UK-based Tokamak Energy says it has completed the formation of “super” magnets for use in future fusion power plants, which it aims to begin testing later this year in order to produce theoretically limitless energy.
With a combined superconducting power almost a million times stronger than the Earth’s magnetic field, 44 of the magnets will be installed this year at the company's Oxfordshire plant in a device designed to control extremely hot hydrogen plasma that is heated up beyond the temperature of the sun.
This device will test a design that Tokamak hopes to scale up to a first pilot plant ready to supply the UK electricity grid in the early 2030s.
“This is a huge, visible moment that we’re really excited about,” said development manager Rod Bateman.
“Our magnets […] are a game changer for getting clean, limitless fusion energy on the grid faster.”
In roughly the same process by which the sun creates energy, nuclear fusion is created when hydrogen atoms are fused together, theoretically creating up to four times the amount of energy than is put in.
Fuel has to be heated and controlled at temperatures well above 100mln degrees Celsius for the reaction to take place, however, making it a distant prospect which has been explored since the 1950s.
Tokamaks suggested its superconducting magnets could provide the answer though, fuelling its aims to “demonstrate grid-ready fusion in the early 2030s”.
Testing will be carried out into 2024 at Tokamak’s Demo4 facility near Oxford, with the magnets made by piecing together some 38km of high-temperature superconducting tape.
Last year the company's earlier prototype created results at the commercial threshold plasma temperature of 100mln degrees Celcius.
Scientists at Lawrence Livermore’s national ignition facility in California carried out a successful fusion reaction in December, create more energy than was put in for the first time.