Italy announced Monday it would within weeks create the legislative framework for its first nuclear power stations in almost 40 years.

"By the end of the year we will create the legislative framework to ensure that new third and fourth generation nuclear power plants can be installed in Italy," enterprise minister Adolfo Urso said.

"We do not want to import nuclear reactors from other countries. We want to build them in Italy using Italian technology and science, to export them to other countries," he said on the sidelines of a business conference in Milan.

He said he intended to present an "industrial entity" that could build such reactors.

Italy abandoned nuclear power in November 1987 following a referendum called in the wake of the Chornobyl nuclear accident.

In June 2011, three months after the Fukushima disaster in Japan, some 94 per cent of Italians voted against a return to nuclear energy during another referendum organised by Silvio Berlusconi's government.

But energy security has become a major issue since the war in Ukraine, as Italy was forced to wean itself off Russian gas.

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni's hard right government also believes nuclear energy is essential to achieve the goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050.

Long taboo in Brussels, nuclear power now benefits from more accommodating legislation as a lever for decarbonisation alongside renewables.

The European Parliament and EU member states agreed in February to include the entire nuclear sector in the list of "strategic technologies". 

Urso said the use of nuclear power could help lower the cost of energy in Italy, which is, he said, "too expensive compared to European competitors". 

"Nuclear energy, which was invented in this country, must once again become the pride of the 'Made in Italy' brand," Urso said.

He was referring to the Italian-American physicist Enrico Fermi, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1938 and famous for having created the first nuclear reactor.