June 4, 2026: the Chamber of Deputies approves, on first reading, the enabling act on sustainable nuclear energy. 155 in favour, 86 against, 8 abstentions, protest placards in the chamber. The text moves to the Senate.
Our May nuclear series stopped one step short of this vote. Time to close the loop — and to be precise about something the debate systematically confuses: what this law does, and what it does not.
1. What an enabling act is (and why the difference matters)
An enabling act does not regulate a subject: it authorizes the government to regulate it, within boundaries and principles set by Parliament. Once the delegation is approved, the government has twelve months to write the legislative decrees containing the actual rules.
Translated: June 4 did not approve Italy's return to nuclear power. It approved the mandate to write the rules for that return. The distance between the two lies entirely in the implementing decrees, and that is where the real friction will show.
2. What is inside
The fields of intervention outlined for the future decrees:
- construction and operation of new-generation plants, focused on SMRs — small modular reactors — including advanced forms (AMRs) and microreactors
- hydrogen production through nuclear energy
- spent fuel management and plant safety
- reorganization of sector governance, redefining the functions of competent bodies and establishing oversight authorities
The technology choice is explicit: not large third-generation reactors, but modularity. The reference to breeder fourth-generation designs, with the capacity to reduce waste volumes, is the political answer to the waste question — the question on which every Italian nuclear discussion has run aground since 1987.
The timeline stated by Minister Pichetto Fratin for the first operating reactors is 2034-2035.
3. Where we are now
| Step | Status |
|---|---|
| Chamber approval | June 4, 2026 ✓ |
| Senate approval | in progress |
| Legislative decrees | 12 months from delegation |
| First reactors operating | 2034-2035 (stated target) |
The government was counting on final approval before the summer recess. As of June 24, 2026, the date of this article, the Senate's final green light has not yet arrived: the bill remains before Palazzo Madama. We will update this passage when there is something to update.
4. What the delegation does not solve
Three absences, and they are the three that matter.
The sites. The act identifies no location. Site selection is deferred to the decrees and the procedures they will define, with everything that implies for local consent — an area where the country's track record is not encouraging, and not only on nuclear.
The national repository. Managing existing radioactive waste remains a twenty-year-old open question, independent of new nuclear and still without a designated site.
The price. No enabling act can say what a kilowatt-hour from an Italian SMR will cost in 2035, because nobody in the world yet has a track record of commercial SMRs to calculate it from.
5. Why, for data centers, the honest answer is "not yet"
Here something unpopular needs saying, in a sector that loves pairing AI and nuclear in every press release.
Nuclear will not power Italian data centers this decade. A plant operating in 2034-2035, in the best case and without slippage, arrives after the useful life of an entire technology refresh cycle for the data centers being permitted right now. Anyone selling a "nuclear-ready" data center project in Italy today is selling a slide.
What powers Italian data centers over the next eight years is what already exists: renewables, grid, storage, efficiency. And that is precisely why locating in Southern Italy weighs more than any atomic roadmap — the surplus renewable energy is already there, today, and in some hours it is actually curtailed for lack of load.
That said, the delegation matters for three concrete reasons even to those designing digital infrastructure:
- Long-term bankability. With the EU Taxonomy admitting nuclear among financeable activities under defined conditions, a national legal framework makes twenty-year PPAs conceivable where today no Italian counterparty exists.
- Dispatchable baseload in the 2030s. For a flat 24/7 load like an AI campus, the future availability of firm generation alongside renewables changes the risk profile of a long-term contract.
- Governance and safety. Reorganizing oversight bodies will produce skills and physical- and cyber-security standards for critical infrastructure that will land well beyond the nuclear perimeter.
6. How we will read the next year
Three indicators, in order of importance: the date of the Senate vote, the quality of the first implementing decree on governance, and how the siting question gets handled — with serious participatory procedures, or with yet another attempt to decide first and explain later.
In 1987 Italy closed a chapter with three referendum questions. In 2026 it opens another with an enabling act. Thirty-nine years separate the two dates; another eight separate the law from the reactors, in the best case. Worth remembering every time someone puts AI and the atom in the same sentence.
Note: this article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal or financial advice. The status of the parliamentary process is current as of the publication date.