THE PATH TO COMMERCIALISTION
| FUSION
Grants awarded As part of Fusion Futures, the UK will aim to invest up to £200m (US$248m) to build a fuel cycle testing facility to develop technology in Li-based tritium breeder solutions, advanced neutron diagnostics, and integrated tritium production solutions. This facility will be unique and will help tackle a key challenge in the global commercialisation of fusion, create new opportunities for universities and industry both within the UK and internationally. This facility will also make the UK a leader in tritium intellectual property and provide the UK opportunities to export tritium related technologies. The UKAEA has awarded £7,410,371 (US$9m) funding in a
‘Fusion industry challenges’ initiative that aims to support the UK’s leadership in economic, sustainable, and scalable fusion energy and in particular encourage innovation in developing lithium in an economic, sustainable, and scalable fusion energy fuel cycle. The topics include technologies that can enrich the proportion of lithium-6. UKAEA says enrichment will be essential to the fuel sustainability of many fusion power designs and, where it is not essential, can add value by boosting tritium production. This will enable the commissioning and re-start of other fusion power plants. It says “Lithium enrichment represents a front-end fuel cycle service that will be demanded by fusion reactor operators around the world”.
It was looking for performance measures that would constitute an improvement over existing lithium enrichment technologies on product quality, economics (production rate, capital cost, energy and resource consumption or value of co-products) and environmental and worker protection (hazards, waste production and obstacles to licensing such as the Minamata Convention). It also looked for:
● Technologies that can extract tritium from a lithium breeding material and make it available to fuel the ongoing deuterium- tritium reaction.
● Technologies or techniques that can convert lithium from the form available in existing supply chains into a form suitable for an isotopic enrichment process or a form required by the tritium breeding system of a fusion energy plant.
● The potential of recycled lithium, either recycled from other sectors into fusion, or recycled to other sectors after its use in a fusion energy plant
The University of Bristol was awarded two grants, for £726,383 (US$0.9m) and £1,237,502, (US$1.5m) the University of Edinburgh was awarded £1,497,970 (US$1.9m), the University of Manchester was awarded £1,285,606 (US$1.6m), and Frazer-Nash Consultancy was awarded £1,498,332 (US$1.9m). ■
This updated strategy retains the three core pillars
of international collaboration, scientific and technical expertise and commercialisation that were set out in the original strategy. What is new is a Fusion Futures Programme, “with a focus on supporting fusion sector development and enhancing UK leadership in an increasingly competitive field”. The three core areas of the Fusion Futures programme
are: ● More infrastructure funding for the UK’s fusion cluster
around Culham in Oxfordshire. This was launched in 2020 under the Fusion Foundations programme and the community of public organisations and businesses
collaborating at Culham attracted over 200 members in a year. Members can access technical facilities, start-up business support and experienced peers.
● A new facility for both the public and private sector to support research and innovation in fusion fuels generation
● A new Fusion Skills Centre that will work with universities, colleges and employers, to provide a pipeline of scientists, engineers and technicians at all career levels.
The government has also promised financial support to “match the ambition of its fusion strategy”. It invested over £700m (US$868m) between 2021/22 and 2024/25 for
Above left: Experience hosting the JET facility at Culham is to be leveraged towards commercial development Photo credit: UK Atomic Energy Authority
Above right: The UK fusion strategy will look at additional technologies as well as the torus deployed at JET Photo credit: EUROfusion
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