Bids invited for construction of UK prototype fusion plant
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In October 2022, the West Burton coal-fired power plant site in Nottinghamshire, England, was selected to host the UK's Spherical Tokamak for Energy Production (STEP). The demonstration plant is due to begin operating by 2040. The technical objectives of STEP are: to deliver predictable net electricity greater than 100 MW; to innovate to exploit fusion energy beyond electricity production; to ensure tritium self-sufficiency; to qualify materials and components under appropriate fusion conditions; and to develop a viable path to affordable lifecycle costs. As well as the STEP fusion facility, a skills centre and a business park are planned.
"The STEP programme aims to deliver a prototype fusion energy plant by 2040, while also developing a robust fusion supply chain and a pathway to commercial fusion," says UK Fusion Energy - a subsidiary of the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority that will build the plant. "Achieving this vision requires the delivery of an unprecedented and complex engineering design, alongside a major infrastructure project involving a large and diverse supply chain, all on an ambitious timeline."
UK Fusion Energy has now launched a tender seeking to procure suitable suppliers (an individual organisation, consortium or joint venture) across five lots to support the delivery of the STEP plant.
The term of the contract under each lot will be two years with an option to extend for one year on two occasions. The total contract length will not exceed four years. UK Fusion Energy said it will award the contract for each lot to a single supplier, with more than one lot possibly being awarded to one supplier. However, a single supplier will only be awarded up to a maximum of three lots.
Under the first lot, UK Fusion Energy is seeking to establish a Breeder Blanket System Partner under a GBP20 million contract to lead the delivery of the Breeder Blanket System. The partner will provide critical capabilities regarding the design, integration and the realisation of designs through to manufacture and operation of the Breeder Blanket System. This includes providing capabilities for management of all engineering data, responsibility for the detailed design of SPP systems, equipment and components and contracting through the supply chain.
UK Fusion Energy is seeking a Fuel Cycle System Partner under Lot 2 to support and then lead on the delivery of key fuelling and fuel cycle sub-systems. Under a GBP20 million contract, they will provide critical capabilities regarding the design, integration and the realisation of designs through to manufacture, delivery and operation of the Fuel Cycle System.
The third lot, worth GBP35 million, is for a Test Operations Partner to lead operations of UK Fusion Energy test facilities and associated test activities. They will be critical to building confidence in and further defining the STEP plant design, while establishing test and operational capabilities that can support its future development and the wider fusion industrialisation. The generated test data and conclusions from these activities will directly inform the design and safety justification of STEP.
Lot 4 is for a Control System Partner, worth GBP15 million, to lead the delivery and integration of control systems across all areas of the plant, working closely with UK Fusion Energy and other partners. They will provide critical capabilities regarding the design, integration and the realisation of designs through to manufacture and operation of the plant control systems. This includes providing capabilities for management of all engineering data, responsibility for the detailed design of SPP control systems, equipment and components and contracting through the supply chain.
Lot 5, worth GBP25 million, is for a Systems Engineering and Whole Plant Integration Partner to provide critical capabilities, primarily within the Design Authority but also within the wider Integrated Projects Teams, to enable the STEP Design Authority to discharge its responsibilities effectively during Tranche 2A. This includes providing capability to support the definition, coordination, and integration of the fusion plant systems to ensure a functional, safe and efficient single operational facility outcome.
The deadline to submit tenders is 29 January 2027. Award decisions are expected on 6 April, with contracts due to begin on 23 April.
In March this year, ILIOS - a consortium led by Kier and Nuvia venture with AECOM, architects AL_A and Turner & Townsend, providing specialist support - was appointed by UK Fusion Energy to deliver the first three‑year, GBP200 million (USD267 million) tranche of the STEP fusion programme. The appointment covered the design and build of a world‑leading prototype fusion power plant and forms part of a wider programme with future opportunities valued at up to GBP10 billion. The consortium will be responsible for the design and construction of all buildings, infrastructure and facilities on the STEP site as well as supporting the constructability and interface of the wider power plant. Works will include site management, design, construction, programme planning, supply chain management, progress monitoring, project controls and constructability assurance, ensuring all activities are fully coordinated with project stakeholders and compliant with all relevant requirements and standards.
Fusion's Next Race Is Over Superconducting Tape, Not Plasma
Proxima Fusion signed memoranda in Tokyo on Oct. 28 with Fujikura, to study a superconducting tape plant in Lower Saxony, and with Kyoto Fusioneering, on plasma-heating gyrotrons and fuel-cycle technology.
Proxima estimates it needs about 20,000 km of high-temperature superconducting tape for its Alpha demonstrator and about 40,000 km for each Stellaris power plant, a material few companies make.
The tape depends on yttrium and gadolinium, and China, which mines about 69% of the world’s rare earths, put export controls on both in 2025.
