Italy will do its part to ensure that, by 2050, the nuclear energy available at a global level is three times its current amount. At the Paris nuclear energy summit on 10 March, Minister of Environment and Energy Security Gilberto Pichetto Fratin announced Italy's official accession to the Declaration to Triple Nuclear Energy, the international commitment to triple global nuclear capacity by 2050, signed by several countries in 2023. For Italy, the signature comes more than two years late — at the time, the country lacked its own legislative framework providing for a return to nuclear energy — but the government now presents it as the crowning achievement of a regulatory and industrial path built step by step from that same 2023 onwards.

The agreement commits signatory countries to developing or increasing nuclear energy production, investing in the construction of new plants and the improvement of existing ones, with the goal of tripling overall capacity relative to 2020 levels, with a horizon stretching across the next quarter century. For Italy, which has no active nuclear plants, signing up means launching a national programme from scratch through the construction of new third- or fourth-generation reactors, thereby contributing to the global increase. An ambitious objective, which according to Pichetto Fratin fits within a broader framework: "In an increasingly electrified system — spanning industry, mobility, data centres and artificial intelligence — nuclear power can contribute to decarbonisation, grid stability and security of supply."

Tripling nuclear energy: a COP28 idea

The declaration, as mentioned, was signed on 2 December 2023 at COP28 in Dubai, the Conference of the Parties on climate, by 22 countries, including the United States, France, the United Kingdom, Canada, Japan and South Korea. Italy was not among the signatories due to a lack of the essential prerequisites: signing would have meant taking on a commitment without yet having the foundations on which to build it. Those foundations have been laid over these two years, as Pichetto highlighted at the Paris summit: "Italy is approaching the possibility of reintroducing nuclear energy production into its energy mix with realism and responsibility." The first building block was the update of the Piano nazionale integrato per l'energia e il clima (Pniec), which for the first time integrated a nuclear scenario into Italy's energy planning. In 2023, to this end, the Piattaforma nazionale per un Nucleare Sostenibile was established, bringing together the country's finest technical and scientific expertise. The projections included in the plan envisage, by 2050, an installed capacity of between 8 and 16 gigawatts, with a potential coverage of electricity demand ranging from 11 to 22 per cent of the Italian energy mix, the remainder of which will need to be composed of renewable sources.

On the European front, in June 2025 Italy also joined the nuclear alliance, the France-led group bringing together EU member states in favour of a role for nuclear power in the energy transition. On the industrial front, also in 2025, Nuclitalia was established, with shareholdings held by Enel, Ansaldo Energia and Leonardo, tasked with "assessing the technologies best suited to the Italian context", as the minister explained. Italy also participates in the Industrial Alliance on SMRs — small modular reactors, which are expected to form the backbone of the next generation of "sustainable nuclear" energy — and in the IPCEIs — the Important Projects of Common European Interest — on innovative nuclear technologies, "in the conviction that nuclear power can strengthen the EU's strategic autonomy and competitiveness."

World Nuclear News @W_Nuclear_News

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Italy's @EnelGroup, @AnsaldoEnergia and @Leonardo_live have established Nuclitalia, a company that will be in charge of studying advanced technologies and analysing market opportunities in the new #nuclear sector tinyurl.com/5n8jjhju

♥ 44💬 1 15 mag 2025 · Apri su X →

Furthermore, at the end of last year the government presented to Parliament a framework delegation bill on sustainable nuclear energy, which is still under discussion: a text that defines the national planning framework, governance structures, the strengthening of the safety authority, and the regulation of the entire lifecycle of nuclear plants, including the management of radioactive waste. "We chose to first build a clear and credible regulatory framework, and then make industrial decisions," explained Pichetto Fratin.

SMRs and AMRs at the centre of Italy's strategy

International Energy Agency @IEA

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Small modular reactors – a promising nuclear technology still under development – could offer reduced costs & faster construction compared to today's nuclear power plants

More on these reactors, their potential & challenges for bringing them to market from IEA's Brent Wanner 👇

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The technology Italy is betting on, as already mentioned, is not that of the large power plants of the past: "From a technological standpoint, in the short to medium term we are paying close attention to advanced third-generation Small modular reactors", the minister recalled from Paris, adding that attention is also being paid to "fourth-generation technologies, in particular lead-cooled fast reactors" — the so-called AMRs (Advanced modular reactors). Project promoters, which may also be private companies, will be required to demonstrate their ability to cover the construction, operation and decommissioning costs of the plants. Incentives are envisaged for the territories that will host the new infrastructure, with the aim of guaranteeing economic and employment benefits for local communities. The signing of the international declaration comes at the end of a journey that has transformed nuclear energy from a controversial topic into a formal component of Italy's energy strategy — even though critics of a return to nuclear power, however different it may be from the large plants of the 1980s, have certainly not stopped making their voices heard.

According to the associations gathered in the 100% Rinnovabili Network, for instance, betting on nuclear energy today will neither reduce energy costs nor increase the security of the system; on the contrary, it "risks slowing down the decarbonisation process and saddling our country with high and uncertain investments in technologies that are not yet available. The Italian government's choice also disregards the popular will, expressed in two referendums — 1987 and 2011 — which clearly ruled out the nuclear option." There is also the still-unresolved question of the waste generated by the old nuclear power plants, which have now been decommissioned: to date, the waste is stored in as many as 100 repositories across 22 sites scattered throughout the country — a situation that is only temporary, and one which, since no permanent site has yet been identified, exposes Italy to infringement proceedings by the European Commission. The government assures that the new systems, and in particular the futuristic fourth-generation AMRs, will be capable of significantly reducing nuclear waste and carbon emissions, effectively burning the waste itself to produce new fuel, in a truly circular economy perspective. The latter, however, are not expected to be available and operational before 2040.