Plasma results from Tokamak Energy’s record-breaking machine advances commercial fusion mission

Tokamak Energy’s record-breaking fusion machine has broken new ground following a series of upgrades.

The company’s ST40 reached a plasma temperature of 100 million degrees Celsius last year, the threshold required for commercial fusion energy and the highest ever achieved in a privately funded spherical tokamak.

Tokamak Energy’s advances during the recent campaign, which ended at the end of September, focused on improving understanding and developing high-performance diverted plasma scenarios in a high field spherical tokamak.

Dr Steven McNamara, Tokamak Energy’s Head of Plasma Systems, alongside other members of the team, will present the full results at next week’s International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Fusion Energy Conference at the Queen Elizabeth II Centre in London.

In a diverted configuration, the magnetically confined hot gas is separated from the wall and its exhaust is directed to a dedicated ‘divertor’ region that extracts heat and particles, keeping the core plasma cleaner and therefore significantly improving overall performance.

In a fusion pilot plant, the heat loads on the divertor are expected to be similar to a space shuttle during re-entry.

An infrared camera was installed in collaboration with Oak Ridge National Laboratory (U.S.) to measure the power load distribution on the divertor targets, helping to improve understanding of plasma exhaust and boost confidence in future power plant designs.

Some of the hardware, including the infrared camera and endoscope, was funded through the UK Government’s Department for Energy Security and Net Zero Advanced Modular Reactor (AMR) Feasibility and Development Phase 2 programme.

Dr McNamara said: “We’re delighted with these latest machine enhancements and results, and proud of how ST40 continues to expand our understanding, further validating future power plant designs on our path to delivering clean, secure and affordable fusion energy in the 2030s.”

To achieve its milestones, Tokamak Energy upgraded the ST40 plasma control system as diverted plasmas are vertically unstable and require precise control. This enabled the team to exceed its target by achieving a diverted plasma with higher currents, sustained for longer durations.

In addition, the team also established diverted H-mode plasmas across a range of parameters and developed scenarios with a high fraction of non-inductive current drive. These scenarios will be used in future operations to further develop key understanding of the performance of high-field spherical tokamaks.

ST40 is a high-field spherical tokamak with copper magnets built and operated by Tokamak Energy. It is a step on the company’s roadmap to develop commercial fusion power plants.

After breaking the 100 million degrees record in 2022, ST40 has been through a series of hardware upgrades to improve its capabilities, including new power supplies and diagnostic systems. It will be back in operation in early 2024 following further upgrades and maintenance.

553 538 Stuart White
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Chris Martin

Dr Chris Martin

Chairman

Chris Martin is the Tokamak Energy Chairman and a non-executive director. He has considerable international experience successfully growing businesses in the healthcare, energy and environmental sectors. He co-founded ADC Therapeutics in 2011, after launching Zynlonta for blood cancer and leading a NYSE IPO, he stepped down as CEO in May 2022.

He was also Co-Founder of Spirogen Ltd and its Chief Executive Officer leading up to the company’s sale to AstraZeneca in October 2013. Chris has a DPhil from Oxford and an MBA from IMD, and is a Fellow of the Institution of Chemical Engineers and a Sainsbury Management Fellow.

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Warrick Matthews

Warrick Matthews

Chief Executive Officer

Warrick joined Tokamak Energy in January 2023. Warrick leads the business and is building the commercial partnership strategy to scale Tokamak Energy.

Prior to Tokamak Energy, Warrick worked at Rolls-Royce for 24 years and most recently managed £3.6B of annual spend as Chief Procurement Officer for the Civil Aerospace division. He has extensive experience in managing supply chains and leading operational and customer business divisions.

He is passionate about sustainability and clean energy, people, diversity and inclusion.

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David Kingham

Dr David Kingham

Executive Vice Chairman

David is our Executive Vice Chairman and former Chief Executive Officer. He is an integral part of our management team.

A trained theoretical physicist, he was one of the founders of the business and became our CEO in 2009 having spent almost two decades as the Managing Director of Oxford Innovation, a company that has supported hundreds of successful new technology ventures.

David successfully led Tokamak Energy through three investment rounds and worked with colleagues and investors to mastermind an ambitious, yet achievable, business plan to drive innovation and accelerate the development of our fusion energy mission.

David’s ample experience has proved invaluable in growing and directing the business. He is a former Chairman of the R&D Society and has been a director at various high technology and knowledge-based start-ups. He has also won and delivered major contracts aimed at supporting innovation, entrepreneurship and business growth at regional and international levels.

