do think this is a new dawn”

Kevin Hamblin is the visionary chief executive of the SGS College Group, which owns the Gloucestershire Science and Technology Park at Berkeley, part of the bid site.

He said: “In the 1960s, Berkeley was one of the world’s most advanced scientific research establishments.

“What I would now like to see – and it is almost a romantic feeling – is that the Berkeley site becomes the innovation and research establishment for something that is brand new, as it was in the 1960s with nuclear.

“I do think this is a new dawn.”

Every expert I talk to gives the Gloucestershire bid a great chance of going through to the qualifying stages this month. It’s thought there may be more than eight bids in total, and understandably politics could well play a big part in the final selection of the successful site, which will be announced by the government around December next year.

Will the government’s Levelling Up mantra kill our fusion bid?

That’s the million-dollar question. My view is that with the Western Gateway partnership with South Wales, and the Midlands Engine also behind us, we will win through to the next stage of the competition.

For too long, the South West has been starved of major infrastructure support from government.

I believe our time has come. And as Kevin Hamblin says: “It’s a new dawn”.

We have everything crossed.

How nuclear fusion works

Nuclear energy harnesses the power of atoms. The UK’s nuclear power stations operate nuclear fission, which releases heat energy by splitting atoms. Fusion is the combination of two lighter atoms into a larger one. Fusion is what powers the sun and scientists across the world are seeking to achieve nuclear fusion on earth. The aim is for a tokamak reactor to heat plasma up to 100 million degrees Celsius, seven times hotter than the centre of the sun. This is the fusion threshold at which hydrogen atoms can begin to fuse into helium, unleashing non carbonemitting, virtually limitless energy.