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For almost forty years, Italy was the rare industrial economy that had walked away from nuclear power completely. Voters rejected it in 1987 and again in 2011, and the country built its energy system around imported gas and, more recently, renewables. That chapter closed this week when the Senate approved a law allowing nuclear generation to return. It was the last step needed to make the law official. The vote was 81 to 51, and the energy minister, Gilberto Pichetto Fratin, called it a historic day.
Italy is not acting alone. Across Europe, countries that once closed the door on nuclear energy are reopening it, because recent years left them uneasy about where their electricity comes from. Switzerland is the closest parallel. Its government proposed lifting a ban on new plants that had been in place since 2017, and the Federal Assembly approved the repeal on June 18, 2026. Opponents have promised to push for a referendum, a reminder that a parliamentary vote is not always the final word.
Elsewhere the moves are smaller but point the same way. Spain still plans to close its reactors by 2035, yet in August it let the Almaraz plant, which supplies more than 7% of the country’s electricity, run until June 2030. The government pointed to gas price swings linked to conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East. Denmark, which banned nuclear power in 1985, is formally studying whether small reactors could work alongside its wind farms. Belgium went further in 2025, repealing the law that required its reactors to close.
Small modular reactors, usually shortened to SMRs, sit at the center of this shift. A conventional nuclear plant is an enormous, custom project that can take many years to build. SMRs are meant to be smaller and made largely in factories, then shipped and installed more like heavy industrial equipment. For a country starting over from scratch, that is an easier case to make, and Italy’s new framework covers SMRs and advanced reactor designs.
That brings attention to Terra Innovatum Global N.V. (NASDAQ: NKLR), a company based in Lucca, in Tuscany. Its reactor, called SOLO, is designed to produce about 1 megawatt of electricity using commercially available low enriched uranium. That is small by nuclear standards, closer to the needs of a factory than a city. The company is targeting industrial users such as cement makers, chemical plants, paper mills and mines. Italy chose to showcase SOLO at the International Atomic Energy Agency’s General Conference, giving the company unusual visibility for its size.
The company went public in October 2025 by merging with a special purpose acquisition company, a listed shell created to take a private business public. The deal was expected to bring in about $130 million, money the company said would support licensing, production and deployment of its first SOLO reactor.
This is where enthusiasm meets the calendar. The company’s most concrete timeline is tied to the United States rather than Italy. It is working through review with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and is aiming for a construction permit and an initial operating authorization in 2027, with its first commercial deployments in 2028. Those are ambitious dates, and first projects have a habit of uncovering problems nobody planned for.
Italy’s law raises questions of its own. Passing a framework is a beginning rather than an end. The country still needs detailed rules on licensing, reactor locations, waste handling and oversight. Denmark offers a sobering benchmark: a study published by its energy agency in February concluded that the most mature SMR designs could reach serial production between 2030 and 2035, and only if demonstration projects succeed and substantial investment follows.
None of this shrinks the importance of the Italian vote. A country that twice said no to nuclear power has changed its mind, and it has done so alongside neighbors wrestling with the same worries about security and cost. What remains uncertain is timing. Laws can change in a single afternoon, but reactors arrive one permit, one component and one inspection at a time. The distance between those two speeds is what anyone following this sector will be watching.
