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Evaluation of a potential reintroduction of nuclear energy in Italy to accelerate the energy transition

Nuclear energy was adopted in Italy in the past to deal with the insufficient fossil fuels on the national territory. After a public vote subsequent to the Chernobyl accident, Italy abandoned the use of nuclear energy and nowadays adopts a mix of fossil fuels and renewable energy sources for electri...

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Autores principales: Bersano, Andrea, Segantin, Stefano, Falcone, Nicolò, Panella, Bruno, Testoni, Raffaella
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Elsevier Inc. 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7334142/
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tej.2020.106813
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author Bersano, Andrea
Segantin, Stefano
Falcone, Nicolò
Panella, Bruno
Testoni, Raffaella
author_facet Bersano, Andrea
Segantin, Stefano
Falcone, Nicolò
Panella, Bruno
Testoni, Raffaella
author_sort Bersano, Andrea
collection PubMed
description Nuclear energy was adopted in Italy in the past to deal with the insufficient fossil fuels on the national territory. After a public vote subsequent to the Chernobyl accident, Italy abandoned the use of nuclear energy and nowadays adopts a mix of fossil fuels and renewable energy sources for electricity production. However, the urging environmental pollution and climate change issues are forcing Italy to realize a so-called “energy transition” towards a more sustainable energy production and consumption system. In this framework, following the examples of other countries, it could be re-evaluated the adoption of nuclear to reduce the consumption of fossil fuels. In the present paper, it is presented an overview of the nuclear energy history in Italy and the current and projected electricity demand and supply. Then, with reference to the Italian framework and policies, the main advantages and disadvantages of a hypothetical reintroduction of nuclear energy are presented. The analysis shows that the adoption of nuclear energy would bring several advantages in terms of lower emissions, higher security of supply and enabling of possible other technologies; the main disadvantages are related to the opposing public opinion and the nuclear waste management.
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spelling pubmed-73341422020-07-06 Evaluation of a potential reintroduction of nuclear energy in Italy to accelerate the energy transition Bersano, Andrea Segantin, Stefano Falcone, Nicolò Panella, Bruno Testoni, Raffaella The Electricity Journal Article Nuclear energy was adopted in Italy in the past to deal with the insufficient fossil fuels on the national territory. After a public vote subsequent to the Chernobyl accident, Italy abandoned the use of nuclear energy and nowadays adopts a mix of fossil fuels and renewable energy sources for electricity production. However, the urging environmental pollution and climate change issues are forcing Italy to realize a so-called “energy transition” towards a more sustainable energy production and consumption system. In this framework, following the examples of other countries, it could be re-evaluated the adoption of nuclear to reduce the consumption of fossil fuels. In the present paper, it is presented an overview of the nuclear energy history in Italy and the current and projected electricity demand and supply. Then, with reference to the Italian framework and policies, the main advantages and disadvantages of a hypothetical reintroduction of nuclear energy are presented. The analysis shows that the adoption of nuclear energy would bring several advantages in terms of lower emissions, higher security of supply and enabling of possible other technologies; the main disadvantages are related to the opposing public opinion and the nuclear waste management. Elsevier Inc. 2020 2020-07-04 /pmc/articles/PMC7334142/ http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tej.2020.106813 Text en © 2020 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Since January 2020 Elsevier has created a COVID-19 resource centre with free information in English and Mandarin on the novel coronavirus COVID-19. The COVID-19 resource centre is hosted on Elsevier Connect, the company's public news and information website. Elsevier hereby grants permission to make all its COVID-19-related research that is available on the COVID-19 resource centre - including this research content - immediately available in PubMed Central and other publicly funded repositories, such as the WHO COVID database with rights for unrestricted research re-use and analyses in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for free by Elsevier for as long as the COVID-19 resource centre remains active.
spellingShingle Article
Bersano, Andrea
Segantin, Stefano
Falcone, Nicolò
Panella, Bruno
Testoni, Raffaella
Evaluation of a potential reintroduction of nuclear energy in Italy to accelerate the energy transition
title Evaluation of a potential reintroduction of nuclear energy in Italy to accelerate the energy transition
title_full Evaluation of a potential reintroduction of nuclear energy in Italy to accelerate the energy transition
title_fullStr Evaluation of a potential reintroduction of nuclear energy in Italy to accelerate the energy transition
title_full_unstemmed Evaluation of a potential reintroduction of nuclear energy in Italy to accelerate the energy transition
title_short Evaluation of a potential reintroduction of nuclear energy in Italy to accelerate the energy transition
title_sort evaluation of a potential reintroduction of nuclear energy in italy to accelerate the energy transition
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7334142/
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tej.2020.106813
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