mix "must be considered not in antagonism but in support of the full deployment of renewables", he continues.

“In the PNIEC, the role of renewable sources will also be central with a view to decarbonisation by 2050,” he explains.“The international scientific literature agrees in stating that, to create decarbonised electricity systems, it is necessary to have a certain share of programmable electricity generation to support the development of non-programmable renewable sources (wind and photovoltaic), ensuring their better integration into the system. Electricity production from nuclear sources can contribute particularly effectively to satisfying this need."

Therefore, specifies the owner of MASE, "a share of nuclear energy in the Italian energy mix must therefore be considered not in antagonism but in support of the full deployment of renewables, without having to resort to oversizing the system, the electrical infrastructures and above all the storage systems of energy".