The engineers behind the Mega Amp Spherical Tokamak Upgrade (MAST-U), the UK’s national fusion experiment based in UKAEA’s Culham Science Centre in Oxfordshire, have received the Royal Academy of Engineering’s Major Project Award for 2021. MAST-U is a pivotal step towards achieving commercially viable fusion power plants and a future source of clean, safe and plentiful energy. The team were presented with their award at a special celebration in London on 13 July attended by the Academy’s Royal Fellow, HRH The Princess Royal.
MAST Upgrade’s compact fusion design, the ‘spherical tokamak’, has the potential to provide a cheaper, more efficient means of providing fusion energy than is possible in larger devices. However, a big engineering challenge in getting the more compact machines on the electricity grid is how to sustain a fuel ten times hotter than the Sun in a smaller volume without damaging the machine itself. The team at Culham led the design and production of a complex and technically challenging exhaust system, called the Super-X divertor, on MAST Upgrade. This reduces the heat of the exhaust material by a factor of ten and channels it out of the machine at temperatures low enough for the machine’s components to withstand, improving the operational life and economic viability of a future fusion power plant.
The MAST-U leadership team reflect the breadth of engineering capability working on this complex project, from high-voltage power and complex and precise mechanical assembly to control and instrumentation, underpinned by transformative, ambitious science.
The recipients of the Major Project Award are: Dr Andrew Kirk, Director of Tokamak Science; Dr Joe Milnes, MAST-U Construction Project Leader; Nanna Heiberg, MAST-U Operations Department Manager; Dr Richard Martin, MAST-U Operations Manager; Dr Paul Stevenson, Electrical Engineering Department Manager.
The team embarked on a design and build programme of MAST-U in 2010, with funding from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, part of UK Research and Innovation. By November 2020 they had completed the new £55M device and performed fusion tests for the first time. The device comprises 130,000 components, with 90% of contracts placed in the UK supply chain. 20 magnets have been built, the largest over 4m in diameter, each containing 5000 components installed to sub-mm accuracy. The vessel interior is lined with 1000 graphite tiles to manage the extreme heat fluxes, cryo-pumped to ultra-low vacuum pressures of 1 x 10-8 mbar. Finally, 120km of cabling, 2km of gas supply lines and over 1000 different detectors enable sophisticated control of the fuel, which is thinner than air.
Professor Bashir M. Al-Hashimi CBE FREng, Chair of the Royal Academy of Engineering Awards Committee, said: “The UK is pioneering smaller, cheaper fusion devices and the Awards Committee was very proud to reward the engineers behind the success of MAST Upgrade. The project delivers an important boost to plans for a prototype fusion power plant in the UK and this will ultimately enable the affordable and efficient delivery of a new and sustainable source of electricity.”
Nanna Heiberg, MAST-U Construction Project Leader, said: “I am thrilled to have been part of the team building and commissioning this complex, precision machine. This award is a wonderful accolade to the role MAST Upgrade will be playing in making fusion energy a reality, which will have an immense impact on the world.”
Media enquiries to: Pippa Cox at the Royal Academy of Engineering Tel. +44 207 766 0745; email: Pippa.Cox@raeng.org.uk