The five-year agreement will take the form of joint technology development, shared use of equipment and facilities and the secondment of staff between the two organisations.
The collaboration will focus on areas including materials development and testing, power generation, fuel cycle, diagnostics and remote handling.
A spherical tokamak is a type of fusion power device that differs in shape from traditional tokamak designs. Tokamak Energy said spherical tokamaks provide greater stability for plasma. This means there is less likelihood of heat loss or leakage, which could reduce production or disrupt operation. “When compared to traditional fusion power, spherical tokamaks can deliver higher levels of performance consistently,” the company said.
UKAEA’s chief executive officer Professor Ian Chapman said fusion has great potential to deliver almost limitless clean energy for future generations. He said the agreement with Tokamak Energy will benefit both organisations and “help advance our collective ambitions, because together we are stronger”.
‘We Are In A Race Against Time’
Tokamak Energy chief executive officer Chris Kelsall CEO said: “We are in a race against time to phase out the world’s reliance on fossil fuels and aim to deliver fusion as a clean, sustainable, low cost and globally available energy source.”
Both organisations have operational spherical tokamak devices, with Tokamak Energy’s ST40 recently achieving a plasma temperature of 100 million °C, the threshold required for commercial fusion energy.
UKAEA’s “Mast Upgrade” experiment has helped pave the way for the development of its ambitious Spherical Tokamak for Energy Production (Step) programme, which aims to design and build a prototype fusion powerplant capable of producing net electricity.
The British government announced last week that the Step prototype power plant will be designed and built at West Burton, Nottinghamshire. It will demonstrate the ability to put net electricity on the grid, enabling future commercial fusion energy plants to be commissioned and constructed.
Tokamak Energy will soon be unveiling its next device, which will be the world’s first high field spherical tokamak to demonstrate the full potential of high temperature superconducting (HTS) magnets, due to be commissioned in the mid-2020s. It will also demonstrate multiple advanced technologies required for fusion energy and inform the design of the company’s first commercial fusion power pilot plant, which will demonstrate the capability to deliver net electricity to the grid.
