People spilled out into the streets of Rome yesterday in jubilation to celebrate the so called “Italian Spring” – the people in four referenda had delivered crushingly humiliating defeats on the beleaguered Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. In one referendum the Italian people voted by well over 90% to reject Silvio Berlusconi’s plans for a return to nuclear power generation. To say that Monday was a crushing victory for the anti-nuclear movement in Italy is a massive understatement. The expected majority against nuclear power was estimated to be likely to be 94%.

Would you be comfortable raising your children next door to a nuclear power plant? Until yesterday many would have answered in the negative citing clusters of leukaemia around nuclear power plants as the reason. Well, this should not be the case any more according a study published yesterday which found that there is no link between childhood-Leukaemia and Nuclear power plants. Studies in America and Germany had raised this theory.

Ukraine is marking the 25th anniversary of the world’s worst nuclear accident. Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on Tuesday visited the Chernobyl power plant site to attend a memorial service. The anniversary comes at a poignant time with reinvigorated global protests over nuclear power in the aftermath less than two months ago of a devastating earthquake and tsunami that has devastated Japan’s Fukushima nuclear plant.