Comment by blue1
7 hours ago
Italian here. I seriously doubt this thing will lead anywhere. If something slightly more concrete than this will appear, there will be an insurrection. NIMBY is very strong in Italy (after decades of attempts, we are still without a spent fuel depot for this reason).
Also, in the past Italy already voted twice against nuclear. I doubt the popular opinion has changed meanwhile in any significant way. As soon as popular opposition will manifest, the politicians will forget the whole issue.
“Also, in the past Italy already voted twice against nuclear. I doubt the popular opinion has changed meanwhile in any significant way.”
Public opinion can change very quickly, and it usually it does not need to change significantly to have a big impact (see Brexit).
40 years ago public opinion was heavily influenced by the Chernobyl disaster, the last major nuclear accident (Fukushima) happened 15 years ago and it is quite far from memory.
Much more pressing matters today are energy costs and independence, so I expect a new referendum would have at the very least a much closer outcome.
To be fair, the referendums for Nuclear were so poorly timed. Just after Chernobyl and Fukushima.
I don't know if this was a deliberate choice of the governments leading the country those years (the tinfoil hat in me can see big oil pushing for those referendums at those particular times) or pure bad luck. Anyway, public opinion was highly biased which led to "No" winning with fair margins. With that said, I believe NIMBY is a contributing factor and not the whole explanation.