PARIS, March 8, 2010 (AFP) - Italy should generate a quarter of its electricity with nuclear power after recently overturning a ban on reactors, the head of energy giant Enel said on Monday at a major conference in Paris.
    "I propose that 25 percent of Italy's energy be generated with nuclear power," Enel chief executive Fulvio Conti said.
    The Italian government last month approved a decree setting out the procedure for restarting nuclear power, which was banned by a 1987 referendum.
    Conti pointed out that 18 percent of the electricity imported by Italy was already nuclear-generated, coming mainly from France.
    France currently covers around 75 percent of its electricity needs with nuclear power -- the highest proportion of any economy in the world.
    French President Nicolas Sarkozy on Monday urged international financial bodies to fund a new era of global nuclear power and talked up France's own technology at a conference attended by delegates from 60 countries.
    Italy's ban was enacted following a nuclear meltdown in Chernobyl, Ukraine in 1986 that sent highly radioactive fallout over large areas of Europe.
    The country's four nuclear plants operating at the time were shut down.