Nottinghamshire will cement its role as a world-leading hub for fusion energy with thousands of skilled jobs, as the government invests over £2.5 billion over the next 5 years.
Funding will see Nottinghamshire drive forward the global race for fusion in the years ahead, while securing the jobs and skills needed for thousands of scientists, engineers, welders and programme managers to enter the cutting-edge industry.
Fusion uses the same process that powers the sun by combining two forms of hydrogen and heating them at extreme temperatures, releasing vast amounts of energy. Countries across the world are striving to deliver commercial fusion, which could provide families and businesses with an abundance of clean, limitless energy.
Fusion already supports thousands of jobs across Nottinghamshire, Oxfordshire, and Yorkshire with thousands more to follow as the technology advances.
Today’s funding includes progressing the STEP programme (Spherical Tokamak for Energy Production), the world-leading fusion plant set on a former coal power plant in West Burton, revitalising a former coal community with new clean power jobs.
Funding will also support critical research into fusion fuels, advanced materials and facilities like the MAST-U fusion machine which is the precursor to STEP.
Energy Secretary Ed Miliband said:
“Fusion has the potential to provide us with an abundant, clean power source and deliver energy security, whilst attracting the best technologies to our shores and training up the next generation of British scientists and engineers.
“Today’s record funding will provide investment and economic growth in Nottinghamshire through our Plan for Change, delivering on net zero and creating the clean energy of the future.”
This investment will give industry the economic certainty it needs to drive progress towards the commercialisation of fusion in the UK to supply families and businesses with secure, clean and unlimited energy. It follows the UK signing a world-first government partnership with a fusion private venture capital fund to crowd in £100m of capital funding.
Successful deployment of fusion energy would be globally transformative and allow the UK to export the technology to a global fusion market expected to be worth trillions of pounds in the future.
