ENI also invests in nuclear fusion to achieve Italian energy independence
The Italian energy giant ENI has signed a cooperation agreement with CFS to accelerate the development of fusion power plants, foreseeing the construction of an operational prototype as early as 2025 and the first a commercial plant in the early 2030s. This is not the is the only industrial commitment linked to nuclear power in Italy, while the country is re-evaluating this abandoned energy source on the emotional impetus of the Chernobyl accident.
The agreement between ENI and Commonwealth Fusion Systems, born from a spin off of MIT, provides for cooperation to accelerate the development and commercialization of nuclear fusion energy. The two companies started working together as early as 2018, with Eni increasing its shareholder role to become CFS's largest investor.
The companies are developing SPARC, an innovative compact tokamak, which is expected to become the world's first magnetic confinement pilot plant with net fusion energy production, which will be operational in 2025.
The Tokamak developed by the MIT-ENI collaboration, the SPARC
SPARC will pioneer ARC, the first commercial power plant capable of feeding electricity into the grid. It is expected to be operational in early 2030.
Progress in progress. The companies hit the headlines in September 2021 when CFS successfully tested its original, patented superconductor technology, which has produced the strongest magnets of their kind, and will allow it to confine plasma at 150 million degrees that will circulate in its fusion reactor.
“ Eni was the first energy company to believe and invest in fusion, which could make an important contribution to the energy transition once developed at an industrial level ,” reads a company statement.
Looking to the future: “We will see the first magnetic confinement fusion-based CFS power plant early in the next decade, and then we will have nearly two decades ahead of us to deploy the technology and meet energy transition goals by 2050,” he said. the managing director of Eni Claudio Descalzi.
“ Having this technology at an industrial level, which provides large quantities of zero-carbon energy produced in a safe, clean and virtually inexhaustible way, will mean contributing substantially to the challenge of the energy transition. This is why we are facing a potentially epochal technological breakthrough .
“ Now we further strengthen this collaboration with our skills and experience, with the aim of accelerating the process of industrialization of fusion as much as possible “.
Elsewhere in the sector: This week, other Italian energy companies – Edison and Ansaldo – signed a letter of intent with the French giant EDF to collaborate in the development of nuclear fission in Europe, including Italy, especially in the field of small modular reactors.
“ Nuclear power is not only a feasible but also a necessary path in the light of current socio-economic imperatives ,” Gianpiero Zinzi, a Lega deputy who recently presented a resolution in support of the construction of modern nuclear power plants, told our website.
He added that the synergies between the Mattei Plan (the Italian plan for achieving energy independence through a network of investments and positive relations with foreign countries) and fourth-generation clean nuclear power are "tangible and concrete".
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The article ENI also invests in nuclear fusion to achieve Italian energy autonomy comes from Scenari Economici .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/eni-investe-anche-nella-fusione-nucleare-per-il-raggiungimento-dellautonomia-energetica-italiana/ on Sun, 19 Mar 2023 09:00:16 +0000.