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Mikhail Gryaznevich

Dr Mikhail Gryaznevich

Chief Scientist

Mikhail is a founder of Tokamak Energy and our Chief Scientist. He is a leading global authority on tokamaks and has performed experiments on 16 different tokamak during his distinguished career.

After graduating with an Honours Diploma in Plasma Physics from the Leningrad University in his homeland, Mikhail earned a PhD in Plasma Physics and Nuclear Fusion from the USSR Academy of Science. In 1990, he joined the Culham Laboratory in Abingdon and has been responsible for leading experimental programmes, preparing and performing experiments, designing, constructing and operating tokamak systems and diagnostics, as well as supervising students and scientific and engineering personnel.

Mikhail is a Visiting Professor at Imperial College in London and an editorial board member for the Plasma Science & Technology Journal and the Open Plasma Physics Journal. He regularly lectures about the physics behind spherical tokamaks at universities and plasma physics schools across the world.

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Erik Bonino

Non-Executive Director

Erik Bonino joined Tokamak Energy as a Non-Executive Director in January 2021.

Erik has over 30 years’ international experience in the energy sector in operations, major projects and technology development.

Erik is a mentor to Imperial College London’s IVMS program where he advises a number of technology start-up companies in energy and related fields.

Erik retired from Shell in August 2018, where he held the roles of UK Country Chair and Executive Vice President of Downstream Technologies. His portfolio included Shell’s Catalyst and Licensing business through which he developed Shell’s bio-fuel technology. He also established Shell’s Global technology campus in Bengaluru, India. Prior to this he served as the Executive Vice President of Project and Engineering Services with responsibility for the delivery of new production facilities, technology and technical support for both the Upstream and Downstream Businesses.

Prior to joining Shell in 2002 Erik spent 18 years in the oil and gas industry, first in the leadership of major capital projects and then in management consulting as Vice President of Energy and Utilities with Cap Gemini Ernst and Young. As a senior consultant he has advised many blue-chip energy companies on operational performance improvement and has led utility privatisations in Europe.

Erik holds an MBA from Cranfield School of Management and a B.Sc. (Hons) in Electrical Engineering from Southampton University. He is a Fellow of the Energy Institute.

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David Gray CBE

Non-Executive Director

David Gray joined Tokamak Energy as a Non-Executive Director in October 2019.

He has spent 30 years working in financial markets, mainly with HSBC, and has extensive experience of the energy sector including advisory roles on the initial privatisations of British Gas and the electricity sector.

He is currently Chair of Mutual Energy and the Energy Innovation Centre (EIC). Mutual Energy is an energy infrastructure company based in Northern Ireland. It owns the electricity and gas interconnectors between Scotland and Northern Ireland together with gas transmission assets in both countries. The EIC acts as an intermediary between innovators and energy network companies to optimise the effective adoption of innovative solutions by the industry.

David was previously Chair of the Gas & Electricity Markets Authority (the board of the energy regulator, Ofgem) from 2013 – 2018 and was Ofgem’s Managing Director, Networks from 2003 – 2007. After leaving Ofgem in 2008 he was a member of a panel advising the Department for Transport on the economic regulation of airports and subsequently led a review of Ofwat on behalf of DEFRA and the Welsh Assembly Government. He was also a non-executive Director of the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) from 2009 to 2019.

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David Harding

Sir David Harding

Non-Executive Director

Sir David Harding joined Tokamak Energy as a non-executive Director in March 2022. He is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Winton Group Limited.

Sir David graduated from Cambridge University with a First Class Honours degree in Natural Sciences specialising in Theoretical Physics. He then embarked on a career in the analysis of futures and trading markets, which led him to co-found Adam, Harding and Lueck Ltd in 1987 with Martin Lueck and Michael Adam. AHL rapidly became one of the leading commodity trading advisors in the UK and was acquired by Man Group plc in 1994. Sir David left Man Group plc in 1996 and in February 1997, he co-founded Winton with Martin Hunt and Osman Murgian with a commitment to applying financial mathematics and empirical scientific research to creating and developing trading systems for the financial markets.

Sir David has endowed a number of significant projects principally supporting the funding of basic science research in the UK and around the world, including the Winton Programme for the Physics of Sustainability at the Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge and the Winton Bio-informatics Suite at the Francis Crick Institute. In 2019, Sir David’s foundation gave US$130 million to Cambridge University.

