The South Oxfordshire District Council Planning Committee has just granted planning permission for the construction of General Fusion’s Demonstration Plant (GFPD) at the UK Atomic Energy Authority's (UKAEA's) Culham Campus near Oxford. Construction is expected to start later this year. The UKAEA website says that it “researches fusion energy and related technologies, with the aim of positioning the UK as a leader in sustainable nuclear energy.”
General Fusion is based in Canada. Its Magnetized Target Fusion (MTF) approach involves the injection of hydrogen plasma into a sphere of liquid metal. The plasma is compressed and heated so that fusion can occur. The heat from the fusion of the hydrogen atoms is transferred into the liquid metal. Then that heat is used to generate steam to drive turbines to generate electricity. The company intends to construct a commercial nuclear fusion energy plant by the late 2020s.
The demonstration plant will be used to verify the viability of the MTF technology. The demonstration plant will be a seventy percent-scaled version of the commercial pilot plant. It will create fusion conditions in a “power-plant relevant” environment. Temperatures of more than a hundred and eighty million degrees Fahrenheit will be achieved. However, the plant will not be used to actually produce power. The GFPD will cycle one plasma pulse per day. It will use deuterium fuel. The commercial pilot plant will use deuterium-tritium fuel and will cycle up to one plasma pulse per second.
When construction of the one hundred and thirteen thousand square feet building is complete, General fusion will rent the building from UKAEA. The company’s fusion reactor is expected to be commissioned in 2026 and fully operational by early 2027.
General Fusion said that siting the facility at the UKAEA’s Culham Campus allows it to “access world-leading science and engineering capabilities, such as knowledge and experience in designing, constructing and operating the record-breaking Joint European Torus”. In addition, the company expects to benefit from the U.K.’s existing fusion energy supply chains.
Greg Twinney is the CEO of General Fusion. He said, “We are thrilled to join the Culham Campus and the UK's Fusion Cluster and anticipate creating 60 long-term jobs at the site. In addition, we expect the project will generate approximately 200 jobs during construction.”
Ian Chapman is the CEO of UKAEA. He said, “The UKAEA welcomes this milestone as it aligns with our strategy to create clusters that accelerate innovation in fusion and related technologies, and support public-private partnerships to thrive. It also builds upon our heritage of hosting major fusion facilities here at our Culham Campus.”
The UKAEA carries out fusion energy research on behalf of the U.K. government. It oversees the country’s fusion program. This included the Mega Amp Spherical Tokamak (MAST) Upgrade experiment. They also host the Joint European Torus at Culham, which is operated for scientists from around Europe.
UKAEA is developing its own fusion power plant design. It plans to build a prototype known as the Spherical Tokamak for Energy Production (STEP) at West Burton in Nottinghamshire. The STEP is due to begin operating by 2040.