Because Calenda is wrong about nuclear power.
One of the funniest things about this election campaign, at least when viewed from abroad, is the absurd way in which some Italian parties talk about nuclear power. The first is the League, but I don't expect them to be connected to reality. The second is Calenda, who, behind her heralded desire for common sense, tackles the subject in a way that is completely devoid of it.
There are two reasons why it is better today to let go of nuclear power in Italy. The first is of a political nature.
So: the universities that taught nuclear engineering were closed more than 30 years ago, after the famous referendum. It is true that Italy has a lot of physicists, but building and operating a power plant, in addition to them, requires intense engineering work. If you also want it safe, efficient, etc.
I am giving this example to make it clear that the nuclear power supply chain should be rebuilt from scratch, even starting from know-how. And leaving without know-how means leaving without patents. And starting without patents means buying everything from abroad, at the price that others decide, and in conditions of oligopoly (there are not many companies that make nuclear reactors).
This alone would be an argument, but if we go forward, we are at the point: rebuilding the nuclear power supply chain in Italy to make it self-sufficient takes 20 years. FOUR legislatures.
It is simply impossible for a project as controversial as nuclear power to survive four terms. Point.
And I can't understand Calenda, who comes out of a coalition saying that it will never remain all together due to internal disputes, and then saying that according to him a controversial project like nuclear power can withstand the four legislatures that serve to set it up ( not to mention the next fifty years).
The second point is the industrial one: if we say that we have to get out of fossil fuels within two thousand years, we are giving bad news to companies like ENI and Italgas. It becomes difficult to think of a future for them.
The tragedy here is that it is necessary to find an alternative to nuclear power, which can allow ENI and Italgas to make a transition, and which can allow them to enhance the wealth of know-how they have.
In this sense, it is easy to identify the Geothermal. For several reasons:
- ENI has a wealth of geological know-how of enormous value.
- ENI has a wealth of know-how in drilling of enormous value.
- Italgas has an enormous heritage in creating networks of pipes in urban areas, which are necessary for district heating (Bergamo, Ferrara and other cities already use district heating, and it is another very interesting side of geothermal energy).
- District heating integrates (as was the case in Ferrara) the geothermal source with local waste-to-energy plants. And Calenda says he is in favor of waste-to-energy plants.
In other words, it is a question of starting to involve these actors, leading them to increase the share of business on geothermal while that on fossil fuels decreases. In this way, two enormous industrial realities would be saved.
In reality, in the comparison between geothermal and nuclear, geothermal wins in all possible ways:
- it has no emissions
- it does not waste
- it has no danger of disasters like Chernobyl.
- The source is abundant in Italy (uranium is not).
- Italy already has power plants, so it already has patents.
- Italy already has power stations, so it already has trained engineers.
And scaling an existing source, of course, is faster. It doesn't take a genius to figure it out.
The choice of nuclear power as a source, in a country that sits on two geological faults, cannot be explained. Everywhere in Italy you drill below two thousand meters you will encounter a thermal source of heat: and for companies such as oil companies, two thousand meters are for beginners.
And not because I say it:
https://www.enelgreenpower.com/it/learning-hub/energie-rinnovabili/energia-geotermica/italia
Under these conditions, this crazy love for nuclear power is inexplicable: Italy is sitting on an immense, clean and safe source of energy.
Because Nuclear, only Calenda knows. And here it is not a question of being for or against nuclear power: the problem is to observe that there is a far better source.
My personal opinion on those who propose nuclear power, both in Italy and in Germany, where it is thought to stop the closure of the plants, is that civil nuclear also produces (by enrichment in reactors) materials that are used for the military.
Does Italy intend to make the atomic bomb?