Italian
research on nuclear energy
is
among the first in Europe
, with France and Germany, and
seventh in the world for quality and number of citations
, but it is a
laggard in terms of patents
.
This is indicated by the research conducted by the scientific editor Elsevier and based on the analysis of over 70,000 articles published worldwide between 2016 and 2021. Of these publications, the Italian ones are over 2,600 and the major contributions come from the National Institute of Nuclear Physics (Infn ) with 713 publications, Enea (468) and Politecnico di Milano (305).
Characteristics of reactors, nuclear fuel, radioactive waste are among
the most discussed topics
in the Italian articles regarding fission, and particular attention is also devoted to nuclear fusion.
The research also indicates that 59% of Italian articles on nuclear power originate from international collaborations: a percentage that exceeds that of scientific publications in general by 12% (47%).
Furthermore, Italian nuclear research has
higher citation levels than
the global average, in particular higher than those of countries with a consolidated tradition of research in this field, such as China, the United States, France and Japan.
Worldwide, only those from Great Britain and Germany have more citations than Italian articles and that almost one in five of the Italian articles is published in the most authoritative journals at international level.
Considering then the citations of articles resulting from
international collaborations
of which Italy is a part, in the first places there are those with the Netherlands and China;
among foreign institutions, the French Université Paris-Saclay has the strongest collaboration with Italy (207 publications in collaboration over 6 years).
Also as regards
collaboration with industry
, nuclear research has more than double the number of articles compared to research in general, with 8.5% against 4.1% of the total number of scientific publications.
A high percentage also compared to that of other countries, such as the United States (5.6%), China (5.6%) and Japan (6.3%).
The analysis also indicates that from 2010 to date, Italian nuclear research has co-participated in an average of 10
projects
a year with an average value of 17 million dollars each, against a global average of less than one million dollars. .
Funding comes mainly from the European Union (over 100 projects in 10 years) and benefited above all from Enea (58 projects), Infn (27), Ansaldo Nucleare and the National Research Council (14 each), Politecnico di Milano (13).
As for
patents
finally, the analysis indicates that Europe is the laggard compared to Asian countries, such as China (14,000 patents), Japan (5,000) and South Korea (4,000).
Among the European countries, France is in first place (1,000), followed by Germany (810) and Great Britain (400);
Italy is sixth (125), after Switzerland and Sweden.