Title page

Contents

Foreword 4

Background 5

Environmental and energy context 5

What is fusion? 7

The pathway to fusion energy 9

The UK Government's Fusion Strategy 10

International leadership 10

Scientific leadership 14

Commercial leadership 18

The role of the UK Government in delivering our fusion strategy 21

Conclusion: Towards Fusion Energy 24

Figure 1. Illustration of climate change as represented by the melting of polar ice caps 5

Figure 2. UK estimated energy requirement for 2050 6

Figure 3. Summary information about fusion energy 8

Figure 4. Internal view of the Joint European Torus 11

Figure 5. A illustration of the ITER tokamak and integrated plant systems 12

Figure 6. Inside ITER July 2021 12

Figure 7. Illustration of DEMO power plant 13

Figure 8. Image of Zeta project from the 1950s 14

Figure 9. Illustration of MAST-U 15

Figure 10. Illustration of STEP prototype power plant facility 16

Figure 11. The six challenges of magnetic confinement fusion and the roles of UK-based facilities and experiments in addressing them 17

Figure 12. UKAEA vision of the future Culham Campus 19

Figure 13. Oxfordshire Advanced Skills apprentices 20

Figure 14. Illustration of UKAEA fusion scientists and engineers 22

Figure 15. Distribution of UKAEA contract spending across the UK 23

Figure 16. Plasma in MAST, the UK's pioneering spherical tokamak 24