On September 23, 2026, Italy’s Senate gave final approval to S.1924, a government bill on sustainable nuclear energy. The Senate docket described it as definitively approved but not yet published. The vote marks a policy step after decades without nuclear power generation in Italy; it is not a decision to build a particular plant.
The bill delegates the next stage to the government: within 12 months after the act enters into force, it must adopt one or more legislative decrees setting the rules for sustainable nuclear energy. The draft covers a broad framework for the development, safety, licensing and operation of nuclear installations and related activities. Parliament’s vote therefore assigns work to the executive rather than completing project approvals.
That distinction matters for the timeline. A framework law does not choose a location, grant construction permission, order a reactor or settle how a project will be financed. Each of those decisions would require later procedures and institutions. Italy would also need to address site consent, safety review, fuel and waste handling, grid connection and cost before nuclear generation could become an operating source of electricity.
The government has promoted advanced reactors as part of its energy policy, but the Senate vote alone cannot show whether they will arrive on schedule or at a competitive cost. Those outcomes depend on rules still to be written and projects not yet approved. What has changed is the legal route for proposing future nuclear installations; the country has not yet gained new nuclear power capacity.