Nuclear enabling act: twelve months to write the rules that will bind you

Your firm has already spent money to stay inside the Italian nuclear perimeter: licensed personnel, calibrated instruments, radiation protection procedures, insurance cover, supply qualifications. That spending holds for as long as the rules defining it hold — and those rules are being rewritten from scratch, in full, by 15 October 2027. Nobody will write to warn you: the decrees will arrive already drafted.

What was published on 30 September

Law no. 169 of 29 September 2026, «Delega al Governo in materia di energia nucleare sostenibile» — delegating powers on sustainable nuclear energy — appears in the Italian Official Gazette, General Series no. 227 of 30 September 2026, and enters into force on 15 October 2026. On Normattiva the articles still show as not yet in force, for that very date: the text can only be read in the gazette PDF. We read all five articles.

An enabling act does not lay down rules: it authorises someone else to lay them down. No obligation affecting your firm arises from this law. The obligations will arise from the legislative decrees it allows the government to write, and those do not yet exist. Which is why the moment to make a difference is not publication, but the stretch when the draft circulates between the Unified Conference, the Council of State and the committees.

Twelve months, four subject areas

Article 1(1) empowers the government «ad adottare, entro dodici mesi dalla data di entrata in vigore della presente legge, uno o più decreti legislativi» — to adopt one or more legislative decrees within twelve months of entry into force — laying down the rules, including by codification, for four subject areas: the production and use of sustainable nuclear energy on national territory, in accordance with the EU taxonomy under the delegated act adopted pursuant to Article 10(3) of Regulation (EU) 2020/852; the manufacture and reprocessing of nuclear fuel; the decommissioning of existing plants, radioactive waste, spent fuel and fusion; and the reorganisation of competences and functions in the field.

Twelve months from 15 October 2026 means 15 October 2027. Paragraph 3 adds twenty-four months of corrective decrees after each one.

The opinions have deadlines. Once they lapse, the work proceeds anyway

Paragraph 2 is the part worth reading twice. The decrees are adopted on a proposal from the Minister for the Environment and Energy Security, jointly with ten other ministers — enterprise and made in Italy, defence, universities and research, health, infrastructure and transport, culture, labour and social policy, civil protection and sea policy, sport and youth, economy and finance — after agreement in the Unified Conference, and with the opinion of the Council of State, given within forty-five days of each draft being transmitted, «decorso il quale il Governo può comunque procedere»: after which the government may proceed in any event.

Then parliament. The competent committees rule within thirty days of transmission, «decorso il quale il decreto legislativo può essere comunque adottato»: after which the legislative decree may be adopted in any event. If the committees flag provisions as non-compliant and the government will not comply, the text returns to parliament and the final opinion comes within ten days — after which applying again.

These are deadlines meant to speed things up, not conditions: their expiry does not stop the decree, it releases it. For anyone in the supply chain the consequence is single: the window for getting a technical observation to the drafters lasts weeks, opens without notice, and never reopens. It is the pattern we described for the facial recognition decree.

Seventeen sub-paragraphs, and your trade is in them

Article 2 sets out the subject matter in seventeen lettered sub-paragraphs, a) to s). Those that touch a firm already operating:

e) the decommissioning and dismantling of «installazioni nucleari esistenti nel territorio nazionale alla data di entrata in vigore della presente legge, che non siano destinate alla ricerca» — nuclear installations existing on national territory when this law enters into force, other than research ones — together with the rules on the permitted use of their sites;
f), g) and h): testing, siting, construction or installation and operation, through to decommissioning, of new generating plants — including for the production of hydrogen and heat — of fuel manufacturing and reprocessing plants, and of interim storage and final disposal facilities. All three repeat «nel rispetto del principio di regolazione dell’intero ciclo di vita degli impianti» — the whole life cycle of a plant is regulated — and all three take in the associated safety and radiation protection systems;
i) use including for the naval and maritime sector; l) fusion, including its regulatory aspects.

Thirty-two criteria, three that change the numbers

Article 3 lays down thirty-two guiding principles and criteria, a) to mm). This is not a blank cheque: the constraints exist and they are specific. Three should be read now.

The single consent. Sub-paragraph f) provides for integrated consenting procedures run by the Ministry for the Environment and Energy Security; g) provides that the consent «sostituisca ogni provvedimento amministrativo, autorizzazione, concessione, licenza, nulla osta e atto di assenso, comunque denominati» — replaces every administrative measure, authorisation, concession, licence, clearance and act of consent, however named — except environmental assessment decisions under Part Two of Legislative Decree 152/2006. Sub-paragraph h) makes it a planning variation; i) declares the works in the public interest, not deferrable and urgent. For a local authority that means the casework moves elsewhere; for a supplier, that the body which grants and withdraws changes.

Foreign credentials. Sub-paragraph l) provides for recognition of credentials and certificates already issued by the competent authorities of an OECD Nuclear Energy Agency member State, or of States bound to Italy by bilateral agreements in the sector. Anyone holding qualifications earned abroad has a direct interest in how that recognition gets drafted.

Who pays. Sub-paragraph o) requires financial guarantees «con oneri esclusivamente a carico del soggetto abilitato», with costs borne solely by the consent holder, including through funds for decommissioning and waste; v) puts the cost of safety and radiation protection inspections on nuclear operators; z) adds insurance cover against operating risks. As with landfills, the guarantee becomes a recurring cost you have to evidence.

There is a fourth element, and it is an absence: who the regulator will be has not been decided. Article 2(p) speaks of reorganising or abolishing the existing bodies with a view to assessing an independent administrative authority for nuclear safety, and Article 3 repeats «ove istituita», if established, every time it refers back. Today you do not know who will grant the consent, who will inspect, or who will qualify your people. Article 5 allocates 20 million euro for each of 2027, 2028 and 2029, and closes with the clause that implementation must create no new or increased burden on public finances.

The two axes, applied

Complying. What helps here is not an opinion: it is a control that runs weekly over the places where drafts surface — Unified Conference, Council of State, committees — and compares them against an inventory of your consents, staff qualifications, policies, guarantees and radiation protection procedures, each tied to the rule that supports it today. When a draft touches one of those rules you know within the day, with time to comment. And the trail remains: what you observed, against which version of the text, on what date. Nothing reopens afterwards, and that trail is the only proof you took part.

Deciding. The same system holds in one operating model the data that in the energy sector sits in separate places — plant records, technical archives, business systems, sensors, consent documents — and on that model AI agents carry out decisions with an operator in command, for large enterprises, defence, public administration and healthcare. When the first decree is published, the question which of our papers loses its legal basis is answered in a morning across the whole archive, rather than folder by folder. Always on-premise, on self-contained machines needing no deep integration into your network, or in a dedicated cloud with dedicated VPN and a data centre in Italy, and always co-managed: you need not already employ people who administer models.

From the first session, at no cost, you get a dated inventory of your consents and qualifications with, for each, the rule that supports it today and the sub-paragraph of Article 3 that could rewrite it. It stays with you whether or not we go further. Talk it through with one of our engineers.