Berlin has shut down its large-scale nuclear plants, but is backing advanced technologies
Germany has announced plans for three national fusion hubs with €125m ($143m) of initial funding planned for next month as Berlin aims to operate Europe’s first commercial nuclear fusion power plant to be operating in Germany in the 2040s.
Germany’s Federal Ministry for Rese arch, Technology and Space said the three national fusion hubs will consolidate research and development in the areas of laser fusion, magnetic fusion, fuel cycles and materials development.
One hub will be at will be at power company RWE’s former Biblis nuclear power station in the state of Hesse, central Germany.
Others will be at Karlsruhe, home to the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, and Garching near Munich, where Proxima Fusion is building the Alpha fusion test reactor, the first fusion test plant in Germany.
Facilities in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Schleswig-Holstein and Hamburg will also be involved in the hubs
The German government said it wants the world’s first commercial nuclear fusion power plant to be operating in Germany in the 2040s.
It said the fusion hubs are designed as central locations where companies, research institutions and industry collaborate onsite and virtually on technological solutions for future fusion power plants.
It added: “The federal and state governments are working in close coordination on this.”
Federal research minister Dorothee Bär said: “Fusion could solve our energy problems in the future.” She said it was important “that we are the drivers, rather than just passengers”.
Germany has closed all its nuclear power plants, but the government has shown support for fusion research and aims to be the first country to connect a fusion reactor to the grid.
Proxima’s Roadmap To Deployment
In February German company Proxima Fusion signed a memorandum of understanding with utility major RWE, the region of Bavaria, and the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics as it delivers a roadmap to build a nuclear fusion plant.
In January, the company laid out plans to build a test reactor called Alpha in Garching, to build a commercial scale fusion reactor plant called Stellaris within 15 years at a nuclear site at Gundremmingen being decommissioned by RWE, and to build a commercial reactor using laser-based technology in southern Bavaria.
Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics in Greifswald use the institute’s experimental Wendelstein 7-X (W7-X) stellarator for fusion research.
Last year they broke previous fusion records and set a new benchmark for reactor performance using the facility. In the experiments, the W7-X outperformed previous benchmarks, especially over how long plasma can be sustained.
This advancement is crucial because maintaining a hot, dense plasma long enough is the key to making fusion power viable.
In June Germany’s Focused Energy raised $240m (€206m) in an investment round led by RWE to support the construction of a laser fusion energy plant at the former Biblis nuclear power station in the region of Hesse, central Germany.
