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 With 83 percent of the vote on a two-day referendum counted, 57 percent of Italian voters turned out to vote overwhelmingly against their country’s continued attempts to launch a nuclear power program, making it the third nation in Europe to dump the peaceful atom in the wake of the Fukushima Daiichi crisis.

Germany decided to shut down its seven oldest nuclear power plants after the Fukushima Daiichi disaster and decided last month to close all its reactors by 2022, in a major policy reversal by Chancellor Angela Merkel. Switzerland, similarly, is poised to close its five reactors –which deliver 40 percent of the country’s energy – by 2035.

Both countries have said they are not willing to run a Fukushima-scale risk and will make up the difference by using renewable energy. Japan, too, has called off its own further plans to develop nuclear power.

The governments of France, England, the United States and Russia still remain stalwart supporters of nuclear power post Fukushima.