Energy: Fusion, first italian made superconductors delivered at ITER

The first 420 meters of superconductors to be installed in the 'heart' of the ITER plant, the international project to build a reactor capable of producing 500 MW of nuclear fusion power to obtain a safe, limitless and clean energy source, were delivered at the Cadarache site in France.

They will be placed in the vacuum chamber, capable of withstanding very high magnetic fields and neutron loads and plasma temperatures of over 100 million degrees. 105 meter long each, they were entirely designed and built in Italy by ICAS, a consortium that includes ENEA and two leading companies in the sector, Tratos Cavi and Criotec.

The superconductors are the first four of a 5 million euro contract for the construction of 69 units by 2023, coordinated by ENEA for the planning, development, monitoring and quality control activities.

The conductors are also the first to be made with an innovative technology based on the use of a copper cable insulated with a compressed layer of magnesium oxide (MgO), coated with a stainless steel tube.

"The development of these cables required a long activity by ICAS and the ITER team, in order to obtain cables capable of resisting magnetic fields which can reach 12 Tesla and high neutron and temperature loads” Antonio della Corte, president of the ICAS consortium and head of the ENEA Superconductivity Section, explained.

The ICAS consortium, a spin-off of ENEA, was founded in 2010 to manufacture superconducting cables for ITER  -the 20 billion euro facility that brings together Europe, Japan, the United States, Russia, China, India and South Korea , and JT-60SA, recently completed in Naka, Japan, which is winning contracts throughout the world, also for other high-tech products and services.

ENEA is national coordinator of the fusion research program, partner of the main European agencies EUROfusion and Fusion for Energy and participates in large international programs like ITER and Broader Approach.

The construction of the Divertor Tokamak Test facility is under way at the Frascati Research Center which,  like the Brasimone Research Center, has state-of-the-art infrastructures.

The Divertor Tokamak Test facility, conceived by ENEA jointly with some of the most prestigious research institutes -ENI, European Investment Bank and Consortium Create- to find solutions to some of the primary challenges of fusion, is a strategic infrastructure of the roadmap towards fusion energy, with significant scientific, economic and employment impact.

For more information please contact:

Antonio della Corte, ENEA – Department of Fusion and Technologies for Nuclear Safety, antonio.dellacorte@enea.it