October 10, 2022 12.54 pm This story is over 29 months old

Nuclear fusion plant to be built at power station on Lincolnshire border

UK’s first prototype commercial nuclear fusion reactor

The chief executive at UK Atomic Energy Authority says it will be “a first of a kind”, as West Burton A power station on the Lincolnshire border was chosen as the site for the UK’s first prototype commercial nuclear fusion reactor.

The plant should be operational by the early 2040s and the government has pledged more than £220 million for the STEP (Spherical Tokamak for Energy Production) programme, led by the UK Atomic Energy Authority.

The government had shortlisted five sites, not initially including West Burton A, but after Ratcliffe-on-Soar dropped out of the list there was room for another consideration.

The project would replace the coal-fired power station site owned by French energy giant EDF which is set to be closed. As well as being the UK’s first it could potentially also be a world first.

Business Secretary Jacob Rees-Mogg announced the government’s chosen site in a speech at the recent Conservative Party conference.

Professor Ian Chapman, CEO of UK Atomic Energy Authority, told BBC East Yorkshire & Lincolnshire: “We’ve done it as experiments in the lab and we’ve shown that we can make fusion happen and we can control it, but we’ve never done it at the scale that it produces electricity and actually powers your home, so this will be a first of a kind.

“I don’t know that everything will work. For sure, we have challenges that we have to overcome and that is the point of the next phase of the programme. We’re going to design, we’re going to build, we’re going to test and show that we can do it.”