Fusion is coming

At least, hopefully. We might not be doing very well with gas storage to tide us over the next few years, but by 2040 we may be pumping modest amounts of fusion energy into the electricity grid.

The press release at reference 1 about the creation of UK Industrial Fusion Solutions Ltd (UKIFS) to deliver a prototype fusion energy plant, also tells us that West Burton has ben selected as the site for this plant, from a short list of five.

The village of West Burton, near the River Trent, has been around for a long time, for a thousand years or more, but was eventually abandoned in the nineteenth century when the River Trent moved the wrong way. And luckily for fusion, the land was given over to power stations before national heritage was properly underway.

Obvious really, but it had not occurred to me before that if you want to build a power station, particularly a small one, it is likely to make sense to use an existing site where one has the infrastructure and a workforce, rather than greenfield.

References

Reference 1: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/uk-takes-major-step-towards-near-limitless-low-carbon-energy.

Reference 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Burton_power_stations.

Reference 3: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2021/10/frost-report.html. Last notice of the STEP project.