FUSION IS THE HOTTEST TOPIC

Fusion energy demonstration receives consent at Culham

South Oxfordshire District Council has granted planning permission to General Fusion for a fusion demonstration plant at the UK Atomic Energy Agency’s Culham Campus near Abingdon.

General Fusion, a Canadian company, is developing commercially-viable fusion power plants. The build at Culham is expected to start this summer.

When construction of the 10,500 sq m building is complete, General Fusion will lease the building from UKAEA. The company’s fusion machine is expected to be fully operational by early 2027.

Built to 70 per cent scale of a commercial power plant, the demonstration plant will achieve temperatures of more than 100 million degrees Celsius. This is a crucial step on the path to powering homes and industry with zero-carbon fusion energy. The facility itself will not generate power.

Siting the facility at Culham, part of the UK’s main fusion cluster, enables General Fusion to access world-leading science and engineering capabilities, such as the knowledge gained in designing, building and operating the record-breaking Joint European Torus, the focal point of the European fusion research programme.

Greg Twinney, CEO of General Fusion, said: “The UK has been a longstanding leader in fusion energy development. We are thrilled to join the UK’s Fusion Cluster, and anticipate creating 60 long-term jobs there."

Professor Sir Ian Chapman, CEO of UKAEA, said: “The UKAEA welcomes this milestone as it aligns with our strategy to create clusters that accelerate innovation in fusion and related technologies, and support public-private partnerships to thrive."

World-first ‘super’ magnets built by Tokamak Energy for fusion power plant testing

Oxford-based Tokamak Energy has built what it says is a world-first set of new generation high temperature superconducting (HTS) magnets to be assembled and tested in fusion power plant-relevant scenarios.

Creating clean, sustainable fusion energy requires strong magnetic fields to confine and control the positively-charged hydrogen fuel, which becomes a plasma several times hotter than the Sun.

Tokamak Energy’s new Demo4 facility will consist of 44 individual magnetic coils recently manufactured using 38 kilometres of ground-breaking HTS tape, which carries currents with zero electrical resistance and requires five times less cooling power than traditional superconducting materials.

Demo4 will have a magnetic field strength of more than 18 Tesla (the standard unit of magnetic flux density), nearly a million times stronger than the Earth’s magnetic field.

Full assembly at Tokamak Energy’s headquarters at Milton Park, near Oxford, will complete this year and testing will extend into next year, informing designs and operational scenarios for its advanced prototype, ST80-HTS, and subsequent fusion power plant, ST-E1.

Chris Kelsall, Tokamak Energy CEO, said: “Tokamak Energy has been a pioneer in recognising the opportunity to apply and develop high temperature superconducting technology for fusion energy. The learnings from Demo4 will be a catalyst for delivering the global deployment of compact, low-cost spherical tokamak power plants.

"We are proud to be delivering this worldfirst, complete system of HTS magnetic coils, which will now be assembled into a full tokamak configuration for testing.”

Strong magnetic fields are generated by passing large electrical currents through electromagnet coils that will surround the plasma in future power plants. The magnets are wound with precision from HTS tapes, which are multi-layered conductors made mostly of strong and conductive metals, but with a crucial internal coating of ‘rare earth barium copper oxide’ (REBCO) superconducting material.

Moderna to build vaccine manufacturing centre in UK

USA pharmaceutical company Moderna has announced it is to build a new vaccine manufacturing centre in the UK which will be able to produce up to 250 million vaccines a year.

The investment means NHS patients will be able to receive UK-manufactured mRNA vaccines.

The location of the new centre has yet to be be announced.

The news comes after the government controversially sold its Vaccines Manufacturing Innovation Centre at Harwell to Catalent last year

Catalent, the USA pharmaceutical contract development and manufacturing business, promised to invest millions to complete the facility and equip it with state-of-the-art capabilities, but in November it was reported that the company had rowed back on its promises and paused work to complete the facility.

Moderna has committed to invest substantial funding in UK-based R&D activities over a 10-year period. This will include running a significant number of clinical trials here. It has also pledged to fund grants for UK universities, including PhD places and research programmes.

Construction of Modern's new vaccine facility is expected to begin this year, with the first mRNA vaccine expected to be produced in the UK in 2025.