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UK government pushes forward nuclear fusion after JET with £410mn funding
29/1/2025
News
Following the 2023 closure of the European nuclear fusion R&D project JET (Joint European Torus) in Culham, Oxfordshire, after 40 years of operations, the UK government has announced £410mn of investment to accelerate the development of fusion energy over 2025 to 2026 with a long-term vision to deliver ‘a future powered by limitless clean energy’.
The funding will support project kick-off of construction of a prototype power plant, known as STEP (Spherical Tokamak for Energy Production), at the site of the now decommissioned West Burton coal-fired power plant in Nottinghamshire by 2040.
Five construction and engineering bids have been shortlisted by UK Industrial Fusion Solutions (UKIFS), a wholly owned subsidiary of the UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) Group. One construction and one engineering bidder will be selected in 2025–2026 for contracts worth in total hundreds of millions of pounds.
The prototype plant will ‘revitalise a UK industrial heartland, supporting new, skilled jobs in former coal communities,’ according to a government statement.
Commenting on the news, Climate Minister Kerry McCarthy said: ‘We are taking a step forward in the global race to commercialise fusion, growing our economy, attracting investment and harnessing the power of the sun to create clean limitless secure energy. This is what our clean energy transition is about – creating jobs in our local communities and building the skills that we need on the path to net zero.’
Earlier this month the government proposed plans for the UK’s first AI Growth Zone to be built at UKAEA’s JET fusion energy campus at Culham, Oxfordshire, which will ‘utilise the advancements of AI to leverage computing power for fusion research and benefit the UK’s wider national AI infrastructure and the local area’.
‘Delivering a viable fusion power plant is one of the holy grails of science and engineering,’ UKAEA Chief Executive Sir Ian Chapman told New Energy World last year. ‘Fusion has the potential to provide low-carbon, sustainable, continuous power, and while technical challenges must be overcome on the quest to deliver fusion, it will be worth the effort.’
Aligning with the government’s funding announcement, UKAEA’s Lithium Breeding Tritium Innovation (LIBRTI) programme has unveiled its latest steps to fast-track fusion fuel development in the UK.
Over its four-year span, the programme aims to demonstrate controlled tritium breeding, a critical step for future fusion power plants. As part of this effort, UKAEA intends to purchase a neutron source from US company SHINE Technologies which will ‘form the backbone of a first-of-a-kind testbed facility’ to be built at Culham.
UKAEA will also provide £9mn funding for 12 small-scale tritium breeding and digital simulation experiments that will run to March 2026.
