Tokamak Energy and Furukawa Electric sign agreement to advance commercial fusion energy

The project: According to Tokamak Energy, ST80-HTS will be the world’s first high field spherical tokamak using HTS magnets at scale. Tokamak Energy said that this is a key stage in its path to a fusion pilot plant that will demonstrate the capability to deliver electricity to the grid in the early 2030s, producing up to 200 MW of net electrical power.

HTS magnets are an essential enabler for the low cost, commercial operation, and global deployment of spherical tokamak devices, the company noted. The magnets are essential for confining the fuel, which reaches temperatures above 100 million degrees Celsius.

Production of the tape for ST80-HTS has started at SuperPower’s facility in New York, and the first batches have been delivered to Tokamak Energy, based near Oxford, U.K. The parties are now also evaluating scale-up plans to meet the requirements for Tokamak Energy’s ST-E1 pilot plant and future commercial fusion power plants.

Quotes: Chris Kelsall, Tokamak Energy chief executive officer, said, “Building our next advanced protype, ST80-HTS, is a key milestone in our mission to deliver commercial fusion as a clean, sustainable, low cost and globally available energy source. Securing partnerships with leading global suppliers such as Furukawa Electric Group strengthens our capability to address the twin challenges of climate change and energy security.”

Keiichi Kobayashi, president and CEO of Furukawa Electric Co., said, “Furukawa Electric Group has set out the vision toward 2030 as pursuing business to solve social agendas and to contribute to the development of sustainable energy solutions. Also, we have laid out the environment-vision 2050, as our committed contribution for the future of the Earth. The new form of fusion energy is core to such goals, and we expect that our superconductors will play key roles in our collaboration between Tokamak Energy and Furukawa Electric.”