10 reasons why Italians should vote against nuclear energy

Even if you want to introduce again nuclear power in Italy, the natural structure of the country makes the installation of nuclear plants even more dangerous and unsustainable than in normal condition.

Italians vote on future of nuclear energy, Peninsula Online,By Francesca Astorri, 13 June 11, ROME: Italians started voting for a referendum that can change the profile of the country. The country will have to express its opinion on four different subjects of which the adoption of nuclear power seems the most susceptible.

The polling stations opened yesterday and citizens can vote till today at 3pm when the tellers will start counting and checking the votes. At 1pm yesterday 11.6 percent voters had already voted. Experts say that it’s a good vote rate, the highest one since the 1974 vote on divorce, a topic that touched the personal interest of everyone in the country.

The aim of today’s referendum is to reach 51 percent votes, the percentage that will put in force the results.From all the voices and opinions heard today in the polls and during these days of referendum campaign in Italy, these are the 10 reasons why people don’t want nuclear power in Italy: :

1) Nuclear power is unsafe. Analysing the calculus of probabilities, there should be a reactor’s meltdown every 250 year. The world have already seen 3 reactors’ meltdown (Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, Fukushima) in 50 years.

2) Italy is a seismic country. Even if you want to introduce again nuclear power in Italy, the natural structure of the country makes the installation of nuclear plants even more dangerous and unsustainable than in normal condition. What happened in Japan shows clearly that even the best technologies don’t work in certain natural conditions.

3) Nuclear waste remains radioactive and dangerous for hundred thousand years. No one has still invented a safe way of keeping this waste in permanent deposit. France is trying to work on a project that will cost €15bn paid by the state … money that some argue can be spent in many other better ways as for the welfare and in clean energies.

4) Italy is importing from abroad just 1.5 percent of electricity produced by nuclear plants installed abroad just behind the borders.

5) Greenhouse effect: this is the card that nuclear power fans are using to promote the installation of nuclear plants in Italy. On one side without nuclear plants the world would produce two billion tonnes of Co2 more than the ones produced now, but on the other side, if you turn coal factories into gas industries you would reduce even more the Co2 emission.

6) Energy dependence. Energy dependence from oil producing countries will persist even if Italy starts producing nuclear power because cars will still go with fuel that nuclear plants are not producing. Today there are new non-conventional sources of gas that are relatively cheap and abundant.

7) Invest in natural renewable energies. Nuclear plant need a huge distribution web that connects production centers and consume centers. Renewable energies instead need a very light distribution structure as they can be spread all over the country not concentrating only in one area.

8) Too expensive. Nuclear plants proposed by Enel will cost between €6bn and €7bn, paid of course by Italians through taxes and energy bill.

9) Business and employment. If Italy decides to start to produce nuclear power, reactors and turbines would be bought directly from abroad, not creating any jobs and not developing research or know-how in the country. In Germany 40 thousand people are employed in nuclear power. 440 thousand people in renewable energies.

10) Nuclear energy doesn’t solve Italian energetic problems. If we start now to build nuclear plants in Italy, we will start having energetic results by 2025-2030. By that time, nuclear power will be able to satisfy only 12.5 percent of the energetic needs of the country, when instead renewable energies will be able to produce 36 percent of the electricity needed by Italy.
Italians vote on future of nuclear energy