Nuclear power and the energy crisis: without Italy it will be less secure and poorer. Three requests to the Meloni government 

We are in the midst of the emergency, triggered by energy crisis most dramatic in modern history. And which has its epicenter in Europe engaged in a double transition:

• free yourself from dependence on Russian imports
• achieve (2030 and 2050 milestones) very ambitious decarbonisation objectives

During 2022 (Russian war) these two objectives intertwined and overlapped, resulting in a short circuit of European economies (inflation, recession, energy prices, unsustainable burden on households and businesses). The double commitment for the States of the European Community has emerged: 

• deal with the emergency with measures to halt the price spiral (gas cap; misalignment between imported fossil prices and those of renewable energy or domestic production) and measures to diversify gas supplies (increasing the share of liquid gas to be reprocessed ; increasing – in the Italian case – the share of gas extracted within national borders; replacing Russian gas with other places of supply
• this, which is the emergency, is accompanied by the structural objective: to change the European energy mix. Where the share of energy goods imported from outside the EU must decrease and domestic production must increase. And – if we intend to continue to respect the objective of decarbonisation – this replacement of external sources with internal production – must take place by making use of non-carbon sources. Which are essentially two: renewables and nuclear energy. 

Why nuclear power? For four reasons

Because already today it is the first non-carbon source of the European energy system. Truth hidden by a long falsifying rhetoric (especially in our country) which has told of an alleged decline of nuclear power. Which weighs in Europe, on the other hand, for 13% in the accounting of primary sources and, with 122 operational plants, for 25% in the electricity generation of the continent. Other than decline! And many forget that without the CO2 avoided (billions of tons in recent decades) by active nuclear power plants, Europe could not boast the record for the lowest emissions in the global carbon balance. And, not even remotely, proclaiming the ambitious decarbonisation targets that we have set ourselves. 

Secondly, because the non-carbon sources that we will need differ from each other in terms of technical, physical and functional characteristics: there are intermittent, non-programmable natural sources, subject to natural and meteorological trends which give a limited Terawatt-hour volume on average of 2500 hours per year in which they generate energy. And there are sources, however, continuous, which provide energy for 8000 hours of the year. Our European energy systems need this continuous non-carbon energy like bread because accumulation and storage technologies and systems are not and will not be enough to eliminate this need. The truth is that the function of continuous source in the energy mix of advanced countries - so far performed by fossil fuels - will have to be guaranteed by energy sources (hydroelectric, biomass and nuclear) with the same characteristic of continuity. Which must support and integrate the growing renewable sources. It is a reason for the safety of the energy system, for guaranteeing the functioning of the electricity and transmission networks, for efficiency. 

The third argument in favor of nuclear energy is that our systems are evolving towards an ever greater penetration of electrical end uses in energy consumption:

• for the unstoppable demand of poor countries;
• for the microelectronics and digital revolution
• due to the growing need for clean energy in final, mobility and domestic uses, but also in the act of generation

Electrification will dominate the energy transition and the rest of the century. Nuclear energy, the latest discovery of the 900th century among the sources, is characterized by the highest capacity factor (annual operating hours at maximum required speed) and by the lowest volatility and highest constancy in operating and management costs. The energy transition, if it has to replace the quantities of fossil fuels that still generate most of the electricity we consume (over 50% in Italy) cannot do without this electricity source par excellence, abundant, efficient and available. 

Finally, the fourth reason: nuclear is the non-carbon and immediately available technology characterized by the most massive articulation of types of high-tech plants and with the greatest track record of safety, efficiency and innovation among all energy plants. The current nuclear plants – large power, third generation plants (the 54 that are currently being built in the world) are plants, designed in the late 90s and started up in the early 2000s, which have achieved a qualitative evolution on factors such as safety, efficiency and cost-effectiveness, which are unmatched by any other energy technology.

At the same time, nuclear nuclear energy is characterized by a roadmap of innovative plants: SMRs (small modular reactors) at the end already of this decade, the fourth generation by the end of the next, and finally nuclear fusion around 2040 Mind you, they are all plants characterized by an impressive average duration factor (from 60 years of today's plants to 100 of future plants). Which connote nuclear energy as, truly, the energy of the century. Also for a second exclusive feature of this technology: its versatility. In current (but above all in future SMR and 4 GEN reactors) electrical uses will be accompanied by other uses, equally and in some cases even preponderant: the generation of hydrogen, the energy carrier of the future, the industrial uses of heat, cogeneration thermal, naval and space propulsion, the creation of a closed cycle of its own waste, the breeder reactors that will consume the waste as new fuel. And finally, the growing use of nuclear technologies in the production of machines for medicine, diagnosis and treatment of major diseases.

Nuclear energy responds to the energy emergency. Can Italy stay out of it? 

