New Delhi, July 31 -- Four decades after the Chernobyl disaster spewed radiation across Europe and turned Italy off nuclear power, Premier Giorgia Meloni 's government is laying the groundwork to bring it back as the country seeks to improve its energy security.

The government is counting on a new generation of Italians who see nuclear power as a source of low-carbon electricity, a tool to help fight climate change and a way to strengthen stable energy supplies amid shocks from the Ukraine and Iran wars.

It's betting that such support will blunt the opinions of Italians who lived through the 1986 nuclear accident, still view atomic energy through the lens of risk and disaster, and twice rejected nuclear power in national referenda, expe...