Part 2 of 3 Parts (Please read Part 1 first)
     For decades, it has been projected that we would have commercial nuclear fusion power plants withing thirty years. Back in 1955, a physicist claimed that he believe that we would have fusion power within twenty years. This claim and many others failed to materialize. It became a running joke that fusion was always going to be decades away as the years passed and fusion did not seem to be getting any closer.
     We now have a scientific understanding of how the fusion process operates in ideal conditions. However, reality is rarely ideal. It would appear that commercial fusion is more of an engineering problem than a scientific problem. Andrew Storer is the chief executive of the UK’s Nuclear Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre. He said, “The biggest challenge isn’t about the science, but the fact that scientists have to now deliver something in a practical sense.”
     After all these years and broken promises, it seems that things are about to change. Last year, the U.K. government revealed their plans for a fully working nuclear fusion reactor by 2040. The first phase of this has been  the development of a masterplan for the Spherical Tokamak for Energy Production (STEP) fusion reactor, a design that is unique to the fusion research being carried out in the U.K. The U.K. is currently searching for a site upon which to construct the STEP reactor.
     Obviously, constructing a fully operational, commercially-viable nuclear fusion reactor in twenty years is a huge undertaking. For comparision, the Hinkley Point C nuclear fission reactor is expected to be completed by 2025. It will have taken fifteen years from proposal to completion and will utilize existing nuclear fission technolgy that has been around since the 1950s. However, it must be noted that some of the time spent on Hinkley Point C was consumed by squables over financing and was not related to licensing or construction.
     Meanwhile, the ITER fusion reactor in France is about seventy percent constructed and is expected to achieve first plasma by 2025. ITER will be a fully-operational demonstration fusion reactor which will provide five hundred megawatts of power. This is the output of a small conventional fission reactor and would power a city about the size of Liverpool.
      Ian Chapman is the chief executive of the UK Atomic Energy Authority. He said, “There are so many things about ITER that almost seem like science fiction. There is a magnet that goes down the middle of ITER, the biggest magnet that can be made. The magnetic impulse produced could lift an aircraft right out of the ocean.”
      ITER is very different in design from the U.K.’s STEP reactor. ITER uses a donut-shaped reactor design commonly referred to as a torus. STEP, on the other hand, will utilize a spherical design which is more compact than the torus approach. By reducing the size of the reactor in their design, the U.K. engineers have reduced the size of the magnets. This will result in saving millions of pounds.
Please read Part 3