ADVERTORIAL FEATURE | NUVIA UK


Fusion Energy and the UK’s STEP Programme: Powering a New Era of British Energy Revolution


As a senior leader in the UK’s fusion landscape and CEO of NUVIA UK — one of the


companies within the newly appointed ILIOS consortium, the Construction Partner for the STEP programme — Tom Jones talks to Nuclear Engineering International to mark the announcement. His perspective highlights the significance of this milestone and the contribution the project will make to the next phase of fusion development.


FOR MORE THAN HALF A CENTURY, fusion energy has been described as the ultimate engineering challenge - “Creating a star in a jar” here on Earth. It is an endeavour often portrayed as impossible or always several decades away. I am old enough to remember, as a preteenager, Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan launching the ITER programme at the Geneva Summit in 1985 — a period when the conversation revolved primarily around science: understanding plasma behaviour, improving confinement, managing instabilities, and sustaining a hot, dense plasma long enough to study it meaningfully. But today, in the UK, that narrative is changing. The


UK Atomic Energy Authority’s (UKAEA) Spherical Tokamak for Energy Production (STEP) programme at West Burton signals a shift from long term research to near term commercial reality — and with it comes a broader transformation. STEP is more than a scientific milestone; it is a once in a generation industrial strategy, promising clean and abundant power, the revitalisation of British advanced manufacturing, stronger supply chains, and the establishment of energy sovereignty in an increasingly uncertain geopolitical landscape. In short, STEP is the project that can build the prosperity of the UK for the next 20 years and beyond.


Engineering the “Impossible” and Creating Long Term Value Fusion represents humanity’s boldest engineering quest — what plasma physicist Melanie Windridge calls “chasing the impossible,” a reminder that breakthroughs come through steady, incremental progress. STEP embodies this reality: an extraordinarily precise and complex machine that demands ingenuity and determination, qualities the UK has consistently demonstrated. Much of the equipment required for a commercial


scale fusion plant does not yet exist; it must be invented, designed and manufactured as the programme advances. That challenge is exactly what creates long term value. By committing to build facilities even before every technology is perfected, the UK is positioning itself as a leader in one of the world’s most advanced industrial sectors.


The Beginning of the Fusion Age Around the world, scientists, policymakers and investors increasingly refer to the “dawn of the fusion age.” As Mark Henderson highlighted in his widely viewed TED talk, fusion offers “clean energy for thousands of generations.” By using hydrogen isotopes — including deuterium, which is abundant in seawater — fusion allows us to imagine


Render of the STEP tokamak within the prototype energy plant


24 | April 2026 | www.neimagazine.com


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