The Spherical Tokamak for Energy Production (STEP) programme is seeking to ease the development of commercial fusion power plants that are capable of producing a limitless supply of low-carbon, clean energy.
It will also showcase how a future fusion power station will be operated and maintained. The government committed £220m for the conceptual design of the power station in 2020 as part of efforts to move the UK towards a zero-carbon energy network.
STEP has been conceived as a successor of sorts to the ITER tokamak proof-of-concept fusion plant that has been under construction in France since 2013. ITER’s main reactor is planned to be completed in late 2025 and is designed to create and sustain a plasma of 500MW (thermal power) for 20 minutes, with just 50MW of thermal power injected into the reactor.
This would demonstrate the principle of producing more thermal power than is used to heat the plasma and would pave the way towards commercialisation...