PRIOLO GARGALLO, Italy (Reuters) - Italy is set to name the head of a new nuclear safety agency within days, moving closer to a relaunch of the nuclear power industry abandoned over 20 years ago, the Environment Minister said on Wednesday.
Setting up a nuclear safety agency is a key step in Italy's plans to revive nuclear energy rejected by a public vote in 1987 after the Chernobyl disaster in Ukraine. But clashing political interests have delayed the new agency, Italian media have said.
"At this point, it's a matter of days," Stefania Prestigiacomo told reporters about nomination of the agency head. She did not name candidates for the job.
"Now we can have a nuclear agency with a strong and authoritative leadership that will finally free the nuclear sector from a thousand irrational fears," she said at the official opening of a new solar power plant in Sicily.
Public opinion in Italy has long been opposed to nuclear power, seen as unsafe and costly.
The agency is expected to define precise criteria for selecting sites for nuclear power stations and oversee their construction and operation, industry players say.
Italy's biggest utility, Enel, has said the timing of its plans to start building nuclear power stations in Italy together with France's power giant EDF depended on the start up of the nuclear safety agency.
Italy is the only Group of Eight industrialized nation without nuclear power, but the government of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi wants construction of nuclear plants to start in 2013 and have a quarter of all power in the country generated at nuclear plants in the future.
RENEWABLE ENERGY MARKETS
In a speech at the opening ceremony, Prestigiacomo also said it was necessary to introduce measures to limit speculative activity on Italy's renewable energy markets which have boomed in the past few years thanks to generous incentive schemes.
"Certainly, it will be necessary to introduce corrections in the future to avoid market distortions and speculative temptations and take into consideration falling costs as technology improves, especially of solar panels," she said without giving details.
"But what counts is to keep incentives and the atmosphere of certainty for hundreds of entrepreneurs who have invested or are ready to invest in renewables," she said.
(Reporting by Deepa Babington, writing by Svetlana Kovalyova; editing by Keiron Henderson)
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