Italy heading back to nuke era, 51 waste sites ID'd

(ANSA) - ROME, DEC 13 - Italy is heading back to the nuclear power era after exiting it after the Chernobyl disaster with the ministry of the environment and energy security on Wednesday publishing a list of 51 sites in five regions "suitable for national nuclear waste storage".
    Italy will not build new government-funded fourth-generation nuclear power plants to aid the green transition but will not stand in the way of local industrial districts and energy companies who want to do so, with small reactors, Environment Minister Gilberto Pichetto Fratin said in a newspaper interview Monday.
    If the districts and companies decide to build the plants, the government will act as regulator, he told la Repubblica.
    The minister said in the interview: "We will never build new nuclear power plants in Italy.
    "It will possibly be the industrial districts or individual energy companies that will equip themselves with small fourth-generation reactors.
    "The state will merely be a regulator".
    Italy left the nuclear energy sector after a 1987 referendum in the wake of the Chernobyl disaster.
    Environmentalists and climate activists are cautiously in favour of the new generation power plants' role in aiding the transition from fossil fuels. (ANSA).