Italy Swings Open the Door to Nuclear Energy

pa href="http://lh6.ggpht.com/_7Jg6_0lMHc0/Snb7iRoeVAI/AAAAAAAAAy4/UWrxfDDdQGQ/s1600-h/Italian%20nuclear%20plant%5B4%5D.jpg"img title="Italian nuclear plant" style="border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px; display: inline; margin-left: 0px; border-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; border-bottom: 0px" height="183" alt="Italian nuclear plant" src="http://lh4.ggpht.com/_7Jg6_0lMHc0/Snb7jBYdeYI/AAAAAAAAAy8/9yTlIzgKEDo/Italian%20nuclear%20plant_thumb%5B2%5D.jpg?imgmax=800" width="148" align="right" border="0" //a No sooner does Italy drop its ban on new nuclear plant development than someone a href="http://www.latimes.com/business/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-eu-italy-enel-edf,0,3038113.story"starts developing them/a:/p blockquote pThe Italian energy company Enel has formed a joint venture with France's EdF to develop nuclear energy in Italy, the companies said in a joint statement Monday./p pThe companies billed the move quot;as the first substantial stepquot; toward establishing nuclear plants in Italy following the approval of an Italian law last month allowing a return to nuclear energy more than two decades after voters shut down the country's reactors./p /blockquote pThe new venture is called Italy Nuclear Development (Sviluppo Nucleare Italia). You can read Enel’s take on this development a href="http://www.enel.com/en/press_room/dettaglio.aspx?iddoc=1618970"here/a. Interestingly, a href="http://www.enel.com/en/"Enel/a is not completely new to this:/p blockquote pEdF and Enel have been working together since 2007 on the construction of a third-generation reactor in Flamanville in Normandy, in which Enel owns a 12.5 percent stake. By a separate agreement Enel will take an identical-sized stake in the second EPR reactor that EdF is to build at Penly in Normandy./p /blockquote pAt first, we thought Enel’s interest was to import some of the electricity from France – and that might well be part of the deal – but Flamanville and Penly are both in the northern part of France, nowhere near the Italian border. Given France’s profile – 80% of their electricity is generated by nuclear energy – maybe it doesn’t matter – maybe Enel was just getting up to speed on new technologies. In any event, here comes nuclear energy in Italy. Welcome./p pemAn Italian nuclear plant. The country had four at most and closed them all in the wake of Chernobyl./em/p div class="blogger-post-footer"img width='1' height='1' src='https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/tracker/10911751-8143100387386952800?l=neinuclearnotes.blogspot.com'//div