Project investigates net power from nuclear fusion

In an EPSRC-funded project, researchers based at Queen Mary University will focus on harnessing power from a tokamak design where reacting plasma is confined by powerful magnets.

The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) consortium is currently building a tokamak in France that it hopes will generate around 10 times the power put into it. However, while ITER will merely dissipate thermal power, its planned successor, DEMO (DEMOnstration Power Plant), is to be the first fusion reactor to generate electrical power, hopefully by 2033.

’I think it’s a reasonable bet that we will have a tokamak that produces net power for a sustained period — the question then is how to best get it away and turn it into electricity,’ said Prof Chris Lawn of Queen Mary who will oversee the project.

A tokamak comprises a hollowed-out, doughnut-shaped reactor vessel (or toroid) that compresses and holds a ribbon of plasma gas using powerful magnets. Therefore, power has to be generated by extracting heat from the blanket of material surrounding the toroid core.