The race to build the world’s first commercial fusion power plant has moved out of the physics lab and onto the factory floor. Private investors poured a record $4.48 billion into fusion last year, a 69% jump, bringing the industry’s total since 2021 to $14.24 billion. According to the Fusion Industry Association, 71% of the 56 private fusion companies it surveyed expect to deliver power to the grid by the 2030s.
The front-runners already have buyers, with Washington-based Helion signing a power purchase agreement with Microsoft in 2023 to deliver at least 50 megawatts by 2028, with financial penalties if it misses, and Constellation Energy (NASDAQ:CEG) is acting as power marketer. Commonwealth Fusion Systems has raised $4 billion and expects its SPARC reactor to reach scientific breakeven in 2027. It has sold half the output of its first commercial plant in Virginia to Google, and Eni has committed more than $1 billion for power from the same plant.
Europe is now spending to catch up, with Germany’s Proxima Fusion raising €411 million in July at a €2.4 billion valuation, Europe’s largest fusion round on record. On October 28 in Tokyo, with Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz in attendance, Proxima signed memoranda of understanding with two Japanese industrial partners. The agreement with Fujikura covers high-temperature superconducting (HTS) tape, which is wound into the magnets that confine the plasma. The agreement with Kyoto Fusioneering expands work on gyrotrons, the devices that heat the plasma with high-power microwaves.
Proxima will explore industrial-scale HTS tape manufacturing in Germany with Fujikura, through a planned €140 million production facility in Lower Saxony that it hopes will make around 5,000 kilometers of tape a year by 2030. Proxima estimates it will need around 20,000 kilometers of the tape for its “Alpha” fusion demonstrator and another 40,000 kilometers for its planned “Stellaris” fusion power station. Proxima’s reactors use HTS magnets to generate the powerful magnetic fields that trap and stabilize plasma at temperatures of 100 to 150 million degrees Celsius.
Fujikura, a 141-year-old company with more than 50,000 employees, built its reputation in optical fibers and is now a leader in manufacturing high-temperature superconducting tape. “They think this tape has the potential to be the next optical fibre,” Francesco Sciortino, CEO and co-founder of Proxima Fusion, told CNBC. Europe’s supply chain is the deciding factor, according to Ann Mettler, president of Brussels-based clean-energy think tank Catalyse Europe. “If Europe is first to develop this technology, it will give us a huge advantage, but key to that will be building the supply chain,” she said.
Few companies make HTS tape because the manufacturing process is exceptionally complex and costly. HTS tape is a composite structure typically built around REBCO, or rare earth barium copper oxide. Manufacturers deposit buffer layers onto a metallic substrate such as Hastelloy using ion beam assisted deposition (IBAD), grow a roughly 1-micron REBCO superconducting layer on top using techniques such as pulsed laser deposition (PLD), and finish with silver and copper stabilizer layers. The product is prone to damage because the ceramic HTS layer is brittle and does not bend or flex easily. HTS magnets are also susceptible to quench, a localized loss of superconductivity that causes resistive heating and can lead to structural damage.
HTS tape manufacturing also relies on yttrium and gadolinium, two critical minerals sourced mainly from China and subject to export restrictions. China produces most of the world’s yttrium, primarily alongside heavy rare earth elements from ionic-adsorption clay deposits in southern China, with significant output from Myanmar. China also accounts for about 69% of global rare earth mine output, and much of its gadolinium comes from the same southern ion-adsorption clays in Jiangxi, Fujian and Guangdong provinces. Last year, China placed strict export controls on both yttrium and gadolinium, along with five other medium and heavy rare earth elements.
Founded in 2023 as a spin-off from the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics, Proxima Fusion is one of Europe’s most prominent fusion efforts. It has raised more than €650 million in private and public funding, with backers including Google and RWE, and Bavaria has committed €400 million in public funding to its roadmap. Building on the heritage of the Wendelstein 7-X research machine, Proxima’s design shapes three-dimensional magnetic fields to minimize fast particle losses and confine high-temperature plasma stably without requiring an internal plasma current. Tokamaks, the more common design, run in pulsed cycles that leave them exposed to sudden plasma disruptions. Proxima’s stellarators are designed for continuous operation.
Helion Energy is among the companies furthest ahead in the fusion race. The company is currently building its Orion facility on land leased from the Chelan County PUD in Malaga, Washington, with operations targeted to begin by 2028. Helion’s design is a pulsed system that magnetically compresses deuterium and helium-3 fuel and recovers electricity directly from the plasma. The company has received radioactive materials and radioactive air emissions licenses from the Washington Department of Health and has completed its State Environmental Policy Act (SEPA) review.
