News: Optoelectronics
11 November 2024
Blue Laser Fusion and RSE sign MoU for joint R&D
During the inaugural ministerial event of the World Fusion Energy Group at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation in Rome, a memorandum of understanding (MoU) agreement was signed between Ricerca sul Sistema Energetico (RSE S.p.A., a company indirectly controlled by Italy’s Ministry of Economy and Finance through its sole shareholder GSE S.p.A.), and Blue Laser Fusion Inc (BLF) of Santa Barbara, CA, USA (founded in 2022 by CEO professor Shuji Nakamura, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2014 and member of the RSE Scientific Committee) to initiate joint R&D on what is claimed would be the world’s first commercial-scale inertial fusion energy (IFE) power plant.
The activities will be carried out in three phases: (1) an analytical phase; (2) a phase to build a prototype of a small-scale commercial inertial fusion energy reactor (‘Small-scale Fusion Pilot Reactor’); and (3) a concluding phase to launch a prototype of a larger-scale commercial IFE reactor (‘Full-scale Fusion Pilot Power Plant’).
“Our researchers will contribute with the expertise developed in Italy through the Energy System Research activities and through the many international cooperation opportunities, such as those linked to Mission Innovation,” says RSE’s CEO Franco Cotana. “Working with BLF will allow us to increase our experience and knowledge of a challenging sector with important decarbonization targets,” he adds. “Although it cannot yet be considered as an alternative to fission small modular reactors, this innovation marks a decisive step towards fusion, which does not use magnetic confinement but a simpler technology that has already been verified by the US Department of Energy’s Livermore experiment in December 2022.”
Picture: Blue Laser Fusion’s CEO Shuji Nakamura and RSE’s CEO Franco Cotana.
Nakamura pioneered the high-power blue LED that enabled the production of LED lamps. In recent years, Nakamura has focused to the development of high-power lasers, which now make it possible to trigger inertial confinement fusion.
“This agreement with RSE will connect top scientists and engineers in Italy and Europe with the BLF laser, target development team and begin the process for establishing demonstration sites in Italy,” says Nakamura.
“We need to make up for lost time in order to promote a change in the pace of Italian and European research, capitalizing on national technical-scientific excellence and industrial know-how at the highest level,” says RSE’s president Carlo Alberto Giusti (chancellor of Link Campus University Roma), who organized and opened an evening of discussion at the World Fusion Energy Group event on the role of research and technology transfer in the energy transition. The discussion focused on the technical and scientific aspects of the possibilities offered by inertial confinement fusion, to which Italian research and industry can make a decisive contribution, it is reckoned. The event presented an opportunity to identify and develop an Italian roadmap for relaunching R&D activities in the sector.
Blue Laser Fusion wins US DOE INFUSE project award
