United Kingdom
UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA)
UKAEA is the UK’s national organisation for fusion research, and its mission is to lead the delivery of sustainable fusion energy and maximise the scientific and economic benefit. It is based at two research sites – at Culham Science Centre (near Oxford) and at Rotherham in the north of England.
UKAEA has 2,200 people in a range of technical and professional support roles. WIt has growing ‘early careers’ programmes involving apprentices, graduates and PhD/Masters students. It also welcome hundreds of scientists from across Europe for each JET campaign.
UKAEA runs research facilities and programmes tackling the main challenges of putting fusion on the grid. We work with EUROfusion partners on areas from plasma physics, materials research, remote handling, tritium breeding and handling, to power plant design.
JET: operated for Europe’s fusion community – the world’s largest magnetic fusion machine and the only one able to use tritium fuel.
MAST Upgrade: part of EUROfusion’s Medium-Sized Tokamak programme – an innovative machine looking at the spherical tokamak design and solutions for plasma exhaust.
RACE (Remote Applications in Challenging Environments): conducting R&D in robotics and remote handling – pioneering systems for fusion and other industries.
Materials Research Facility: preparing and examining samples of materials to assess their suitability for use in fusion – plus other related fields of science and technology.
H3AT: a research centre for processing, storing and recycling tritium – integral for commercial fusion power stations.
Fusion Technology Facilities: developing and testing components for fusion power plants.
STEP (Spherical Tokamak for Energy Production): UKAEA’s programme to design and build a prototype fusion energy plant in the UK by 2040.
Read article: Watch iconic fusion energy machine’s 100,000th ‘pulse’ (January 19, 2022)
Read article: Fusion energy record demonstrates powerplant future (February 9, 2022)
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