Tokamak Energy, based at Milton Park, has released the first images of its planned commercial fusion power plant with the capacity to generate enough electricity to power 50,000 homes when completed in the 2030s.
Fusion power stations will provide safe and secure clean energy to towns and cities and heat to industrial factories. One kilogram of fusion fuel releases the same amount of energy as burning around 10 million kilograms of coal, with no harmful emissions.
Tokamak Energy’s ST-E1 fusion pilot plant will demonstrate the capability of delivering electricity into the grid in the early 2030s and pave the way for globally deployable 500-megawatt commercial plants. They can be built next to large populations and centres of industry where power and heat are needed.
The process that powers the sun and stars, fusion, is the opposite of nuclear fission – combining lighter atoms rather than splitting heavier ones – and is easy to stop because it needs a continuous fuel supply. It produces no long-lived nuclear waste.
Warrick Matthews, Tokamak Energy MD, said: “Fusion energy from power plants like this will be zero carbon, safe, secure, extremely efficient and run on limitless fuel from seawater. Fusion is the ultimate energy source – no emissions, and you can put a plant where you need it.
“Renewables are fantastic and absolutely vital. However, we also need dependable, reliable power you can switch on around the clock – when the sun isn’t shining or wind isn’t blowing – without high storage costs. Fusion fills that important gap as part of a sustainable net zero future.”
Fusion power plants can be connected to a traditional turbine to produce electricity as well as provide heat for multiple industrial uses, including metalworks, water desalination or hydrogen production. They will generate a lot of power from a small amount of fuel and take up small amounts of land, compared to solar and wind farms.
There are many different approaches to fusion. Tokamak Energy has over 10 years of experience designing, building, operating and validating record-breaking results using compact spherical tokamaks that are shaped like a cored apple rather than a ring doughnut.
Mr Matthews added: “Our spherical tokamak design is more efficient than the traditional shape, with lower capital investment, operating costs and a smaller footprint.
“It has to be a globally deployable solution because the technologies and innovations available today are clearly not enough. Fusion power plants will have that unique ability to support and sustain a long-term, permanent transition from fossil fuels by ensuring future clean energy grids are resilient, flexible and safe for our communities.”
In 2021, Tokamak Energy achieved a fusion threshold plasma temperature of 100 million degrees Celsius in its current spherical tokamak, ST40. The company will build its next device, ST80-HTS, at UK Atomic Energy Authority’s Culham Campus in 2026 before completing ST-E1 in the early 2030s.
