Will Italian nuclear power restart from nuclear fusion? Meloni’s words and the facts

During the conference " Science at the center of the state ", promoted by the Italian Scientists' Association (ISS, who knows why not call it the Italian Association of Scientists).

What the Prime Minister said:

A great perspective, a great vision, a great dream derive from the possibility of producing clean and unlimited energy from nuclear fusion in the not so distant future . Italy is the homeland of Enrico Fermi, in this regard it is second to none thanks to its know-how, research and development activity, our production system: we can continue to grow, to give the world new discoveries and a better future it's different.

So the Prime Minister gave the green light to Italian nuclear power, but only from fusion. Who knows why he avoided talking about other ways of safe nuclear energy, such as, for example, thorium reactors: these are intrinsically safe reactors, which use safe fissile material, which cannot be used for military purposes, on which India and China and which, among other things, is compatible with the CANDU reactors on which Ansaldo Nucleare also works. Perhaps we didn't want to make too technical a statement, but a reminder would have been interesting.

Let's go back to Italy: at what stage is fusion in our country?

Italy has some ongoing experiments related to nuclear fusion, including relevant ones. In Frascati, the Metropolitan City of Rome (20 km south-east of Rome), a new tokamak, the Divertor Tokamak Test facility ( DTT), is under construction.

First proposed in 2015, the DTT project is the result of a collaboration between scientists from several Italian institutions and European fusion laboratories. In September 2019, the DTT Consortium was established with the mission of realizing the project. Made up of many Italian research institutes, governmental and regional partners and international stakeholders, the consortium raised almost 500 million euros to build the facility. Both DTT and ITER are expected to come into operation at approximately similar times.

Unlike ITER, DTT's primary mission is not to achieve deuterium-tritium fusion – it will primarily use only deuterium fuel – but to explore and test the physics and technology of plasma thermal power exhaust concepts that could be used in the European DEMO reactor (demonstration power plant), the machine that Europe is designing as a successor to ITER. In tokamak devices, power exhaust is usually handled with a special component, known as a diverter, often (as in ITER) installed at the bottom of the reactor chamber.

ENI also has an active role in the pursuit of nuclear fusion . The energy company is collaborating with MIT and Commonwealth Fusion, a very innovative project that should lead to a functioning commercial fusion by 20230 and which is based on a new type of extremely efficient magnets already tested in 2021. This project is currently under construction and it is a shame that ENI did not build part of it in Italy

In Italy, nuclear projects are linked to the National Platform for Sustainable Nuclear Energy of the Ministry for the Environment. What is Italy missing?

• funding for testing alternative technologies to the Tokamak, such as inertial fusion and participating in private initiatives:
• a coordination of public or participatory bodies and companies that helps research start-ups in the nuclear energy sector;
• legislation that simplifies and provides for, for example, the installation of low-risk and innovative reactors outside the territory, for example on maritime platforms, in order to overcome the NIMBY problem.
• Shift the useless PNRR funds to this issue, instead of hundreds of small initiatives.

We will see if the interest in nuclear power is only superficial, or if it really will have future developments.

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The article Will Italian nuclear power restart from nuclear fusion? Meloni's words and facts come from Scenari Economici .

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This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/il-nucleare-italiano-ripartira-dalla-fusione-nucleare-giorgia-meloni/ on Sat, 06 Apr 2024 07:44:39 +0000.