Extremely powerful superconducting magnets
Warrick Matthews, Tokamak chief executive, and his colleagues believe they have moved closer to this target through the development of extremely powerful high temperature superconducting (HTS) magnets. These can create magnetic fields a million times stronger than that of the Earth.
The parallel development of artificial intelligence has also given engineers a tool for controlling such fields. In theory it means that the white hot plasmas needed to generate fusion can be maintained for long periods with the heat it generates extracted to produce continuous power.
The company has told investors it could have a fusion pilot plant running by 2034 and plans to use the new money to design the reactor, plus the superconducting magnets needed to control the process.
Announcing the investment, Mr Matthews suggested that fusion would one day be cheap enough to undercut most existing forms of power generation, including from natural gas and offshore wind.
He said: “We have a target point of initial fusion power plants generating power at $70 (£55) a megawatt hour, driving down to $50 per megawatt hour and then we’d be competitive with other baseload forms of power like gas and other technologies.”
Such promises have been made before, and the target remains highly ambitious.
The aim of fusion is to use extremely high temperatures and pressures to force hydrogen atoms to fuse, creating helium. This process destroys a tiny fraction of their mass and converts it into massive amounts of heat energy. If controlled, this can be used to generate low carbon electricity – with helium the only byproduct.
Tokamak Energy is just one of several global teams saying commercial fusion will be achievable by 2040.