UK to launch ‘Apollo mission of nuclear fusion’ in 2024
Joe Pinkstone
Sat, July 15, 2023
The Culham Centre for Fusion Energy in Abingdon, Oxfordshire has already experimented with the deuterium-tritium fuel mix needed for commercial fusion power - Heathcliff O'Malley for The Telegraph
When man first set foot on the moon in 1969 it brought to fruition the dream of John F Kennedy, who wanted to do it “not because it is easy, but because it is hard”.
Now Britain, with its plan for the world’s first nuclear fusion-powered plant, is having its own Apollo moment.
Nasa’s expertise and innovation took the former president’s speech from grandiose oration to reality in just seven years. Government scientists in the UK are channelling the mantra of JFK and the space race to build Step, a fusion energy power plant generating unlimited power with no waste or emissions, by 2040.
Fusion has been heralded as the holy grail of renewables for decades, but so vast are the difficulties surrounding the technology that it has thus far remained an unconquered enigma.
While the US in the 1960s was motivated by Soviet rivals, the 21st century UK Government has been spurred into action by the climate crisis and an energy shortage triggered by the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Officials are building on four decades of research and are in the early stages of turning a defunct coal power station in the East Midlands into the world’s first fusion power station.
The Spherical Tokamak for Energy Production (Step), located at West Burton in Nottinghamshire, is the site of the UK’s hoped-for “small step for mankind” moment.
Politicians want Step to become an operational “mini-Sun” that contributes energy to the grid by 2040. George Freeman, the science minister, previously said he was hopeful this could be done even sooner, in just 15 years.
Pound for pound, fusion makes four million times more energy than coal and creates none of the emissions or problematic waste of current energy generation methods.
However, it is exceptionally difficult to create the conditions needed to initiate fusion and harder still to sustain it for long enough to produce more energy than it requires.
Speaking at an international fusion conference at the University of Oxford this week, Paul Methven, the Director of Step, admitted the technology is “embryonic” and refused to guarantee the project would be live by 2040.
Mr Methven also declined to comment on how much the project would likely cost. More than £200 million of taxpayers’ money has already been spent on setting up Step and Mr Methven expects the bill to run to multiple billions before completion.
A refined timeline and cost analysis is expected next year.
Designs for Step are currently being fine tuned and government scientists at the UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) have so far drawn up almost 150 different drawings and looked at 66 concepts in a bid to solve the fusion riddle.
The latest plans, seen by The Telegraph, reveal engineers will use a 22 metre tall spherical tokamak to merge two forms of hydrogen – deuterium and tritium – to make helium and therefore release huge amounts of harnessable energy.
The plasma ball of around 100 million degrees Celsius will have a radius of 3.6 metres, designs show, and be controlled by magnets.
It is also hoped that the plant will make its own fuel in another world first. A lithium blanket around the reaction will be deliberately bombarded by neutrons spewed out by the helium production process to produce the tritium fuel which, unlike deuterium, is rare in nature.
Engineers are hopeful that Step will generate 1.6GW of power – about half as much as Hinkley Point C – which equates to a net output of up to 200 MWe.
The rudimentary blueprints are likely to change significantly over the coming years as the concept is fine tuned.
Construction at West Burton is expected to start in spring 2024 and future optimisations and material breakthroughs are expected to optimise efficiency and boost output, experts say.
‘It’s an incredibly exciting opportunity’
“Step is fusion’s Apollo,” Mr Methven told The Telegraph.
“We are currently designing the rocket and building the team, across both public and private sectors, that will put our equivalent of people on the moon.
“It’s an incredibly exciting opportunity for the UK to be at the forefront of this new frontier.”
Cracking the nuclear fusion conundrum is akin to tackling an amorphous blob, Prof Sir Ian Chapman, the chief executive of UKAEA, told The Telegraph. Solve one problem, and a raft of others emerge.
“By far and away the biggest difficulty facing Step is this,” he said.
“We’ve got the high-level master plan laid out, but not the specifics of exactly how everything will be. But before you start building it, you need to know the specifics.
“It’s not the perfect way of running a project but it’s the sort of challenge you take on when the world is under existential threat, which we are.”
Officials are keen to keep the scale of Step as compact and manageable as possible to try to stay within budget, on time and give fusion the best chance of being a viable long-term energy source and of becoming an enduring success.
‘Hubristic to give cast iron guarantees’
Uncertainty over the feasibility of fusion, and an engineer’s pragmatism, has left Mr Methven less gung-ho than the politicians promising fusion powered homes in the next decade or two.
“We have a clear target from the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero to drive towards first operations in 2040 and myself and the team will strain every sinew to do that,” he told The Telegraph.
“But, equally, I think it would be hubristic to give cast iron guarantees about the lights in this room being powered by fusion from that plant within a particular timescale.”
Scientists are skipping physical tests for Step, instead relying on a “digital twin” powered by the world’s most powerful supercomputers to troubleshoot any issues.
Grant Shapps, the Secretary of State for Energy, said: “The world needs fusion energy like never before, it has the potential to provide a ‘baseload’ power, underpinning renewables like wind and solar.”
