Magnetics Business & Technology - May/June 2023 - 12

FEATURE ARTICLE
Superconducting Magnets Built by Tokamak Energy for Fusion Power
bly at company headquarters in Milton Park, near Oxford, will
complete this year and testing will extend into 2024, informing
designs and operational scenarios for its advanced prototype,
ST80-HTS, and subsequent fusion power plant, ST-E1.
" This is a huge, visible moment that we're really excited about.
Our magnets enable the construction and operations of spherical
tokamaks, and so are a game changer for getting clean,
limitless fusion energy on the grid faster, " said Dr. Rod Bateman,
HTS magnet development manager. " Demo4 will allow
us to create substantial magnetic forces and test them in fusion
power plant-relevant scenarios. Importantly, it will substantially
progress the technology readiness level of HTS magnets as a
key part of our mission to demonstrate grid-ready fusion in the
early 2030s. "
Magnetic coils made of HTS tape at Tokamak Energy
Creating clean, sustainable fusion energy requires strong magnetic
fields to confine and control the extremely hot, positivelycharged
hydrogen fuel, which becomes a plasma several
times hotter than the sun. Now, Tokamak Energy in the UK
has built a world-first set of new generation high temperature
superconducting (HTS) magnets to be assembled and tested in
fusion power plant scenarios. The magnets use HTS tape from
Furukawa Electric and SuperPower, a New York-based affiliate
in the Furukawa Electric Group.
In other recent developments at Tokamak Energy, a former
Rolls-Royce executive has been named managing director and
plans have been cemented for an advanced prototype power
plant to be built at UK's Atomic Energy Campus.
Demo4 will comprise 14 toroidal field limbs and a pair of poloidal
field coil stacks to form a cage-shaped structure. It will need
be tested at an extremely low temperature of minus 253 C, just
20 degrees above absolute zero.
Precision wound coils of HTS tape generate the strong magnetic fields
Strong magnetic fields are generated by passing large electrical
currents through arrays of electromagnet coils that surround the
plasma in a power plant. The magnets are wound with precision
from state-of-the-art HTS tapes, which are multi-layered
conductors made mostly of strong and conductive metals, but
with a crucial internal coating of rare earth barium copper oxide
superconducting material. The tapes are typically 12mm wide
and less than 0.1 mm thick, containing just a 'human hair' of the
oxide deposited as a thin coating.
Superconducting magnets on the worktables at Tokamak Energy
The company's new Demo4 facility will consist of 44 individual
magnetic coils recently manufactured using 38 kilometers of
HTS tape, which carries currents with zero electrical resistance
and requires five times less cooling power than traditional
superconducting materials. Demo4 will have a magnetic field
strength of over 18 Tesla, nearly a million times stronger than
the Earth's magnetic field.
The learnings from Demo4 will be a key catalyst for producing
compact, low-cost spherical tokamak power plants. Full assem12
Magnetics Business & Technology * May/June 2023
On February 23, the company announced the
appointment of Warrick Matthews as managing
director and chief commercial officer. He joins
a 24-year career with Rolls-Royce where most
recently he was chief procurement officer for the
civil aerospace division, in another position he
led a team of more than 2,000 people in the
engine control systems business unit.
Warrick Matthews
Also in February, the company announced
that it will build a new fusion energy advanced
prototype with power plant-relevant magnet technology at the
named managing
director and CCO
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Magnetics Business & Technology - May/June 2023

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