Undersecretary of State Mantovano addresses World Fusion Energy Group

Undersecretary of State to the Presidency of the Council of Ministers Alfredo Mantovano addressed the inaugural ministerial meeting of the World Fusion Energy Group (WFEG) at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation in Rome today. The event was co-organised by Italy and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).    

Thank you. My greetings to all of you and, as Vice-President of the Council of Ministers and Minister of Foreign Affairs Tajani mentioned, I am speaking on behalf of President of the Council of Ministers Giorgia Meloni, who is unfortunately unwell (I know it is not the same thing, but sometimes in life you have to make do).
I will therefore read the address that President Meloni should have delivered to you today, and she is very sorry not to have been able to do so herself.

As Vice-President Tajani and Minister Pichetto have already mentioned, Italy is convinced that fusion energy is a technology that has the potential to guarantee energy security, reduce the use of fossil fuels and safeguard the competitiveness of the economic system.

I wish to thank the IAEA and its Director General, Rafael Mariano Grossi, for proposing to establish this Group and for the long-standing cooperation with Italy. I would like to take this opportunity to commend the IAEA for the dual task it is carrying out. On the one hand, it promotes high safety standards in nuclear energy applications and supports Member States in the development of nuclear power for peaceful purposes, and, on the other, it encourages the use of atomic sciences to provide global development tools.

Italy is particularly committed to fusion energy at various levels, which have already been mentioned. I am thinking, for example, of the Nuclear Energy Summit held in Brussels in March this year and the work carried out at the G7 Ministerial Meeting on Climate, Energy and Environment in Turin.
Fusion energy was also included in the G7 Apulia Summit Communiqué under the Italian G7 Presidency. Under the Italian Presidency, the G7 appreciated this initiative and has established a working group which, as Minister Pichetto recalled, met just a few days ago.

It is therefore no coincidence that the World Fusion Energy Group is gathering for the first time in Italy. We are here thanks to our tradition, our prestige in the field of scientific research and the key contribution that Italy has made to global technological progress. As Director General Grossi put it, Italy remains “the most nuclear among non-nuclear countries”, despite it having stopped producing nuclear power at the end of the 1980s. However, the fact that representatives from Italy’s main energy companies are also in this room shows that there is particular attention being paid also in this respect.

Italy’s nuclear industry ranks eighth in Europe in terms of workforce size, counting around 40,000 workers, and is a point of reference in the global supply chain. It is endowed with top level technological expertise, our university system trains a significant number of internationally renowned nuclear engineers and physicists, and our centres of excellence stand out for their ambitious research and development projects.
I am thinking of the engineering design work for the first fusion demonstration plant: this aims to produce enough energy to meet the annual consumption of approximately 1.5 million households by 2050. A European consortium including 21 Italian organisations coordinated by ENEA [Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development] is working on this forward-looking project.
I would also like to mention the technological and industrial partnership that has existed for years between ENI and Commonwealth Fusion Systems, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology spin-off for development of the first magnetic confinement pilot plant for net production of fusion energy.
I am also referring to the memorandum of understanding signed just two days ago between RSE, a GSE Group company, and Blue Laser Fusion, founded by Nobel Prize-winning physicist Nakamura, to begin joint research and development work on the world’s first commercial-scale inertial fusion energy power plant.
So, a glimpse into the major role that Italy as a whole is able to play.

Enrico Fermi who, as Minister Pichetto recalled, was one of the pioneers of nuclear power, said that a scientist’s vocation is to push the boundaries of our knowledge, in all directions. It is up to those with political responsibility to support scientists in their endeavours, and to ensure the world of science and that of the institutions talk to each other, discuss and pursue the common good together. The role of politics is to set the goal, which is to pursue a sustainable and not an ideological energy transition; it is up to science to identify the technologies to meet that goal. All technologies: those already in use, those we are experimenting with and those we are yet to discover.
I am not only talking about renewables, but also gas, biofuels, hydrogen and carbon dioxide capture. Technologies that can allow us to transform from a linear economy to a circular one, using waste as raw materials, or turning marginal and non-food-producing land into cultivable land.
There has never been, and nor will there ever be, a single solution able to build a solid alternative to the supply of fossil fuels. The right path is to have a balanced energy mix, respecting technology neutrality, without excluding anything, and to be able to explore all options. Along the path that lies ahead to reach our end goal of fusion energy, we should not exclude the intermediate steps, such as fourth-generation fission reactors which could act as a bridge between hydrocarbons and future fusion.
This is also why the Government has established a national platform for sustainable nuclear power, with the aim of coordinating the progress of new nuclear technologies over the medium and long term.
We are following through on the commitments we undertook at COP28, which for the first time included nuclear power among the technologies that are useful for the transition in the Global Stocktake.

Director General Grossi, Ministers, ladies and gentlemen, the atom can be a safe, effective and clean source for the future, as you have already underlined. As Director General Grossi said, it is a concrete prospect in which to invest.
Today we are starting an ambitious path of sharing and discussion that will concern not only the current situation of fusion energy, but also the path to follow in order to reach this goal.
The Group we are launching today encourages each of us to look beyond our own borders and to lay the foundations of a new energy diplomacy that multiplies the opportunities for cooperation between the North and the South of the world.
I shall conclude with a suggestion. Fusion energy is the mechanism that powers the stars, and nature. All we need to do is follow the path of nature, and it is nice to imagine that, in the not-so-distant future, each nation will have its own ‘little star’ able to produce safe, clean and limitless energy. This is not a dream but rather, as Director General Grossi underlined when he said that fusion is within reach, it is a great challenge, that we should pursue precisely because it is within our reach.
Thank you.

[Courtesy translation]