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The Superconductivity Section of "Fusion,Tecnology and Nuclear Protection" department of ENEA at Frascati has been doing R&D in the field of applied superconductivity for more than 30 years.
The main features concern:
Many collaborations between our laboratories and Italian industries have significantly increased the competence in producing superconducting strands and cables as well as the capability to fabricate superconducting magnets.
Since 1985, the Superconductivity Section partecipates to the European R&D
technology programme for ITER (International
Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor), an international project with Europe,
Japan, USA, Russian Federation, China, South Korea and India as partners.
The programme is partly funded by Euratom. ENEA has contributed about 25%
of the European R&D activities
on superconducting magnets for ITER.
Moreover, our group has been given the responsability for coordinating the
work done in Europe to develop the Nb3Sn and NbTi composite superconductors
needed for the magnetic coils of ITER.
Thanks to our, internationally recognized, high level of competence acquired in designing and developing superconducting conductors and magnets for ITER, ENEA has been entrusted of managing the design, production and test of the 18 toroidal coils for the new japanese tokamak JT-60SA, a fusion experimental reactor in preparation and complementary of ITER.
The activity on "high critical temperature" superconductivity is mainly addressed
to R&D of methods for realization of YBa2Cu3O7-x based
superconducting tapes (YBCO) by means of the deposition techniques used for thin
films.
This material is being studied worldwide because potentially it can
be produced on a large scale at competitive costs and also it has good electric
transport properties in the presence of magnetic fields at temperatures (65-80°K)
obtainable with liquid nitrogen. This allows to prefigure power applications with reduced cryogenic costs compared to superconducting materials at high critical temperature which are currently available on the market.
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