He was also open to building a nuclear power plant in his home region of Lombardy, Italy’s economic engine. “A nuclear power plant in Lombardy? No problem. There are nuclear reactors in the city centers of large cities,” said Salvini on Wednesday on the public radio station “Radio 1”. Salvini had already spoken out in favor of a return to nuclear energy on Tuesday. “Italy is the only G8 country without nuclear power. We are surrounded by countries that produce and sell nuclear power to us. It is our duty to examine the return to the latest generation of modern, safe, clean and environmentally friendly nuclear power,” he said Salvini in conversation with journalists.
“A large Italian energy company is building four nuclear power plants in Slovenia. We cannot import nuclear energy from France, Austria, Switzerland and Slovenia and then find that the bill is twice as high,” said Salvini.
The Minister for Ecological Transition, Roberto Cingolani, caused a stir last week by claiming that Italy should consider fourth generation technologies in the field of nuclear energy. “In the atomic arena, there are fourth generation technologies, there are countries that are investing in this technology. If at some point the security of this technology is found to be high and the costs are low, it would be foolish not to consider it . In the interest of our children it is forbidden to ideologize any kind of technology. Let us stick to the numbers. As soon as they are available, we will make decisions, “said the minister.
The Italians voted in a referendum in 1987 – one year after the Chernobyl reactor disaster – to phase out nuclear energy. In 2009, the then Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi announced that he wanted to invest in nuclear power again, but put his plan on hold after the Fukushima disaster. In 2011, around 94.5 percent of Italians voted against new reactors in another referendum.
