Pressure to restart nuclear power has mounted as Italy has become the world's largest electricity importer. The Italian environmental movement campaigned against nuclear power during the 1980s, culminating in a 1987 moratorium on nuclear power production. The green movement was partly institutionalised by the Italian state during the 1990s, which contributed to the upholding of the moratorium. Internationally, some environmentalists have recently embraced nuclear power as an environmentally-friendly response to climate change. New nuclear power plants are planned in the USA, UK and ‘considered’ elsewhere. In Italy, however, the 1980s movement has a durable legacy which maintains opposition to nuclear power without evidence of it being reconsidered due to climate change. But in the general election of April 2008, environmentalists' political influence was reduced and a government promising to reopen nuclear plants was elected. Also, imported nuclear power from foreign joint ventures is now increasing and may provide an alternative to re-starting domestic nuclear generation.
MarkJ., The Fission Division: Will Nuclear Power Spilt the Green Movement?Earth Island Journal, Autumn 2007, accessed on 11.3.2008, available at: http://westgatehouse.com/art253.html
5.
Ibid.
6.
Ibid.
7.
DianiM., The concept of social movement, Sociological Review, 1992, No. 40, 13.
8.
GoffmanE., Frame Analysis, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1974, 21.
9.
SnowD.RochfordE.B.WordenS.BenfordR., Frame alignment processes, micromobilization, and movement participation, American Sociological Review, 1986, Vol. 51, 464.
10.
DianiM., Green Networks. A Structural Analysis of the Italian Environmental Movement, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, 1995, 22–25.
11.
Ibid, 29.
12.
BiorcioR., Ecologia e politica nell'opinione pubblica Italiana, Polis, 1987, Vol. 1 (No. 3), 536.
13.
LodiG., Uniti e diversi. Le mobilitazioni per la pace nell'Italia degli anni Ottanta, Unicopli, Milan, 1984, 138–150.
14.
StrassoldoR., The Greening of the Booth: Environmental Awareness, Movements and Policies in Italy, The European Journal of Social Sciences, 1993, Vol. 6 (Issue 4), 457–72.
15.
MelucciA., Challenging Codes. Collective action in the information age, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1996, 164.
16.
SzerszynskiB., On Knowing What to Do: Environmentalism and the Modern Problematic, in: LashS.SzerszynskiB. and WynneB., eds, Risk, Environment and Modernity. Towards a New Ecology, Sage, London, 1998, 105.
17.
DianiM. and FornoF., Italy, in: RootesC., ed., Environmental Protest in Western Europe, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2003, 164.
18.
EderK., The Institutionalisation of Environmentalism: Ecological Discourse and the Second Transformation of the Public Sphere, in: LashS.SzerszynskiB. and WynneB., eds, Risk, Environment and Modernity. Towards a New Ecology, Sage, London, 1998, 206–7.
19.
HajerM., Ecological Modernisation, in: LashS.SzerszynskiB. and WynneB., eds, Risk, Environment and Modernity. Towards a New Ecology, Sage, London, 1998, 252.
20.
EderK., op. cit, 205.
21.
StandishD., Venice and the politics of environmental risk, Ph.D. thesis, University of Kent, UK, 2008.
DianiM., Isole nell'arcipelago. Il movimento ecologista in Italia, Il Mulino, Bologna, 1988, ch. 3.
27.
PortaDella D. and PiazzaG., Voices of the Valley, Voices of the Straits. How Protest Creates Communities, Berghahn Books, New York and Oxford, 2008, 2.
28.
PortaDella D., Comitati di cittadini e democrazia urbana: Una introduzione, in PortaDella D., ed., Comitati di cittadini e democrazia urbana, Rubbettino, Soveria Mannelli, 2004, 22.
