First Light working with UKAEA on "fusion island" concept

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Oxford University spin-out First Light Fusion is working with researchers at the UK Atomic Energy Authority’s (UKAEA) Culham laboratory on a project to convert nuclear fusion reactions into heat.

The company is planning to achieve fusion - which has the potential to transform the world’s energy supply - by the middle of 2019 and has said that it hopes to demonstrate technology capable of generating more energy than that required to create fusion reactions by 2024.

First Light hopes that its work with UKAEA, which is being funded in part by a BEIS Energy Entrepreneurs Fund, will mark a key step towards this goal, through the development of “a fusion island” concept, a sub-system that converts fusion energy into heat and manages fuel supply in a fusion power plant.

First Light's technology uses a high-velocity projectile to create a shockwave to collapse a cavity containing plasma inside a ‘target’. The design of these targets is First Light’s technical USP.

In July, it successfully fired the first test ‘shot’ on one of the six limbs of its newly-constructed pulsed power machine and swiftly proceeded to test three-limb shots in September.

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