The UK’s Fusion Centre at UKAEA is “in good health” a recent government assessment concluded. It said the organisation “has effective leadership and mechanisms in place to ensure a high standard of governance and accountability” as it “carries out an important function on behalf of the government, delivering the UK’s fusion strategy”. That assessment came at the right time, as the UKAEA prepares to set up the UK’s fusion work to deliver a fusion industry, as set out in ‘Towards Fusion Energy 2023: The next stage of the UK’s fusion energy strategy’, published in October.
UK electricity demand is expected to rise from 326 TWh in 2022 (of which 56% was from low-carbon technologies) to 570-630 TWh by 2050. The government says fusion can provide baseload low-carbon power and high-grade heat to decarbonise industrial processes. It says “The UK is uniquely positioned to capitalise on the huge societal and economic opportunities of fusion due to the expertise gained from hosting JET, the unique capabilities developed through its extensive fusion R&D programmes, its growing and dynamic fusion industry and its world-leading proportionate, pro-innovation regulatory framework.”
The ‘next stage’ comes two years after the UK published its first fusion energy strategy, which had the double aim of capitalising on the UK’s unique scientific and technical expertise and commercialising the technology.
The government claims “significant progress” in the interim, in a rapidly evolving environment that has brought “considerable investment into a growing number of private sector fusion companies worldwide, often with ambitious timescales and a wide range of technical approaches”. It highlights UK legislation in a process that will lift fusion out of the ‘nuclear’ regulatory environment, advances in the concept design for the Spherical Tokamak for Energy Production (STEP) and stimulus for both the developing UK fusion sector and its supply chain.
This updated strategy retains the three core pillars of international collaboration, scientific and technical expertise and commercialisation that were set out in the original strategy. What is new is a Fusion Futures Programme, “with a focus on supporting fusion sector development and enhancing UK leadership in an increasingly competitive field”.
The three core areas of the Fusion Futures programme are:
- More infrastructure funding for the UK’s fusion cluster around Culham in Oxfordshire. This was launched in 2020 under the Fusion Foundations programme and the community of public organisations and businesses collaborating at Culham attracted over 200 members in a year. Members can access technical facilities, start-up business support and experienced peers.
- A new facility for both the public and private sectors to support research and innovation in fusion fuels generation
- A new Fusion Skills Centre that will work with universities, colleges and employers, to provide a pipeline of scientists, engineers and technicians at all career levels.
The government has also promised financial support to “match the ambition of its fusion strategy”. It invested over £700m (US$868m) between 2021/22 and 2024/25 for research programmes and facilities and £126m (US$156m) in 2022. Now it plans an additional £650m (US$806m) up to 2027. The new funding was ringfenced for Euratom, and it has been repurposed after the UK left the Euratom programme. Nevertheless, the government says the UK “remains very open to collaboration with the EU and other international partners.”
Evolving strategy
The UK says it has established its position in the fusion industry and “it is time to look towards addressing broader sector needs” and look at additional technologies as well as the torus deployed at JET, which has been the main focus of past collaborations. Now, “the global fusion market with specialisms in other fusion technologies such as inertial fusion can provide opportunities for the UK”.
It highlights several contrasting projects. They include:
- The STEP programme in Nottinghamshire, which aims to design, develop and build, by 2040, a prototype power plant. The government committed over £240m (US$298m) up to 2024 for the first tranche of STEP and funding will exceed £300m (US$372m) by 2025. It says, STEP is an “ambitious and high-risk programme” that will “play an important role in demonstrating the commercial viability of fusion by integrating and operating industrial-scale fusion systems in a single, energy-producing facility which will galvanise the entire fusion sector in the UK.” To deliver STEP, UK Industrial Fusion Solutions Ltd (UKIFS) is being set up as a delivery body that is due to be fully formed by August 2024.
- First Light Fusion’s inertially confined plasma technology, which has raised £78m (US$97m) in private-sector funding. The design sidesteps many of the major engineering challenges of many other fusion approaches and a prototype power plant is expected in the early-to-mid 2030s. The next step towards the power plant is an ignition demonstration, targeted for 2027, which will be in a purpose-built facility at Culham.
Wider issues
The revised strategy included international co-operation, regulation and legal issues. Despite leaving Euratom the UK says “Fusion is a global endeavour and the advantages of international collaboration in R&D are well understood. We want to use international collaboration to accelerate commercialisation and reduce the cost of fusion energy development for the UK and its partners.”
It wants a new route for collaboration:
- To use international R&D collaborations to accelerate the commercialisation of fusion energy.
- To reduce the cost and risk of UK fusion programmes through collaboration, while protecting UK intellectual property and competitive advantage.
- To lead the development of international fusion standards and regulation, to ensure safety and maximise the global potential of fusion whilst creating important market opportunities for the UK.
It is keen that regulation “enables innovation rather than stifles it”. Legislation now underway will mean fusion is regulated by conventional safety and environment regulators (the Health and Safety Executive and Environment Agency). The provisions in the Energy Bill are expected to become law in 2024.
Fusion will also remain outside many arrangements for nuclear liability. The UK will work with international partners on third-party liability and on what would happen in the event of an accident, to provide the fusion supply chain with clarity on whether they would be held liable. Safeguards and export controls also have to be clarified, because although fusion waste is not as radiologically active as fission waste, it includes tritium, which is subject to regulation.
The next step domestically for the government is to introduce a National Policy Statement for Fusion Energy, which will streamline the consenting process for STEP and private developers. The government will invest up to £18m (US$22m) to establish a Technology Transfer Hub dedicated to bridging the gap between research and commercial technology, and it will explore the option of a UK fusion investment fund, providing ‘patient capital’ to UK fusion firms and suppliers.
This article first appeared in Nuclear Engineering International magazine.
