Il nucleare sostenibile

The history of nuclear power in Italy has now spanned a century and is inextricably linked to both the country's economic choices and prospects and its uncertain and, in some respects, controversial environmental implications. The earliest experience—like the recent one—is indelibly marked by catastrophic and dramatic events that have contributed to making the issue particularly sensitive to the population. For this reason, the 1987 referendum—which interrupted the nuclear experience in our country, leading to the closure of existing plants—without, however, definitively ruling out a possible return to nuclear power—and the 2011 referendum, which, instead, blocked the government's plan to revive nuclear energy, played a fundamental role in the history of our energy supply. It must be underlined, more-over, that Italy, in the mid-sixties of the last century, was the third largest producer of nuclear en-ergy in the world, after the United States and Great Britain, whereas, today, with a perhaps inevita-ble inconsistency, it imports significant shares of energy from neighbouring countries, also pro-duced with nuclear plants, despite the push in recent years aimed at promoting forms of energy production from renewable sources, such as wind and photovoltaic.