Through EUROTRONIC, the company where I worked, I came into contact with other small firms operating at the boundary between information technology and electronics. One of them, ELECTRON srl, belonged to Francesco S., a friend of Giovanni M. It had installed a surveillance and alarm system at the ENEA Research Centre in Brasimone and was also responsible for maintaining it.

A surveillance project

I was EUROTRONIC’s technical director, but for this collaboration I was formally hired by ELECTRON srl, which needed consultancy on the computer side of the system. My role was, essentially, to take care of the program that coordinated the operation of the surveillance centre.

The system’s technical supervisor was Nando — Fernando B. —, a dark-haired man of about thirty-five, calm and taciturn. He knew the installation down to the smallest detail and spoke only when he had something to say. We liked each other immediately. He also had another quality, by no means unimportant for our journeys: he was an impeccable driver.

The computer system

Seen from today’s perspective, the Brasimone system had a fairly conventional architecture. Different parts of the complex — doors, gates, windows, rooms, and other sensitive points — were monitored by sensors, video cameras, and alarm devices.

The information reached a surveillance centre, where the operators had colour monitors and printers. A central computer received the signals from the field, interpreted them, and stored them in compressed form on a removable disk. Depending on the nature of the alarm — intrusion, cutting, failure or tampering with cables, or various technological faults — the system triggered the prescribed actions and displayed images from the area in which the alarm had occurred.

The system could be configured by including or excluding particular inputs, disabling certain relays, and performing similar operations. At the operator’s request, statistics and event lists could be displayed on screen or printed, with filters by area, type, date, and time. When an alarm occurred, a map of the affected area appeared on the screen, and the point that had generated the alarm was indicated by a flashing icon.

The system also possessed a certain degree of “intelligence.” It analysed not only isolated events, but also their sequence in time. From the order of alarms coming from different points in the complex, it could attempt to reconstruct the route taken by an intruder inside the site: where the person had entered, which areas they had crossed, and in which direction they were moving. For the operator, this meant that a series of scattered signals could be transformed into a coherent picture of the person’s movement through the complex.

In the early 1990s, however, integrated systems of this kind did not yet have the standards, reference architectures, and ready-made solutions that would appear later. Cameras, sensors, and the other devices naturally complied with their manufacturers’ specifications, but the way in which all these components were joined into a single system depended largely on those who designed it.

This was the part that concerned me directly. The central computer had to receive the signals from the sensors, recognize alarm conditions, issue the necessary commands, and provide the operators with useful information for intervention. My role was to develop and maintain the software that performed this coordination.

I wrote the program in Pascal, on an IBM PC running OS/2, an operating system widely used at the time in certain professional applications. After the years I had spent in Romania working on languages, compilers, and software systems, I now found myself in a different field, in which the program no longer processed only abstract data: it was directly connected to cameras, sensors, alarms, and the operation of a real technical facility.

Nando and the journeys to Brasimone

I usually travelled to Brasimone with Nando. The road from Rome was long, but I did not mind it in the least. On the contrary, I came to enjoy the journey. Nando drove calmly and safely, without unnecessary gestures, just as he spoke.

As we travelled north and entered the Emilian Apennines, the road became increasingly beautiful. The wooded hills, valleys, and roads following the contours of the land often reminded me of the Subcarpathian landscapes of Romania. After months spent almost entirely in Rome, that resemblance sometimes gave me an unexpected feeling of familiarity.

Lake Brasimone lay in a relatively isolated area. The larger towns were some distance away, and when the work could not be completed in a single day, we had to stay overnight. Near the dam, on the shore opposite the ENEA centre, there was a restaurant with a few guest rooms. We ate there and sometimes slept there before resuming work the following morning.

Brasimone was therefore not a one-off visit for me, but a journey I made several times. In time, the route, the lake, the centre, and even those nights spent near the dam began to form a small, distinct world within my Italian life of that period.

Only gradually did I begin to understand that the place to which I came to work on a surveillance system carried within it a history far more important than the technical problem on which I was working.

The ENEA Research Centre at Brasimone

At the time, simplifying matters, we sometimes spoke of “the Brasimone nuclear power station.” In reality, it was the ENEA Research Centre at Brasimone, established in the 1960s and later developed for research into nuclear technologies. Construction had begun there on the experimental PEC reactor — Prova Elementi Combustibili — intended for studying fuel elements for fast reactors.

Only later did I understand more fully the symbolic weight of the place. Brasimone was not merely a technical centre hidden among the Apennine hills, but also one expression of Italy’s nuclear ambitions during the years when the country, together with France, stood at the forefront of European research in this field. After the Chernobyl accident and the Italian referendum of 1987, that chapter was interrupted, and the experimental reactor was never completed.

For me, at the time, all these meanings formed only the background to a much more concrete problem: how a large technical complex could be monitored and how unusual situations arising in its different areas could be reported rapidly.

Technology in an unexpected landscape

The technical complex was not situated in an industrial landscape, as I might have imagined before arriving there, but in a remarkable natural setting. The expanse of water, the wooded slopes, and the road following the shape of the land contrasted with the cameras, sensors, cables, and installations we discussed during our visits.

It was one of those unexpected encounters between nature and technology that I was to observe many times in Italy.

A broader professional geography

For me, Brasimone remained more than the name of a project. It was also one of the first places in Italy that I reached because of my profession.

Until then, the geography of my emigration had been restricted: central Rome, Caritas, the boarding house, Sirio’s home, the EUR district, Rebibbia, and the offices of a few companies. Every journey was connected with finding work, solving an administrative problem, or obtaining the money needed for daily life and for my family.

The road to Brasimone opened up a wider space. I was not travelling as a tourist, but because someone considered that my training could be useful in a technical project. I was beginning to be more than simply the man who had come from Romania and was trying to find a place in Italy. I was once again the engineer and professor called upon to help solve a problem.

What remained

Brasimone remains associated in my memory with several things at once: a program written in Pascal and a computer running OS/2, cameras and sensors spread across a large technical centre, Nando and the long journeys we made together, but also a landscape that sometimes reminded me of Romania.

In those years, I was not yet travelling through Italy as a tourist. I discovered new places because my work took me there. Perhaps that is precisely why they have remained so clearly in my memory. Brasimone was one of the first places where I felt that Italy was beginning to be not only the country to which I had emigrated, but also a country my profession was helping me discover.

Related pages

• Brasimone, Chernobyl and Italy’s long nuclear hiatus (in Romanian)
• The rain of 1 May 1986 (in Romanian)

Back to top