Tokamak Energy is a private company with an innovative approach: to produce fusion energy within a compact device only a few meters wide. David Kingham, chief executive officer, explains: “Our aim is to be the first to commercialize fusion and the first to create a fusion device that produces an energy gain. We designed the world’s first high-field spherical tokamak to take full advantage of this class of device.”
Tokamak Energy has produced two laboratory prototypes, achieving a world first with the ST25 HTS, which demonstrated the use of high temperature superconductor (HTS) magnets. “Our latest design, ST40, uses copper magnets but is much more of an engineering challenge as we are aiming for exceptionally strong magnetic fields, up to three Tesla at the centre of the plasma.”