FUSION | THE PATH TO COMMERCIALISTION
Commercialising fusion technology
The UK has published an update to its fusion strategy. It aims to leverage its experience hosting the JET facility at Culham and turn the programme definitively towards commercial development
THE UK’S FUSION CENTRE AT UKAEA is “in good health” a recent government assessment concluded. It said the organisation “has effective leadership and mechanisms in place to ensure a high standard of governance and accountability” as it “carries out an important function on behalf of government, delivering the UK’s fusion strategy”. That assessment came at the right time, as UKAEA prepares to set up the UK’s fusion work to deliver a fusion industry, as set out in ‘Towards Fusion Energy 2023: The next stage of the UK’s fusion energy strategy’, published in October.
UK electricity demand is expected to rise from 326 TWh
in 2022 (of which 56% was from low-carbon technologies) to 570-630 TWh by 2050. The government says fusion can provide baseload low-carbon power and high-grade heat to decarbonise industrial processes. It says “The UK is uniquely positioned to capitalise on the huge societal and economic opportunities of fusion due to the expertise gained from
hosting JET, the unique capabilities developed through its extensive fusion R&D programmes, its growing and dynamic fusion industry and its world leading proportionate, pro- innovation regulatory framework.” The ‘next stage’ comes two years after the UK published
its first fusion energy strategy, which had the double aim of capitalising on the UK’s unique scientific and technical expertise and commercialising the technology. The government claims “significant progress” in the
interim, in a rapidly evolving environment that has brought “considerable investment into a growing number of private sector fusion companies worldwide, often with ambitious timescales and a wide range of technical approaches”. It highlights UK legislation in a process that will lift fusion out of the ‘nuclear’ regulatory environment, advances in the concept design for the Spherical Tokamak for Energy Production (STEP) and stimulus for both the developing UK fusion sector and its supply chain.
Above: The JET tokomak is now being decommissioned but learnings from the programme will be applied to commercialisation of fusion technology Photo credit: EUROfusion
28 | December 2023 |
www.neimagazine.com
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