He sits on the Advisory Board of the Royal Society and the University of Cambridge Development Board, and is an honorary Fellow of the Science Museum, and of St Catharine’s College, Cambridge.

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Warrick Matthews

Warrick Matthews

Chief Executive Officer

Warrick joined Tokamak Energy in January 2023. Warrick leads the business and is building the commercial partnership strategy to scale Tokamak Energy.

Prior to Tokamak Energy, Warrick worked at Rolls-Royce for 24 years and most recently managed £3.6B of annual spend as Chief Procurement Officer for the Civil Aerospace division. He has extensive experience in managing supply chains and leading operational and customer business divisions.

He is passionate about sustainability and clean energy, people, diversity and inclusion.

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Thomas Pfisterer

Non-Executive Director

Thomas is Director of Direct Investments of the WILD Family Investment Office.  He joined the Family Office following the sale of WILD Flavors GmbH, one of the world’s leading suppliers of natural ingredients to the food and beverage industry, for which he served as Head of Strategic Development directing the company’s global M&A activities since October 2011.  Thomas currently serves on the Boards of Directors of several other companies, including TTTech Computertechnik AG.  He holds a Master’s in Finance from Cambridge University, UK, as well as a BA in Economics and a BA in Business Administration, both from University of St. Gallen, Switzerland.

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Daniel Freeman

Non-Executive Director

Daniel Freeman leads Dorilton Ventures, a venture capital firm investing in advanced technology companies. He has more than 20 years’ experience investing across a range of geographies and asset classes at firms including Lehman Brothers, Deutsche Bank, and Eton Park Capital Management. Daniel holds an AB in East Asian Studies from Princeton, was a Fellow at the Johns Hopkins-Nanjing University Centre for Chinese and American Studies, and received an MBA from the Harvard Business School.

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Warrick Matthews

Warrick Matthews

Chief Executive Officer

Warrick joined Tokamak Energy in January 2023. Warrick leads the business and is building the commercial partnership strategy to scale Tokamak Energy.

Prior to Tokamak Energy, Warrick worked at Rolls-Royce for 24 years and most recently managed £3.6B of annual spend as Chief Procurement Officer for the Civil Aerospace division. He has extensive experience in managing supply chains and leading operational and customer business divisions.

He is passionate about sustainability and clean energy, people, diversity and inclusion.

Close

Warrick Matthews

Warrick Matthews

Chief Executive Officer

Warrick joined Tokamak Energy in January 2023. Warrick leads the business and is building the commercial partnership strategy to scale Tokamak Energy.

Prior to Tokamak Energy, Warrick worked at Rolls-Royce for 24 years and most recently managed £3.6B of annual spend as Chief Procurement Officer for the Civil Aerospace division. He has extensive experience in managing supply chains and leading operational and customer business divisions.

He is passionate about sustainability and clean energy, people, diversity and inclusion.

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Warren East

Warren East

Non-Executive Director

Warren East CBE, previously CEO of Rolls-Royce and Arm, joined Tokamak Energy as Non-Executive Director in May 2023.

After 11 years at Texas Instruments, Warren joined Arm in 1994, was appointed to the board in 2000, and was CEO from 2001 to 2013. Under his leadership, Arm became the world’s leading semiconductor IP licensing company.

In 2014, Warren became a non-executive director of Rolls-Royce Holdings and chair of the board’s technology committee. As CEO from April 2015, he led Rolls-Royce through the Covid-19 pandemic impact on global aviation and championed the strategic shift to net zero. After seven years leading Rolls-Royce, he retired from the company on 31 December 2022.

Warren is a Fellow of the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET), Royal Society and Royal Academy of Engineering, a Distinguished Fellow of the British Computer Society and a companion of the Chartered Management Institute. Warren has a degree in Engineering Science from Oxford University, an MBA from Cranfield, and honorary doctorates from Cranfield and Newcastle Universities. With his wife, he established The Relithan Charitable Trust, supporting science education. He was made CBE in 2014 for services to Engineering and Technology.

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Rory Scott Russell

Non-Executive Director

Rory is head of Venture Capital at East Innovate, the venture capital arm of East X, the quantitative commodity technology and research company. East Innovate invests and partners with early-stage research-driven start-ups addressing the global energy challenge. He is the founder and co-founder of several technology companies, following an early career in international energy. He has a BSc in Computer Science and Al from the University of Edinburgh.

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