International Bank for Reconstruction and Development

Abstract

The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development announced on September 16, 1959, a loan equivalent to $40 million for the construction of a 150,000-kilowatt atomic power plant in Italy. This represented the Bank's first loan for the development of nuclear power. The project was the outcome of a joint study begun in 1957 with the Italian government on the technical, economic, and financial merits of a large nuclear power plant to be located in southern Italy. The loan was made to the Cassa per il Mezzogiorno, an Italian government agency, which was to relend the proceeds to the Società Elettronucleare Nazionale (SENN), a corporation which included nine public utilities companies and five industrial companies as shareholders, and was established to build, own, and operate the plant. The total cost of the project was estimated at the equivalent of $66.4 million, of which the International Bank's loan represented about 60 percent, the remainder to be provided by SENN's stockholders. The Bank's loan, which was guaranteed by the Republic of Italy, was to be for a twenty-year term, bearing 6 percent interest, with amortization beginning on February 15, 1964.