In this period Italy, like much of the western world, has to revise or at least to reflect on its positions regarding the reality of nuclear energy, especially because of the serious safety concerns arisen in the Japanese nuclear plant of Fukushima, on the west coast of Honshu, after the devastating tsunami that struck the country on March 11^th, 2011. The Japanese government recently announced that, once out of this critical situation, the country will get rid of nuclear power plants to move into cleaner but above all safer energies. Hot on the heels, many countries that currently produce nuclear energy have announced that production will be slowed down and many power stations will be blocked to allow safety verifications.

The Italian government, which has long since heralded a return to nuclear power, is now in a tight spot , and Italians were summoned to decide through a referendum whether the country should go back or not in nuclear power. To clarify ideas about the nature and desirability of a return to nuclear power, we interviewed Sergio Zabot, an engineer specialized in applied ergonomics and than in energetics. He coordinated several researches into energy efficiency and renewable energies and now he heads the Energy Sector of the Central Office for Environmental Resources in the Province of Milan, where he planned and coordinated the Provincial Action Plan for Energy Efficiency.

· First of all, Dr. Zabot, can you explain which is the current position of Italy about nuclear power? - If Italy means the current Italian government, the position is to return to nuclear power. If you mean most Italians, then the government should encourage and allow the referendum to let Italians decide about it

· In deciding whether to vote for or against nuclear power, every citizen must first be informed about the costs to the consumer. Is it true what we recently hear so often, that is that nuclear energy will cost less than the energy sources currently in use? As far as the cost for putting up the nuclear energy production (construction of power plants, their goodwill, etc..), what can you say? - The cost of energy, particularly energy produced by nuclear power plants depends on: 1) the cost of construction of power plants, 2) the cost of fuel, 3) costs for equipment maintenance, 4) financial costs and capital and finally 5) the costs to confine the radioactive waste and dismantling facilities.

1) The costs of building a nuclear power plant are very high and growing because of security issues; currently a 1,600-MW nuclear power plant like the ones they would like to build in Italy doesn't cost less than 8 billion euros.
2) The cost of nuclear fuel (uranium) is very low and accounts for no more than 15% against a good 70% of a natural gas combined cycle. We should however consider that the price of uranium is still sensitive to the price of oil. In April 2007, during the oil crisis, the spot price reached 230 € / kg, an increase of 1250% compared to 2000. This means that uranium prices are not and will not be exempt from the volatility of petroleum products. Claiming that the uranium price will remain low so that we can have giveaway electricity is sheer madness.
3) Costs for maintenance of nuclear plants are high, about twice a gas system. Given the enormous complexity of nuclear plants, they are highly sensitive and vulnerable to stops for maintenance or failures. According to Citigroup, the largest U.S. merchant bank, the risks arising from accidents are still so large that they can not be borne by a single plant but they must be distributed over the whole portfolio of assets of energy companies.
4) The timing of construction of a nuclear installation is very long, around 10 years. Consequently, the interests payable to banks for provided funds are high, not less than 10% per year, unless State guarantees intervene. The same IEA (International Energy Agency) estimates that interests for a nuclear plant during its construction may exceed 75% of the cost of the plant itself.
5) The administrators of nuclear plants must put aside, year after year, the amounts necessary to pay the costs of managing worn-out fuel and the decommissioning of power stations and disposal of radioactive waste. The amount of money set aside each year depends on the estimated cost of decommissioning the plant at the end of its life and the discount rate that is adopted. The method commonly used to ensure that the funds necessary for decommissioning will be available at the end of the useful life of a nuclear installation, is to estimate the cost at current prices and then put aside, year after year, the necessary amounts, assuming a return, or a rate of interest on the capital accrued, such that at the time "of need", funds are actually available. The problem is that no large-scale plant has yet been completely dismantled and all over the world there are no permanent sites in which the radioactive waste can be confined: that is why all the calculations are just “academic” suppositions.

Italy for example has accumulated a debt of over 5.5 billion euros. Each year, the Italian consumer pay 300 million euros, taken directly from electric bills, for dismantling the four nuclear power plants closed more than 22 years ago. And we will have to pay for this at least for the next 20 years. Britain has a worse situation than us. In 2003, when British Energy financially collapsed after privatization imposed by Margaret Thatcher, the funds set aside for decommissioning have been used to pay off debts left by the disastrous management of the system. In 2006, Britain found itself with a debit of 112 billion euros as demand to dismantle the entire civilian nuclear program, and no more than a few hundred million pounds in the state coffer. The consequence of the collapse of British Energy is that the dismantling of its nuclear reactors, already partially paid by consumers, will be repaid in full by Her Majesty's subjects for decades to come. In France, according to the Audit Court, the requirements to dismantle nuclear facilities has exceeded 70 billion euros, but there are no money; even in the United States the prices are exorbitant: according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, only to dismantle th 25 currently inactive reactors they need 12 billion dollars, and if we consider the entire park composed by 104 currently operating reactors well, they will need an additional 50 billion dollars, not yet accrued of course.

Estimates of the electricity costs for new nuclear plants are growing. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston (MIT) has updated the cost of nuclear energy in 2009 to 65 Euro / MWh. Recently, the Department of Energy (DOE) has updated its estimates for electricity generated by new plants by 2020: a good 111 Euros / MWh. Moody's went further by setting the price, again at 2020, to 116 Euros / MWh. We have to keep in mind that that at present in Italy the average price in the Power Exchange is around 70 Euros / MWh. 

