Italy ramps up superconductor R&D
Developing high-temperature and high-magnetic-field superconducting technologies both for societal applications and next-generation particle accelerators is the goal of a new project in Italy called IRIS, launched in November and led by the INFN. IRIS (Innovative Research Infrastructure on applied Superconductivity) has received a €60 million grant from the Piano Nazionale di Ripresa e Resilienza to create a distributed R&D infrastructure throughout the country. It will focus on cables for low-loss electricity transport, and on the construction of superconducting magnets with high-temperature superconductors (HTS) in synergy with R&D for the proposed Future Circular Collider (FCC) at CERN. The project is estimated to last for 30 months, with more than 50% of the funds going to laboratories in the South of Italy. One of the main objectives will be the construction in Salerno of a large infrastructure that will host not only a superconducting connection line, but also a centre of excellence for testing future industrial products for high-power connections, with the aim of making high-temperature superconductors less difficult and less expensive to work with...
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