Senior Engineer at private fusion energy company Tokamak reveals scientific breakthrough
11 January 2023, 16:43 | Updated: 11 January 2023, 16:49
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Senior Engineer Greg Brittles explains how Tokamak Energy has achieved a "world first" result in the field of private fusion energy.
Tokamak Energy's Greg Brittles joined Tom Swarbrick in the latest episode of The People Who Will Change the World. He spoke about how Tokamak Energy achieved a private fusion energy world first and how the company is working toward completely clean, abundant energy.
The interview took place in December 2022. Tokamak Energy is a is a leading global commercial fusion energy company.
The Senior Magnet Engineer explained: "We are the only private fusion company in the world to have achieved a plasma temperature of more than a 100million ºC in a commercial device."
He told Tom: "This is a test reactor, a much smaller scale than an energy-producing reactor has to be. So these devices are very difficult to build and expensive to build at a scale that's necessary to produce net energy gain."
The engineer revealed a "pre-production pile-up plan" for 2026, as well as plans for as far as 2030: "We'll have a plant that actually produces electricity."
He emphasised the importance of the scientific breakthrough: "The key thing is that 100million degrees is considered the threshold for commercial fusion energy, so to have achieved that in a device that is so small is a really significant achievement and especially with a relatively small amount of private funding that we've benefitted from."
You can listen to full episodes of the People Who Will Change the World via Global Player and on LBC's YouTube channel.
