Romania’s large scale laser project at Magurele was unblocked after the country’s Waters Company has issued the permit which allows builders to start drilling the over 1,000 geothermal heat pumps that will provide energy to this project. The Waters Company gave this permit with a delay of 11 months, reports local Hotnews.ro.

The drillings needed for the geothermal pumps already started, Nicolae Zamfir, Magurele project manager told Hotnews.ro. He said no explanation was given for the 11-month delay in issuing the permit.

The total investment in the Magurele laser project is EUR 280 million, with more than 80% of the investment financed with European funds. This makes it the largest research investment project in Romania.

The laser at Magurele is part of ELI (extreme light infrastructure), which is a new research infrastructure (RI) of pan-European interest.” It is a laser facility that aims to host some the most intense lasers world-wide, develop new interdisciplinary research opportunities with light from these lasers and secondary radiation derived from them, and make them available to an international scientific user community,” according to the project’s presentation.

The facility will be based on four sites. Three of them are presently being implemented in the Czech Republic, Hungary and Romania, with an investment volume exceeding EUR 850 million, mostly stemming from the European Regional Development Funds (ERDF). They should become operational in 2018.

Missing approval threatens Romania’s most powerful laser project.

Irina Popescu, irina.popescu@romania-insider.com