The UK and US governments have signed a new pact to collaborate on efforts to develop commercially viable forms of nuclear fusion energy, mimicking the chemical reaction of the sun in what is potentially almost an unlimited form of renewable energy.
Following companies in both nations making progress with fusion developments in recent years, the "strategic partnership" will include agreements to share access to facilities, provide funding for new research, and develop more resilient supply chains for fusion materials.
The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero said the deal will "transform global efforts to reach net zero and deliver energy independence" - although the technology is widely acknowledged to be many years away from being ready to feed into the grid.
Instead of splitting atoms, like the fission process that is currently used by the nuclear industry, nuclear fusion combines hydrogen atoms to create potentially huge amounts of energy – though currently the output levels are small and there has been a struggle to produce more energy from fusion than is used to create the reaction.
On signing the agreement in Washington, Andrew Bowie, Britain’s minister for nuclear and networks, repeated the government's ambition to have a commercial fusion reactor “grid-ready” by 2040.
This confidence has presumably been bolstered by some of the significant breakthroughs on both sides of the Atlantic in the last couple of years.
Last year, the UK-based Joint European Torus (JET) fusion experiment smashed a two-decade record for the most energy produced by more than double, and not to be outdone, scientists in the US later became the first to create more energy from a nuclear fusion reactor than was put in – known as 'net energy out' and then repeated the trick this year.
UK-based Tokamak Energy, which has developed “super” magnets to control its reactor, last month reported that it attained a plasma temperature of 100 million degrees Celsius, the threshold required for commercial fusion energy.
TAE Energy's US-Japan collaboration reported being "on track" for a mid-2020s demonstration of its new Copernicus reactor of net energy out, after its initial successes with hydrogen-boron fusion experiments.
There are also transatlantic collaborations underway, with General Fusion, a startup backed by Microsoft and Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos, building a nuclear fusion demonstration plant in the UK, with commissioning expected in 2026.
This summer, the UK government launched Great British Nuclear, an arms-length body, with an initial £157 million package for developers and promises of billions of pounds of future funding for the re-emergent industry – mainly to support the rollout of small modular reactors (SMRs).
US deputy energy secretary David Turk said a jointly led coordinating committee for the new partnership will meet for the first time in early 2024, including representatives from national laboratories, academia and industry.