Today we know that it is possible to produce energy from nuclear fusion, without generating polluting gases or radioactive waste. The so-called “magnetic confinement fusion” works through a plasma, i.e. a rarefied and very hot gas (up to 150 million degrees centigrade) of ions and electrons, enclosed thanks to a magnetic field inside a donut-shaped container called tokamak, maximizing its performance thanks to an algorithm by researchers from the Swiss Plasma Center of EPFL and Google.
It is a road “sacrificed” for more geopolitical than economic reasons and undermined over the years by the usual fake news circulated after the Chernobyl accident. In the Seventies, Bruno Coppi, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston, imagined the future we know now. His Ignitor project, born from an Italian-Russian agreement, envisaged “hybrid” nuclear power (a combination of fusion and fission) but was hindered by other European countries. Yet, if adequately financed and cultivated, perhaps it would have made it possible to anticipate (and who knows, reach them in Italy) the goals on nuclear fusion achieved by MIT. In 2005, on the Sole24Ore, Ludovica Manusardi Carlesi launched Coppi's appeal to the government regarding the decommissioned Caorso power plant for its experiments on Ignitor. It involved creating the core of an experimental fusion reactor as a source of the neutrons necessary to produce fission reactions. In vain.
According to Renato Spigler, professor of the Department of Mathematics and Physics of Roma Tre, a ridiculous investment would have been enough, around 100 million euros. It is the same technology already developed to build the experimental machines Alcator A (in operation in the years 1973-1979), Alcator C (years 1978-1987), and Alcator C-Mod (years 1991-2016), whose name comes from Italian «Alto Campo Toro», who operated at the Plasma Science and Fusion Center of the MIT and twice at the Enea of Frascati (Frascati Tokamak and Frascati Tokamak Upgrade), respectively in 1977 and 1989. Today the Pnrr would like to transform Caorso in a storage room for works of art and restoration workshops.
As with information technology and chemistry, the road to Italian nuclear power is also paved with missed opportunities.