Five sites shortlisted for £222m fusion reactor project

15 Oct 2021 By

STEP fusion reactor cutaway schematic

The government has published a shortlist of five sites in the running to host a prototype fusion power plant – a green energy project it is backing with initial funding of £222m.

A longlist of 15 sites was published in June this year and the secretary of state for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy is due to select the final location by the end of 2022.

The five sites are:

  • Ardeer in North Ayrshire, on the coast, south-west of Glasgow;
  • Goole in Yorkshire, on a greenfield site close to the M62;
  • Moorside in Cumbria, adjacent to the Sellafield nuclear site;
  • Ratcliffe-on-Soar in Nottinghamshire, where a coal-fired power plant is due to be decommissioned;
  • Severn Edge, near Stroud in Gloucestershire.

Once selected, the chosen site will play host to a complex project to build a prototype power station using nuclear fusion. Fusion is a potentially safer and more advanced renewable energy source than the fission reactions that underpin conventional nuclear power plants.

The Spherical Tokamak for Energy Production (STEP) project aims to build a prototype plant capable of producing at least 100MW of energy – about 3 per cent of the target output of the Hinkley Point C nuclear project.

The plant will also aim to be self-sufficient in the production of tritium, a fuel used in fusion reactions that is a fast-decaying isotope of hydrogen.

In a statement, the government said: “STEP will create thousands of highly-skilled jobs during construction and operations, and attract other high-tech industries to its host region.” It added that the project “will pave the way to the commercialisation of fusion and the potential development of a fleet of future plants around the world”.

The UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA), which is leading the work, expects the prototype plant to be fully operational in the early 2040s.

UKAEA’s STEP programme director Paul Methven said: “The shortlisting of sites is a significant step for the programme as it helps bring this challenging, long-term endeavour to life in the here and now. It also increases our focus as we push on with design and delivery of what we hope is the world’s first fusion powerplant prototype.”

In June, a rival fusion energy project backed by Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos announced it would build its prototype fusion plant at the UKAEA’s Culham Centre for Fusion Energy, near Oxford, after securing backing from the UK Government. At the time, Canadian firm General Fusion said it planned to begin construction in autumn 2022.

In April this year, engineering firm Atkins won a separate UKAEA contract to design a tritium energy research facility at the Culham Centre.

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