Nuclear power in post World War II Italy, research, culture and policy. (Press review)

Fifty years ago, the Ippolito case shook the political world and the scientific community following the trial and subsequent sentencing of Felice Ippolito, the main protagonist of Italy’s nuclear policy. The anniversary of that event offers us an opportunity to analyse the state of research in our country in order to rethink the role of scientific and technological culture in today’s society.

 

 
This is the objective of the conference entitled “Nuclear power in post World War II Italy, research, culture and policy”, organised by Elettra-Sincrotrone Trieste and the Doctoral School in Humanities Studies of the University of Trieste. The conference will take place over a two day period, on Thursday 15th November at the Revoltella Museum and the following day at the Sartorio Museum.
 
Bringing together the most noteworthy Italian experts in this field for the first time, this event aims to provide a historical and scientific overview but above all encourage a meeting between various subject matters. The debate will move from a technical-scientific perspective to a political-economic and sociological one, proposing food for thought on the central role that the activities of the nuclear committees and their protagonists have had in configuring that particular model of “modernity” that became affirmed in Italy in the subsequent decades.
 
“Our intention – confirms Guido Abbattista, director of the Doctoral School in Humanities Studies – is to show the essential nature of the dialogue between scientific-experimental and scientific-humanistic subjects, to overcome the oppositions betweendifferent spheres of knowledge that are no longer defendable, and that have always measured themselves, although with different methods, with the study of the phenomena of nature, man and society”.
 
Closing the conference, in round table talks that will be open to the public and moderated by the science journalist Fabio Pagan, three important scholars will debate on Friday the 16th on the theme “The Ippolito case. Fifty years of disputes on nuclear power in Italy” (from 3.00 p.m. in the conference room of the Sartorio Museum). “ A reflection – adds Carlo Rizzuto, Chairman of Elettra - Sincrotrone Trieste – on the human event of Felice Ippolito, grand commis of the nuclear committees and an intellectual of his time, but above all, on the meaning that those events have in influencing our country’s civil nuclear policy”.
 
Giovanni Battista Zorzoli, a nuclear engineer at Ises (International Solar Energy Society Italia) and a direct witness to the debate that took place on the theme of the nuclear power committees in the 50’s, will intervene in the round table talks, along with Massimo Sepielli, a physicist and manager of the Enea archives (National agency for new technologies, energy and sustainable economic development); and Renato Giannetti, an economics and business historian at the University of Florence.




Press Office Elettra - Sincrotrone Trieste
Laura Bibi Palatini
bibi.palatini@elettra.eu
040 3758493
335473809

Press Office Università degli Studi di Trieste
Sabina Viezzoli 
040 5583035
sabina.viezzoli@amm.inits.it