Canada-based General Fusion has been granted permission to construct a demonstration of its fusion technology at the UK Atomic Energy Authority’s (UKAEA) Culham campus near Oxford.

The development of a 70% scale of a commercial power plant will be housed in a 10,500m2 building on lease from the UKAEA, on which construction is expected to start during the summer, and is expected to be commissioned in 2026 and become fully operational by early 2027.

While the facility itself will not generate power, its siting at Culham places it at the centre of the UK’s fusion research activities. There General Fusion envisages drawing on capabilities such as the knowledge and experience in designing, constructing and operating the Joint European Torus, as well as benefitting from the existing fusion energy supply chains.

“We are thrilled to join the Culham campus and the UK’s Fusion Cluster, and anticipate creating 60 long-term jobs at the site,” said Greg Twinney, CEO of General Fusion.

He added that the project should generate approximately 200 jobs during the construction.

Magnetised target fusion

General Fusion’s technology utilises magnetised target fusion, which combines concepts from both magnetic confinement fusion such as are exploited in tokamaks and other toroidal machines and inertial confinement fusion, such as is being developed by Marvel Fusion among others.

In General Fusion’s approach a hydrogen plasma is injected from a magnetised ‘gun’ into a vessel lined with liquid metal, which is then rapidly compressed to increase the plasma to fusion temperatures – the intent being to avoid both the complexity and cost of full magnetic confinement and the high energy costs of inertial compression.

“The UKAEA 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,” said Professor Sir Ian Chapman, CEO of UKAEA.

Preparations are well advanced for the building, which is to be not only highly efficient but also to express “the technological optimism of fusion to solve the energy problems of the world”, promises Amanda Levete, founder and principal of the designer AL_A with Ove Arup Engineers.

General Fusion believes that its approach is the most practical and fastest and the company, twenty years after its founding, claims to be on track to meeting its target 10keV – 100 million oC in the demonstration and followed by commercialisation in the 2030s.

In the latest results, the technology achieved a plasma energy confinement time of 10ms and validated compression time of 5ms supporting achieving 10keV at power plant scale.