Can Italy stand lame in this extraordinary development that is prefigured by nuclear technologies? Meanwhile, the issue of nuclear power involves us in responding to the emergency. Even if we don't have nuclear power plants yet, we make extensive use of them through imports (14% of our electricity needs). We are, therefore, vitally interested in the European orientation, stated in RePower EU, of "increasing nuclear energy production by 5 terawatt hours over the next 10/44 years". Through the extension of plant activities at the end of the project life cycle and through the construction of new plants. That in the 27 countries of the Union between plants under construction, decided and planned add up to 29 additional plants. We applaud Federacciai's proposal, which President Gozzi will illustrate here, to include Italy in this orientation of RePower Eu with the hypothesis that Italian users can enter the capital of new European plants, starting from those on our borders, to import electricity at stable prices and for very long reference periods. 

But beyond the emergency of RePower Eu there is an urgency for Italy to initiate a radical change in its energy mix to make it resilient to the strategy of diversification of supplies and the climate transition. We can no longer hide the cost we paid, 35 years ago, for the wicked decision, taken only by us in the world, after theChernobyl accident, to zero out our nuclear energy production. Going even beyond the genders questions of the referendum of 1987. It was a catastrophic mistake of the Italian ruling classes. From that year began the dangerous assignment to imported fossil sources which, in just a few decades, has given us the most dependent, most expensive, least diversified and most insecure energy system in the entire West. If we had been able to count, at this juncture, on the nuclear production scheduled in the plants active in 1987 and in the new plant in Alto Lazio under final construction, we would not have any of the dramatic problems of today's emergency. Having done without that quota of nuclear energy has exposed the country to a dramatic, indisputable and guilty crime energy failure. 

Nuclear: it's time to return to modernity 

It's time to return to modernity. To readmit our country into the club of industrialized powers. Which all, Germany is increasingly an isolated case and a brainy example, orient the energy transition towards a mix of sources in which the predominant development of renewables is accompanied by a sufficient share of nuclear energy. This is the energy model of decarbonization. In 2050, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA), the installed power of nuclear power in the world, today around 390 GW, is destined to double to 800 GW. 

Here we advance to our Government and to the political forces of the majority and of the opposition, the request that, in a bipartisan way (on energy and nuclear power, the confrontation leads only to paralysis), the Italian Parliament implements three measures, in this legislature, that reopen the country, in a realistic and concrete way, to nuclear energy. 

Three requests to reopen Italy to nuclear energy

We need to go back to a PEN that indicates the desirable change in the energy mix that takes us out of addiction and realizes the safety energy of the country. This means giving up energy plans (such as the PNIEC) which limit themselves to indicating only the emission targets and going back to thinking in terms of planning the sources with which to achieve emission targets together with the security and continuity of supplies needed by the demand for energy of the country. Once we had a national electricity agency, ENEL, which had the task of promoting electricity and energy programming. A function needs to be restored energy planning. By strengthening the study and processing functions of other public energy bodies, starting fromENEA. In addition to the emergency of prices and supplies, the Government should initiate a planning table, which identifies the new energy mix of the near future, the sources and technologies that must implement it in absolute technological neutrality. The nuclear source, for 35 years discriminated against on principle, among the sources that can be used, must fully return to the non-carbon technologies evaluated secularly to contribute to the indispensable change in the country's energy mix. 

We propose a law that supports, encourages and promotes participation of Italian companies to international development projects and programs in the field of small and medium SMR reactors. A commercial competition is about to open which, at the end of this decade, will bring about ten new-concept models to the market. It is not fair that Italian industry is out of this challenge. We cannot reduce ourselves to being only users in this market challenge. It was an act of short-sightedness, of cultural retardation, of provincialism driven by ideology to have kept nuclear power out of the laws that, in Italy, support research and innovation for 35 years. And myopia continued with the PNRR where, unlike, for example, France, it has not been considered that, among the new technologies for the energy transition, the new nuclear, that of the SMR reactors and the IV GEN, are among the closest to implementation. Europe, gentlemen politicians, is moving in this direction. For example, with the decision to activate an EU initiative on the development of small reactors. Italy, with industry and universities, is autonomously present in this initiative. But without the comfort of a state support. Which of course is massive in the case of other countries. Reflect the policy. It's time to follow the European lead: nuclear energy must be re-admitted in research and innovation and development laws. 

Finally, one third indication bring to the attention of the government and of politics: we respect another European obligation on which we have been absconding for 40 years, the national repository for radioactive waste. Which is not about the future nuclear power. But the arrangement of about 90.000 cubic meters deriving from the decommissioning activities of decommissioned plants, but also from medical and industrial activities which, we inform the uninitiated, generate radioactive waste. Which, the only country in Europe, we keep dispersed in about a hundred deposits (not built for the purpose of disposing of this waste, but only for its temporary storage). It's time to get out of the deposit hypocrisy: speed up the localization procedures, convene service conferences on the sites deemed suitable and, after the public debate, choose and decide. It is a useful infrastructure, an investment that brings development and skilled employment to the chosen site. And it is a school of radioactive waste disposal and treatment technologies. 

