Tokamak Energy has shared the first images of its commercial fusion power plant featuring a tokamak reactor with a practical output of 200 MW.
Design of Tokamak Energy’s experimental commercial fusion power plant from the outside. (Photo: Tokamak Energy).
Tokamak Energy, a company based near Oxford, England, plans to build a prototype fusion plant around the ST-E1 tokamak reactor, which is expected to be operational in the early 2030s to demonstrate its capability to supply electricity to the grid. This project opens up the potential for commercial 500 megawatt (MW) plants worldwide, according to New Atlas on April 12.
When a mixture of deuterium and tritium, two isotopes of hydrogen, is heated to temperatures hotter than the core of the Sun, they fuse to create helium and release energy that can be harnessed for electricity and heat production. The plasma formed by this heating process is contained by strong magnets arranged inside a circular device known as a tokamak.
The fusion reaction is extremely efficient, producing significantly more energy per kilogram of fuel than burning fossil fuels like coal, oil, or gas. One kilogram of fusion fuel releases energy equivalent to burning about 10,000 tons of coal. According to Tokamak Energy, fusion offers advantages that other renewable energy sources do not. “We need reliable energy that can be harnessed continuously throughout the day when the sun isn’t shining or the wind isn’t blowing, without incurring high storage costs. Fusion will fill that critical gap,” said Warrick Matthews, managing director of Tokamak Energy.
Fusion reactions are in contrast to fission reactions, which occur when a neutron collides with a larger atom, exciting it and causing it to split into two smaller atoms, thereby releasing energy. Unlike fission reactions, fusion does not produce nuclear waste and occupies less land area. According to Matthews, fusion energy from this type of power plant is carbon-free, safe, extremely efficient, and produces fuel in unlimited quantities from seawater. The plant could be connected to a conventional turbine for industrial electricity and heat production.
Tokamak Energy has spent years developing a compact circular tokamak. In 2021, the company achieved a plasma temperature threshold of 100 million degrees Celsius using the ST40 tokamak model. Next, the company plans to construct the next version, the ST80-HTS, at the UK Atomic Energy Authority’s Culham campus in 2026. The ST80-HTS will serve as a prototype for Tokamak Energy’s first commercial fusion reactor, the ST-E1, with a practical output of 200 MW, expected to be completed in the early 2030s.
