U.K. Fusion Energy (UKFE), an organization within the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority that is leading the delivery of the Spherical Tokamak for Energy Production (STEP), is seeking to procure suppliers to support the development and construction of the prototype fusion energy plant. Also, U.K.-based fusion company First Light Fusion will collaborate with researchers at the U.K. Science and Technology Facilities Council's Central Laser Facility (CLF) to develop its fusion ignition concept.

STEP procurements: UKFE has launched a procurement program seeking industry partners to develop five of STEP's key systems.

The program budget allocates up to £115 million (approximately $152,180,000) across the five areas for two-year contracts.

The call seeks partners to design, integrate, manufacture, and operate STEP's breeder blanket system, fuel cycle system, and plant control system, which collectively cover the systems for harvesting energy from fusion, producing fuel supplies, processing and storing fuel, and monitoring and coordinating plant operations.

UKFE also seeks a partner to develop and operate facilities to test technologies and engineering solutions before deployment and a partner to support the systems engineering and overall plant integration.

First Light Fusion: First Light Fusion, which is based in Oxford, England, will collaborate with the CLF to work on the fast ignition physics of its inertial confinement fusion concept.

First Light has been developing a two-step approach to inertial confinement fusion, first compressing the fuel using magnetic pressure and then igniting it with a high-intensity laser pulse. The collaboration with CLF focuses on making that second step as effective as possible.

According to First Light, "CLF scientists will model the generation and transport of energetic electrons produced by the laser and how efficiently their energy can be deposited into dense fusion fuel. The program will explore approaches including engineered target structures and magnetic fields designed to guide energetic electrons into the ignition region."

For a fusion energy facility, the target would be surrounded by lithium, which would facilitate heat conversion. According to the company's website, this is intended to be a high-gain, low-repetition method with a self-sustaining fuel cycle. First Light is developing the fuel system for this approach, which it calls FLARE, and plans to find partners that will utilize the technology it's developed to build fusion energy facilities.

"We have validated the first half of the FLARE concept using the target itself to create the pressure history needed to assemble fuel at high density, with a relatively simple pulsed power driver. The next phase is to rapidly heat that dense fuel. The CLF has world-leading expertise in laser and plasma physics to accelerate this step. Bringing these two phases together gives us a clear route towards integrated FLARE experiments," said Jonathan Skidmore, chief scientist at First Light.