A nuclear fusion demonstration plant will be built by General Fusion at the UK Atomic Energy Authority's (UKAEA) site in Oxfordshire after planning permission was granted.
The startup, which is based in Vancouver, Canada and London, and is backed by Microsoft and Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos, expects to start construction this summer, with commissioning expected in 2026.
Construction of the 10,500 sq metre fusion power plant – built to just under three-quarters the size of a commercial power plant – is planned to be fully operational by 2027, though it is important to note that the facility itself is not designed to generate any power.
The demonstration plant is designed to create fusion conditions in a “power plant-relevant environment”, the firm said today, aiming to achieve temperatures of over 100mln degrees Celsius and provide insights to support its commercialisation of fusion energy.
So far General Fusion has built 24 prototypes and carried out 200,000 plasma experiments to develop its Magnetized Target Fusion technology, which it says has helped it build “the world’s largest and most powerful operational fusion plasma injector”.
In 2021 the UKAEA gave its approval for the plant to be housed on its site in Culham, Oxfordshire, making into the UK Fusion Cluster, where the Canadian company can work closely with other world-leading scientists and engineers, as well as tapping into existing and future fusion energy supply chains.
Culham was where the record-breaking Joint European Torus was designed, built and operated, and is also home to the MAST Upgrade.
“The UK has been a longstanding leader in fusion energy development. We are thrilled to join the Culham Campus and the UK’s Fusion Cluster,” said Greg Twinney, chief executive of General Fusion.
Construction of the facility is expected require around 200 jobs, and once it is up and running, create 60 long-term jobs at the site.
Professor Sir Ian Chapman, CEO of UKAEA, said the body “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.”