A seat at the table alongside Brigitte, married Macron, the first lady of France, and in front of the tenant of the Elysée. The recipient is Stefano Buono, born in 1966, with a degree in physics, former assistant to Nobel Prize winner Carlo Rubbia at Cern in Geneva. The occasion is the “Choose France” summit, organized by the French Prime Minister a year ago in Versailles to convince foreign investors to choose France. There, in that moment, he understands that he is very close to the goal. And when he’s one step away from the finish line, Buono isn’t one to back down. He had already demonstrated this in 2018, concluding one of the most important deals in the history of Italian entrepreneurship thanks to the sale of the company he had founded, AAA, to Novartis for 3.9 billion dollars. And he hits the mark this time too, convincing Macron that he is the right man for the latest generation nuclear power. Thanks to highly innovative technology and an investment of three billion by 2030, with which Newcleo, a Turin-based company of which Buono is president and CEO, will build a MOX fuel factory and the first 30MWe demonstration reactor beyond the Alps.
Nice shot, Good, how did he do it?
«President Macron has decided to revive nuclear power in France, realizing how much it is an instrument of strategic independence and competitiveness for his country. We have met several times over the last few years, since we obtained important public funding which allowed us to become one of the reference companies for France’s nuclear relaunch. Then the first commercial 200MWe reactor will also follow.”
It’s Italy? Are you building an axis with France on nuclear power?
«France is a global point of reference on nuclear power and as such has relations with numerous countries. In Europe, dialogue with France and its nuclear ecosystem is essential for any country approaching the technology. We naturally support any interaction between Italy and France that can lead to greater development of the Italian manufacturing industry. France must go from 220 to 320 thousand employees by 2030, this growth shows the ambitions of the French program, but it will also require strong collaboration from the European nuclear industry and we want Italy to contribute in a fundamental way, given its potential and his skills.”
The potential, in fact. What is the condition of our country from the point of view of research and investments?
«The recent statements by Minister Pichetto Fratin at the G7 in Turin seem like an important opening of credit. The Minister’s position is encouraging and follows a dialogue between institutions and companies that has already been going on for some time. In Italy, in fact, strong skills in the nuclear industry remained even after the closure of the last power plant in 1990. Many companies continued to be part of the global supply chain and universities continued their research programs. We arrived in 2021, porENEA, which should have been the flagship of the Italian nuclear program. We have raised 400 million euros mostly from capital of Italian origin. The appetite for investment is there and we are also seeing it with our capital increase still underway at the moment.”
In your opinion, is the French investment tax credit system replicable?
«I often talk about the French tax credit system as a virtuous element of their country’s ability to attract investments in research and development for innovative technologies. I’ve used it with previous businesses and we continue to use it with Newcleo as well. The system is not particularly complex and would probably be replicable anywhere, provided there is the political will to do so.”
From a technical point of view, Newcleo offers reactors that cost up to thirty times less and use waste from other reactors as fuel. Can this technology really be the game changer?
«We will make reactors with a new technology different from that of traditional water-cooled reactors. Our reactors will be cooled with lead, a material that offers both passive safety solutions and the possibility of using nuclear fuel very efficiently. We will do this by taking the waste generated by existing power plants and reprocessing it to produce new fuel. This will allow us to operate our reactors without the need to extract new uranium from the earth, but also to significantly reduce the volume of existing nuclear waste in those countries that already use nuclear power.”
Why do you talk about factor 30?
«The factor 30 is also due to the size: for the same amount of energy produced we could instead say half. But the size of the investment to make it productive is important, and above all the speed of construction will be important, which is the most significant financial opportunity of small nuclear reactors.”
In a recent interview he gave an interesting example of how much waste would be generated by powering a city like Rome with nuclear power.
«Yes, it’s an example that I like to give because it gives a good idea of how irrelevant the problem of waste will become with our technology: we will be able to satisfy the electricity needs of a city like Rome by producing less than one cubic meter of waste in a year, and above all in a totally safe, decarbonised and sustainable way.”
Its plans include listing on the stock exchange. What is your goal for the future of the company?
«I make no secret that the company’s future is most likely on the stock exchange and this is why we already operate with many of the control systems of listed companies, so as to make a stock market listing easier in the future. The stock exchange could guarantee the permanence of Newcleo’s business model.”
