ROME: Marilena Capitanio was a carefree 24-year-old trainee nurse living in a small town in northern Italy when disaster struck, 1,000 miles away.
“Of course I remember Chernobyl,” she said of the 1986 nuclear meltdown in the Soviet-era power plant of modern-day Ukraine.
“We were told to avoid fresh vegetables as they might have been contaminated. It was all pretty scary. A colleague of mine bought two huge freezers and spent the next five months eating only frozen food,” she recalled.
Though hardly any radioactive fallout ever reached Italy, the worst accident in the history of nuclear power had a massive psychological impact on health-conscious Italians.
About 17 months later, on November 8, 1987, Capitanio and most of her compatriots banished nuclear energy by taking part in a referendum that received the support of more than 80% of voters. The last of Italy’s existing nuclear power plants was finally shut in 1990.
A growing number of people now believe this was a tragic mistake.
One of the main effects of the anti-nuclear stance is that Italy depends heavily on oil and natural gas bought in other countries, with total energy imports estimated at about 15% of its total requirements.
According to a 2005 report by the International Energy Agency (IEA), Italy is in fact the world’s largest energy importer ahead of Germany, Brazil and the US.
This, in turn means Italians pay the highest electricity bills in Europe – 14.6 euro cents per kilowatt/hour compared to a European average of 10 cents and just 5.6 cents in Greece.
Meanwhile, soaring petrol prices mean Italians are paying record amounts to fill up their cars.
The repercussions of the 1987 vote, however, are not only financial. In September 2003, for instance,millions of Italians were left without electricity for most of the day because a tree fell onto a power line in neighbouring Switzerland and interrupted supplies to Italy.
In January, the government forced Italians to turn down their heating systems and urged them to minimise their consumption of natural gas because of a fall in supply from Russia.
More than 60% of Italy’s imported gas comes from Russia and Algeria while most of its oil comes from another potentially unstable part of the area, the Middle East, prompting alarm among the experts.
“Our energetic setup is too fragile, too dependent on gas and petrol. Italy’s energy supplies are not secure,” Pippo Ranci, the former head of Italy’s energy authority, warned in an interview with daily Corriere della Sera.
The latest energy crises have prompted the government to reconsider its stance on nuclear power.
Industry Minister Claudio Scajola effectively kickstarted the nuclear debate last November by proposing the constructing of nuclear power plants.
Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has added his voice by saying Italy should start producing its own nuclear energy.
The problem, Berlusconi said on Italian television, is that local governments still oppose the construction of such plants in their own territory. And with a closely-fought general election scheduled for April 9, Berlusconi acknowledged that this was not the right time to bring up such a delicate issue.
And yet, there are signs that public opinion is beginning to shift.
According to a recent poll published by weekly L’Espresso, 47% of Italians are now in favour of nuclear energy, compared to 40% a year ago. Those against have fallen from 51 to 44% over the same period, the poll found.
Capitanio, who is now an experienced health professional working in southern Italy, says she would still vote no if a new anti-nuclear referendum were to be held. But others, like Rome schoolteacher Anna Maggiani, say they have changed their minds.
“I voted against nuclear energy in 1987, but today I would, if somewhat reluctantly, vote in favour,” Maggiani said.
Maggiani said she believed today’s power plants are far more secure than what they were 20 years ago and noted that there have been no serious nuclear accidents reported out of neighbouring France, whose power stations are far closer to Italian soil than Chernobyl.
“It seems to me that the whole world has nuclear energy these days, and I don’t see the point in continuing to be a nuclear-free state,” she said. – DPA |
