Francesco Sciortino: a stellator to bring the energy of the stars to Earth
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There is a group of Italians among the scientists who they will bring stars to Earth to produce clean energy. They will do this by building a Munich a stellarator new generation. It will be ready by 2031. Once this is done, they aim at build a real fusion power plant capable of producing safe and low-cost energy. It will be the first plant of its kind. If it works, 10, 100, 1,000 will be built. One for each city.
In this revolutionary project there are talents that come fromMax Planck Institute for Plasma Physics (IPP) in Munich, from the MIT in Boston and Google X. Scientists, engineers, physicists, who after years of study and research have now set up a startup: the Max Planck spin-out is called Proxima Fusion, designs fusion power plants based on the stellarator concept. As soon as it was born, it has already raised funds for 7 million euros. The investment is led by Plural and UVC Partners, together with High-Tech Gründerfonds (HTGF) and Wilbe Group.
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Five co-founders. The CEO is the Italian Francesco Sciortino, 30 years old, from Viterbo. Degree in physics in London, spent a year at EPFL in Lausanne, PhD in physics at MIT in Boston. With him, there has always been the companion of a thousand adventures: Lucio Milanese, today COO by Proxima. From Naples, same degree in London. PhD in Nuclear Engineering from MIT in Boston.
“For people like us, there is no better challenge than fusion to impact humanity. We have years of scientific research behind us. Fusion is not a gadget, it’s not an App on your phone, it’s a thing that changes everything. We will need time, but we can really change the cards at stake. Mission driven is our mantra. We repeat it over and over”
What do you do exactly?
“Let’s try to recreate the fusion process that powers stars, but on earth. In stars, matter, called plasma, is very hot and ionized, and is held in place by gravity. In a laboratory on earth, matter can be confined using magnetic fields. What we do with a stellarator is to suspend this hot ionized matter in the air, or rather in a vacuum. There we heat to 100 million degrees, nearly 10 times the temperature at the center of the Sun e we create the conditions in which fusion can take place. From here we collect the resulting energy”.
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Clean energy. Safe, plentiful, low cost. “The world has been chasing fusion for over 60 years, because on paper it is perfect. However, it has one big problem: it is difficult to do. Over 30 startups globally are working on it, differently.”
In Italy, Eni is also pushing for nuclear fusion. It has signed a cooperation agreement with MIT spin-off CFS (Commonwealth Fusion Systems), with the aim of accelerating.
There is more.
Helion energy, an American startup whose investors include Sam Altman, CEO of Open AI and father of ChatGPT, promises to produce electricity from nuclear fusion from 2028.
“We are convinced that the best way to achieve this is through stellarators. Fusion power plants, which they work with heavy hydrogen atoms, in which the power and energy density is so high that comparisons with coal are ridiculous. I’ll give you an example: by merging the equivalent of a teaspoon of hydrogen, the resulting energy density could be similar to 11 tons of coal“.
The project has its roots in Wendelstein 7-X (W7-X), the most advanced stellaretor in the world Right now. “We started from the W7-X, to go further. It is a very complex machine, built by the Max Planck Institute by physicists to study physics. We want to produce and sell energy. Our Proxima Fusion machines will have to be simpler, but more powerful”.
The project requires bringing together different pieces, scientific knowledge, industry, governments, academic institutions, investors. “We are ready for the challenge, we have signed collaboration contracts with the Max Planck Institute of Plasma Physics, with MIT in Boston and with the Lisbon Institute of Technology. We are creating various other connections”
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Francesco has always had the ability to take up challenges that would scare many. His father is a physicist, worked on climate change adaptation. Mom worked on water pollution analysis in a regional environmental protection agency. And a role model sister. Anna, a few years older, a Cambridge degree, then a master’s degree at Science Po in Paris, was instrumental in pushing Francesco ever further. “Today she lives in Paris and works for the European Union. Last year she worked for the Draghi Government. At 17, Anna won a very competitive scholarship and was allowed to go to Hong Kong to finish high school I was 14. I looked at her and thought I couldn’t possibly be less than her. She always inspired me and pushed me to do my best.”
Skills, great willpower and determination did the rest. “At Proxima Fusion we are aware of the difficulty, the long time required and the effort we will have to make. But this does not scare us. Mission drive is our mantra. A short sentence that we have written in our computer system. Everything we do is for a common mission”.
With Francesco and Lucio, another Italian, Andrea Merlo, with a doctorate in Greifswald in northern Germany, where the W7X was built. And then there is Martin Kubie, British of origin. “I met him years ago, he was introduced to me as ‘the best engineer in Cambridge’. He worked in Formula 1, in McLaren for years. Then he moved to California, to Google and then to Google X. We met again at my sister’s wedding last year. Martin was becoming the leader of a group of hundreds of engineers, he was working his way up as a manager but he wanted more. He wanted to be the best engineer on the planet. He told me he was looking for a bigger challenge. I have I started talking to him about stellarator. And he hasn’t been distracted since.” The other two co-founder I am Jorrit Lion and Jonathan Schillingboth Germansexperts in stellarators and numerical optimization.
Married to an American girl he met during his doctorate at MIT, Francesco feels like a European citizen. “Our company is based in Germany, but it is a European company. We hope to work also in Italy in the future with the best engineers we will find and to look for who can contribute to the project”.
Big physics buff, ha first co-founded the National Association of Physics Students. Then he was a member of the executive committee of the international one. “Physics is a wonderful thing. It’s the means to explore and understand what is most beautiful in nature. Fusion on the other hand is the means to make sure that my passion has a real impact in the world.”
On WhatsApp, Francesco has a profile photo while climbing a mountain. Are you a mountaineer?
“What you see is the Wendelstein, one of the most beautiful mountains in the Bavarian Alps. The Max Planck company stellarator got its name from here. “It’s an astronomical observatory. Five hours of effort to get close to the stars. It will take us many more to create a star on Earth, but we believe in it immensely”.
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