Italian industry and research have guaranteed an important presence in the nuclear sector

Italian companies, public research structures (ENEA, CNR, INFN, the Universities grouped in CIRTEN (Interuniversity Consortium for Nuclear Technological Research) - Milan Pavia, Turin, Padua, Bologna, Pisa, Rome, Palermo - in these 35 years since the 1987 referendum guaranteed the maintenance of an overtime control in the nuclear field, despite the cancel culture and public ostracism on nuclear technologies. L'Italian industry it has participated in the construction activities abroad of new nuclear power plants and has asserted itself, with competence and prestige, in the activity of improving the safety systems in European power plants after the Fukushima accident. With universities and research centres, industry has continued to design small advanced reactors. This garrison of nuclear technology was the protagonist in Europe in the design of the fourth generation, assuming the leadership in one of the most promising technologies, that of lead cooling. Finally, this community of companies, research institutions and universities is today among the protagonists of the itinerary towards the realization of nuclear fusion. The Italian companies that work on the construction of the ITER reactor have been awarded two thirds, among 35 competing countries in the world, of the supplies, often of very high quality - the mechanical heart of the large TOKAMAK reactor, the superconducting magnets, the control systems, the complex and unprecedented electrical systems - of the largest fusion experiment plant under construction. 

Nuclear fusion: Eni's role in research

With theEni we are the main private shareholder of the one project fusion reactor compact among the most promising in the world. We will host, with the DTT in Frascati, one of the most decisive and delicate experiments on the feasibility of fusion; with the Universities, ENEA and the RFX of Padua we are positioned in the strategic heart of the physical demonstration of fusion: the configuration and control of the plasma, the accelerated gas of light nuclei which is the heart of the fusion process. Exactly 80 years after the physical and engineering demonstration of nuclear fission, which bears the name of the Italian genius of Enrico Fermi, Italy is among the protagonists of the promise of fusion. A sign that we are, despite the cancel culture on civil nuclear power, a country alive, prepared and competent in nuclear technologies. Rather, we ask politics and institutions to catch up with the country's nuclear industry and culture. 

Civil nuclear power has a technological, engineering and construction road map made up of precise times for the journey towards ever more performing plants: the current 3 GEN plants; SMRs, 4th gen, nuclear fusion. It is a path that has, as its goal, the middle of the century in which it will be necessary to create a decarbonised economy and energy. Anyone who proposes that Italy skip some of the stages of this journey, to wait for Gen 4 or nuclear fusion, does not know how technology works: one stage skipped and the train is lost! And the country is condemned to technological dwarfism and to remain a country that imports energy and is no longer able to generate it on its own. 

The return to nuclear power must be started today, starting from existing and upcoming technologies. If we want Italy to be able to grapple with the constraints, obligations and opportunities of the energy transition

We have greeted, in recent days, the announcement of the Livermore laboratories on the nuclear fusion: the measure of a gain between the energy input into the lasers (2,05 megajoules) to induce the fusion of two nuclei of deuterium and tritium and the energy obtained from the reaction (3,15 megajoules). A big step. We are pleased, as a nuclear community, that the media have covered the fusion experiments. Which, it is known, are conducted in Europe and throughout the world (China and Japan) also with the technology of magnetic confinement (tokamak) different from the inertial one of the US experiment. Just a few months ago the JET (Joint European Torus) tokamak in the UK generated 59 megajoules of energy, also a record for the volume of energy generated.

Nuclear fusion is closer but still experimental

By now on fusion the count of the experiments carried out with the two methods is lost. And announcements, sometimes exaggerated, chase each other. Two things must be specified: the announced successes are still in the field of scientific and experimental demonstration of the physical possibility of fusion. Demonstration that it is still far from experimental completion; the key demonstration will be when from experimental machines, tokamak o laser, we will move on to the prototypes of reactors connected to the electricity grid. This is the real challenge between the two technologies. And here the race, to tell the truth, does not see at all – not even after Livermore's announcement – ​​a disadvantage of the tokamak technology on which Europe (but also other nations in the world) has bet. And on which Italy, with ITER and with ENI's Commonwealth fusion system, is distinguishing itself. 

Nuclear fusion is closer. It has entered the visual horizon of the energy transition with its milestones of 2040 and 2050. But we are still a few decades away from its creation, with plants connected to the grid. In which it will be necessary to resort to the nuclear power that exists, the one from fission, with its large technological offer of plants already on the market or close to it. It is a clean nuclear power, with a track record of safety, efficiency and convenience for energy systems on which even Italy can only rely once again.

Umberto Minopoli is President of the Italian Nuclear Association. We publish his speech at the AIN National Day (Rome 20 December 2022)