ROME, June 10 (UPI) -- With Italy set to vote in a nationwide referendum on nuclear power, Greenpeace unfurled a huge anti-nuclear banner at the Colosseum in Rome, activists said.
Other banners protesting the government's plans to reactivate the country's nuclear power program appeared Friday on the Ponte Vecchio in Florence and St. Mark's bell tower in Venice, the Italian news agency ANSA reported.
Since the Fukushima Daiichi disaster in Japan, there has been a sharp rise in opposition to the government's plan to reactivate nuclear energy activities, suspended in 1987 after the Russian Chernobyl disaster.
Premier Silvio Berlusconi has urged Italians not to vote against the plan.
Such a result in the referendum would be seen as a further defeat for the government after upsets in local elections in Milan, Naples and other cities earlier this month, ANSA said.
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