Greenpeace demands a nuclear-free Veneto at the Lido di Venetia (© Francesco Alesi / Greenpeace)

This morning 20 GP activists from Italy and Austria made a 2000 square-metre anti-nuclear-sign at the Lido di Venezia in a spectacular protest against the planned nuclear ‘renaissance’ in Italy.

Italy is planning the construction of four new nuclear power plants. The plans include a new nuclear power plant at the south of Venice, only 160 kilometres from the Austrian border and next to the most popular Italian tourist beaches. As part of the protest Greenpeace handed over a petition to the Venetian governor Luca Zaia asking him to declare the Veneto region a Nuclear Free zone.

 (© Francesco Alesi / Greenpeace)

Italy’s Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is ignoring the majority of the Italian population who, after the Chernobyl disaster, voted at a referendum in 1987 to ban nuclear power in Italy. Two thirds of Italians are against nuclear energy.

The country has chosen to adopt AREVA’s infamous EPR reactor design which is not yet operational anywhere in the world. The prototypes currently being built in
Finland and France are already notorious for their safety concerns, massive cost overruns and schedule delays.

It’s not even that Italy needs nuclear energy, on the contrary. Energy efficiency and renewable energy programmes will deliver three times more energy by 2020 than these nuclear plans. That’s a renaissance of which Italy could be proud.

(More information is available in Italian on Greenpeace Italy’s website and in German at Greenpeace Austria.)