Italy
Italy closed its four commercial nuclear reactors in 1987 after a national referendum in the wake of the 1986 Chernobyl reactor explosion. However, efforts are underway to restart the Italian nuclear program. In 2003, an attempt to dump Italy's high-level radioactive waste at a single site in the southern community of Scanzano Jonico was met with a successful protest that culminated in a march of 100,000 people.
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Cesare Silvi, a former nuclear engineer who worked at reactors, foresaw many of the problems and risks and made his name by turning to solar. Read the article.
"Following the decision the Italian people are taking at this moment, we must probably say goodbye to the possibility of nuclear power stations and we must strongly commit ourselves to renewable energy," said Italian prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi after an overwhelming turnout and "yes" vote against nuclear Sunday and Monday looked certain to end nuclear plans in Italy.
Italian oncologists unite to back the anti-nuclear referendum. From the ASCO congress in Chicago, the world's most important oncology summit, AIOM (Italian association of medical oncology) urges the people to vote 'yes' at the referendum to be held on 12 and 13 June. "Nuclear radiation is the most carcinogenic thing that exists - said AIOM president Carmelo Iacono - and it cannot be kept under control, as the Fukushima tragedy proved. Let's drop the nuclear plants project and let's start staking on alternative energy, which pollutes much less and which, unlike nuclear energy, does not pose a threat for health."
On June 12 and 13 Italians will vote in a national referendum on nuclear power. A "yes" vote says "no" to nuclear power. Italy closed its nuclear program by national referendum in 1987. Now the Berlusconi government wants to revive it. Beyond Nuclear supports our Italian colleagues in their efforts to drive a huge "yes" turnout to say "no" to nuclear power.
Michael Leonardi, an ally of Beyond Nuclear in environmental coalition efforts to block the 20 year license extension at Davis-Besse atomic reactor in Ohio (see the Counterpunch article from last month), has reported at Counterpunch that Italian PM Berlusconi is attempting to postpone a national referendum set for June 12th and 13th that would end his proposed nuclear relapse in Italy. The anti-nuclear referendum drive required the gathering of 500,000 petition signatures. Berlusconi privately owns and/or controls much of the media in Italy, and has effectively censored any efforts by the anti-nuclear movement to spread the word about the referendum. Michael Leonardi reports about a moment of deep cynicism, when Berlusconi and French President Nicholas Sarkozy stood together in Rome to promote building new French reactors in Italy on Chernobyl's 25th anniversary on April 26th. Berlusconi said to the assembled press that the Italian voters had been scared by Fukushima, just as they had been by "leftists and ecologists" after Chernobyl, so a year-long calm down period before the referendum should take place. Leonardi quoted Angelo Bonelli, President of the Italian Green Party, as saying: "The referendums will be voted on anyway, despite the fact that the thieves of democracy have returned to action. The attempts of the government to steal the democratic rights of the Italian people to vote against nuclear energy and the privatization of water will not succeed."
June 14, 2011