In a regulated market, these uncertainties can be shifted on to consumers through regulated tariffs. But in a liberalized market, where costs have to be recovered by acting in competition with other energy sources, there is no way to recover the extra costs accrued during the construction of power stations and the opened ones shall be assisted by the States. We have to remember that in the history of nuclear power has never occurred that a builder of nuclear plants has taken the risk of energy prices. 

Moreover, the Italian government has already taken precautions regarding these issues. In fact the Law N° 99 approved on July 23rd 2009, provided that "the operator of the national transmission system ensures priority to electricity produced by plants that use nuclear energy produced in the country." But the government went even further: by the Executive Order number 31, approved on February 15th 2010, it commissioned to the Minister of Economic Development to identify ways of providing financial and insurance security against the risk of delays in construction and in the activating of nuclear plants. So, have no fear: whatever will be the price of nuclear energy in Italy we will be forced to consume and pay for it.

• Talking about of costs, they would be higher or lower than those for nuclear energy, if Italy will chose to follow the path of operation of renewable energy sources? - There is an important aspect, when dealing with new technologies. History teaches that there is a so-called "learning time" for any technology appearing on the market and this means that with the passing of time and with the improvements in productivity the cost of technology decreases. This is true for traditional technologies, such as combined gas cycle that have significantly increased their yields, approaching the 60% and whose costs have decreased from 1,500 € / kW of the Nineties values to the currently 800-900€ / kW.  This is especially true for the technologies of renewable energy sources, whose price-performance ratio strongly decreased year after year. The cost of solar PV in particular, fell by more than 6,000 € / kW in 2007 to just over € 4,000 / kW in 3 years and for 2020 we expect the so-called "grid parity" around 1,200 € / kW.  Nuclear technology is moving in exactly opposite direction: the more years pass, the higher the costs are: a sign that it is a technology having a marked decline and is therefore destined to die.

• Could you briefly explain what kind of technology would the future Italian nuclear plants use, with particular emphasis on security? - In Italy they would like to build at least four EPR (European Pressurized Reactor) produced by the French Areva, which is already building two plants respectively at Olkiluoto in Finland and at Flamanville on the English Channel. Now, an official note issued last year by Supervisory Agencies of Great Britain, France and Finland, had rejected the emergency safety systems of the plants: not being independent, there is the risk that they go into a tailspin along with the main one, making the reactors impossible to be governed. So far, no word yet on whether and how the problem has been resolved.

• What would be the environmental impact of the construction of nuclear power plants? Which one for the clean energy plants? - According to the Department of Energy (DOE), a site that hosts a 1,000 MW nuclear power plant which occupies 200 hectares need an "exclusion zone" of at least 1,700 hectares. In addition, processing the data from the Argonne National Laboratory, scientists at the Brookhaven National Laboratory and Columbia University have calculated by analyzing the entire life cycle of the nuclear industry that to make a 1,000 MW nuclear plant work for 40 years producing 8,000 GWh / year of electricity, it requires 1,000 acres to extract uranium from a standard mine and 200 acres to enrich uranium. Finally, to confine, whether provisionally or definitively, the worn-out fuel produced in 40 years by the power plant, it needs further 700 hectares of land. In total, a 1,000-MW plant to be operational for 40 years occupies and devastates an area of 3,800 hectares, or 38 km2. Now, on 38 km2 you can can install 2,400 MW of solar PV and produce 3,500 GWh of electric power, comparable to what a nuclear plant that occupies the same space can produce. It is true that the construction of plants fueled by renewable sources like solar photovoltaic needs lands to accommodate the factories and to recycle the components at the end of its life, but surely the land and space, once abandoned, are reusable and do not never occur situations where thousands of square miles of territory are radioactive and banned to all forms of activity for centuries to come.

• Leaving aside the subject Italy, is there any country in the world that, for the time being, has resolved the problems of safety and disposal of radioactive waste? - No major nuclear installation has never been dismantled: no country has yet identified a site for a final disposal of the nuclear waste for the next centuries. The social, environmental and economic costs of these activities seem so high that many people now argue that it is cheaper to abandon and isolate the nuclear reactors at the end of their useful life, with all its radioactive waste within, rather than dismantle and transfer residuals no one knows where. According to a recent study by Ohio University it requires at least 50 years of stop to reduce the general level of radioactivity of a site, and then other 60 years of actual decommissioning. But in more complicated cases according to the English National Audit Office, the process can last over 300 years.

• Do you believe that the majority of the Italian population in the next referendum will declare for or against (as happened in 1980 referendum) the adoption of nuclear power? - The point is if you fail to meet the quorum of 50%, which is very high. In 1980 the government had encouraged the entire debate, but now I do not think the government is interested in the referendum to succeed, and indeed, the moratorium seems more oriented to sink the referendum than to stimulate debate among the people.

• Do you think that the situation of Fukushima plant in Japan have had or will have a strong impact on Italian public and its position on nuclear energy? - I think so.

• A final burdensome question, necessary even if it's not strictly related to the subject we analyzed until now. How do you think the situation will evolve in Japan? - Do not forget that the economic interests related to nuclear technology are very large: it means hundreds if not thousands of billions of euros at a global level. Surely there will be a slowdown, but I think it will take a long time and unfortunately more disasters before we decide to abandon this technology, at least until there will not be a better prospect for the Generation IV reactors. 

Thanks to Dr. Zabot for its accurate and comprehensive answers, which we hope will help every citizen, Italian or not, to decide whether nuclear power can be a resource for the future, or a setback, a failure in the search for a cleaner, safer and, above all, hospitable world for centuries and generations to come.