By Alex Kimani for Oilprice.com
Self-heating in unstable plasma demonstrated
A discovery born of reverse thinking
image:
An unstable plasma generates electromagnetic waves, causing a distortion in the velocity distribution; when this distortion is resolved, the spread of particle motion increases.
view moreCredit: National Institute for Fusion Science
Background of the Research
Fusion power generation is expected to be a sustainable energy source that emits no carbon dioxide during power generation. To achieve this, research is underway worldwide to confine high-temperature plasma*1 using magnetic fields. To initiate a fusion reaction, high-energy particles or waves must be injected from the outside to heat the plasma to extremely high temperatures.Once the fusion reaction begins, “self-heating”*2 occurs, in which high-energy particles generated by the reaction further heat the plasma, allowing the high-temperature state to be maintained even if external heating is reduced. This self-heating process is complex, and large-scale experimental facilities such as ITER are necessary to demonstrate it in its entirety. Demonstration of self-heating is expected around 2040.On the other hand, one of the key processes underpinning self-heating—the phenomenon in which “waves generated by plasma instabilities heat the plasma itself”—can be verified even with current experimental facilities. In this study, experiments using the Large Helical Device (LHD)*3 demonstrated the process in which “plasma heats itself using waves it generates.” This achievement represents an important step toward understanding the mechanisms of self-heating necessary for fusion power generation .
Research Findings
Until now, it was believed that when plasma becomes unstable and waves are generated, the plasma loses energy and its temperature drops. Consequently, research has focused on how to suppress plasma instability. The research group led by Professor Katsumi Iida shifted their perspective from this conventional thinking and reasoned, “Rather than suppressing instability, isn’t it more important to observe unstable plasma in detail and clarify its characteristics?”Consequently, they deliberately generated unstable plasma and examined its state in detail. As a result, they uncovered a phenomenon in which the plasma heats itself through the waves it generates. It had already been known that when waves occur, a temporary “distortion” arises in the motion of the particles comprising the plasma (distribution function)*4. However, it had not been clear how the plasma’s temperature changed afterward.The research group therefore conducted a detailed analysis of the motion of the plasma particles (distribution function). As a result, they discovered that after the “distortion” in the distribution function caused by the waves had returned to normal, the spread of the particles’ motion had increased. This indicates that the plasma temperature had risen.In other words, this study succeeded in capturing the following sequence of events: “Plasma becomes unstable → Waves are generated → Distortions occur in the distribution function → The spread of the distribution function increases (the plasma is heated).”This study demonstrates that waves generated by instabilities not only cause the plasma to lose energy but, conversely, also heat the plasma. This discovery provides a new perspective for understanding the mechanism by which fusion plasma maintains its high temperature.
Significance of the Findings and Future Directions
Currently, there is no device capable of demonstrating the entire “self-heating” process in nuclear fusion.“Self-heating” is an essential element for realizing fusion power generation, and demonstrating even a single part of this process is of great significance. The phenomenon observed in this experiment—in which “waves generated by plasma instabilities heat the plasma itself”—is one of the key processes underpinning self-heating. The experimental observation of this phenomenon is a major achievement that advances our understanding of the mechanisms of self-heating in fusion plasma.Furthermore, this phenomenon—in which “waves cause the plasma to heat itself”—is a universal physical process that occurs not only in fusion plasma but also in the plasma of Earth’s magnetosphere. The findings of this study bridge the distinct research fields of fusion and space plasma, and are expected to contribute to the future development of interdisciplinary research.
[Glossary]
*1 Plasma
The fourth state of matter, following solid, liquid, and gas. A state in which, due to high temperatures, atoms are dissociated into electrons and ions, allowing the electrons and ions to move freely.
*2 Self-heating
Self-heating is a phenomenon in which the temperature of a substance rises due to energy or reactions generated within the substance itself. In a fusion reactor, the phenomenon in which energy generated by fusion reactions heats the plasma and maintains its high-temperature state is called “self-heating.”
*3 Large Helical Device (LHD)
The main experimental facility at the National Institute for Fusion Science, the LHD is the world’s largest superconducting helical plasma generation device that utilizes a heliotron magnetic field based on Japan’s original concept. LHD stands for Large Helical Device. Experiments began in March 1998. Its magnetic field structure differs from that of tokamak-type plasma generation devices, enabling unique research that takes advantage of these characteristics.
Contrary to expectations, the plasma is being heated and its temperature is rising after the distortion in the velocity distribution has been resolved
Credit
National Institute for Fusion Science
*4 Reference Information
Press Release: World’s First Observation of the Process by Which Waves Transport Heat in Plasma
https://www.nifs.ac.jp/news/researches/220929.html
Journal
Communications Physics
Method of Research
Experimental study
Article Title
Direct observation of phase-space dynamics during energetic-particle-driven MHD bursts
Article Publication Date
10-Nov-2026
