Tokamak Energy’s new high tech divertor lab has been opened by Minister for Science, Research and Innovation Amanda Solloway MP.
The lab, which is housed at the company’s headquarters at the Milton Park scientific hub, is a key development as the company continues to pioneer commercial fusion energy – which is clean, economic and globally deployable.
Tokamak Energy is developing two leading core technologies – high-temperature superconductor (HTS) magnets and compact spherical tokamaks. These are both essential enabling technologies for economic fusion. The spherical tokamak is the UK Government’s preferred technology to develop commercial fusion and is the system chosen by the UKAEA for the STEP programme.
Around £10m is already being invested in the Divertor Laboratory, courtesy of UK Government funding from the Advanced Modular Reactor (AMR) programme. This new laboratory is a bold new development that will enable Tokamak Energy to develop and deploy fusion energy in the UK and globally.
A divertor enables the removal of heat and benign helium from a tokamak fusion reactor while it is operating and better divertor technology means that future fusion power plants can produce energy more economically and the output can be increased without additional capital costs.