Thermonuclear fusion is the process that powers the sun and the stars.
As you can read in the Fusion4Energy web site “Fusion is the process which powers the sun and the stars. When light atomic nuclei fuse together to form heavier ones, a large amount of energy is released. This is a very difficult process to recreate on earth – gases need to be heated to extremely high temperatures (about 100 millions degrees C) to produce a plasma which then needs to be contained for a sufficiently long period for fusion to occur. To reach these temperatures there must first be powerful heating, and thermal losses must be minimised by keeping the hot fuel particles away from the walls of the container. This is achieved by creating a magnetic “cage” made by strong magnetic fields, which prevent the particles from escaping. Harnessing fusion would provide an environmentally friendly and almost limitless source of energy.“
My research activity deals with the physics of those “magnetic cages”. We work to understand how they behave, how to optimize them, how to get the best performance out to them. The final goal is to realize a reactor that can transform nuclear energy in electricity in a environmental friendly, clean and sustainable way, thanks to fusion.
Since January 2014 I’m serving as Leader of the “Medium Size Tokamak Campaigns” Task Force of the European Research Consortium “Eurofusion”. My base for this job is Garching bei Muenchen, in Germany. Here, at the Institut fuer Plasma Physik of the Max-Planck Society is located ASDEX Upgrade, one of the three tokamak devices that we operate in our task force. The other two are TCV at EPFL in Lausanne, and MAST at CCFE in Culham.
Till 2013 I have been the scientific director of the RFX-mod experiment, which is a large device for the study of controlled thermonuclear fusion as a clean, renewable and broadly available energy source. RFX-mod is based in Padova at the Consorzio RFX laboratory, and is operated in the framework of the Euratom-ENEA association.
Here you can find a list of my recent scientific papers.
Here, a list of my recent talks.