“Fiendish”, “technically tough”, “difficult”, “complicated”. Those were just a few of the choice words used at an event last week in Oxfordshire, UK, to describe ambitious plans to build a prototype fusion power plant. Held at the UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) Culham campus, the half-day meeting on 5 September saw engineers and physicists discuss the challenges that lie ahead as well the opportunities that this fusion “moonshot” represents.

The prototype fusion plant in question is known as the Spherical Tokamak for Energy Production (STEP), which was first announced by the UK government in 2019 when it unveiled a £220m package of funding for the project. STEP will be based on “spherical” tokamak technology currently being pioneered at the UK’s Culham Centre for Fusion Energy (CCFE). In 2022 a site for STEP was chosen at the former coal-fired power station at West Burton in Nottinghamshire. Operations are expected to begin in the 2040s with STEP aiming to prove the commercial viability of fusion by demonstrating net energy, fuel self-sufficiency and a viable route to plant maintenance.

A spherical tokamak is more compact than a traditional tokamak, such as the ITER experimental fusion reactor currently being built in Cadarache, France, which has been hit with cost hikes and delays in recent years. The compact nature of the spherical tokamak, which was first pioneered in the UK in the 1980s, is expected to minimize costs, maximise energy output and possibly make it easier to maintain when scaled up to a fully-fledged fusion power plant.

The current leading spherical tokamaks worldwide are the Mega Amp Spherical Tokamak (MAST-U) at the CCFE and the National Spherical Torus Experiment at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) in the US, which is nearing the completion of an upgrade. Despite much progress, however, those tokamaks are yet to demonstrate fusion conditions through the use of the hydrogen isotope tritium in the fuel, which is necessary to achieve a “burning” plasma. This goal has, though, already been achieved in traditional tokamaks such as the Joint European Torus, which turned off in 2023.

“STEP is a big extrapolation from today’s machines,” admitted STEP chief engineer Chris Waldon at the event. “It is complex and complicated but we are now beginning to converge on a single design [for STEP]”.

A fusion ‘moonshot’

The meeting at Culham was held to mark the publication of 15 papers on the technical progress made on STEP over the past four years. They cover STEP’s plasma, its maintenance, magnets, tritium-breeding programme as well as pathways for fuel self-sufficiency (Philosophical Transactions A 382 20230416). Officials were keen to stress, however, that the papers were a snapshot of progress to date and that since then some aspects of the design have progressed.

One issue that crept up during the talks was the challenge of extrapolating every element of tokamak technology to STEP – a feat described by one panellist as being “so far off our graphs”. While theory and modelling have come a long way in the last decade, even the best models will not be a substitute for the real thing. “Until we do STEP we won’t know everything,” says physicist Steve Cowley, director of the PPPL. Those challenges involve managing potential instabilities and disruptions in the plasma – which at worst could obliterate the wall of a reactor – as well as operating high-temperature superconducting magnets to confine the plasma that have yet to be tested under the intensity of fusion conditions.

We need to produce a project that will deliver energy someone will buy

Ian Chapman

Another significant challenge is self-breeding tritium via neutron capture in lithium, which would be done in a roughly one-metre thick “blanket” surrounding the reactor. This is far from straightforward and the STEP team are still researching what technology might prevail – whether to use a solid pebble-bed or liquid lithium. While liquid lithium is good at producing tritium, for example, extracting the isotope to put back into the reactor is complex.

Howard Wilson, fusion pilot plant R&D lead at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the US, was keen to stress that STEP will not be a commercial power plant. Instead, its job rather is to demonstrate “a pathway towards commercialisation”. That is likely to come in several stages, the first being to generate 1 GW of power, which would result in 100 MW to the “grid” (the other 900 MW needed to power the systems). The second stage will be to test if that power production is sustainable via the self-breeding of tritium back into the reactor, what is known as a “closed fuel cycle”.

Ian Chapman, chief executive of the UKAEA, outlined what he called the “fiendish” challenges that lie ahead for fusion, even if STEP demonstrates that it is possible to deliver energy to the grid in a sustainable way. “We need to produce a project that will deliver energy someone will buy,” he said. That will be achieved in part via STEP’s third objective, which is to get a better understanding of the maintenance requirements of a fusion power plant and the impact that would have on reactor downtime. “We fail if there is not cost-effective solution,” added STEP engineering director Debbie Kempton.

STEP officials are now selecting industry partners — in engineering and construction — to work alongside the UKAEA to work on the design. Indeed, STEP is as much about physically building a plant as it is creating a whole fusion industry. A breathless two-minute pre-event promotional film — that loftily compared the development of fusion to the advent of the steam train and vaccines — was certainly given a much needed reality check.

Source: Physics World

_{Phil Diamond, MD of Diamond & Company}

NEW research has revealed more than 5,000 high-rise buildings in Scotland are estimated to be covered in ‘flammable cladding’.

Figures produced by Diamond & Company reveal that around 5,500 private and public buildings across the country taller than 11m (36ft) have flammable cladding.

The firm estimates around 25,000 people living in flats in high-rise buildings are affected, with the predicted bill for removing and replacing the combustible cladding expected to eventually reach £7.5 billion in Scotland.

The research has been published following publication of the final report of the Grenfell Tower public inquiry into the 2017 fire that killed 72 people.

The nine-storey Aurora Apartments in Aberdeen is one of several ‘high priority’ buildings identified in the Scottish Government’s pilot programme on cladding remediation as part of the Single Building Assessment.

The Aurora work was managed by Diamond & Company (Scotland) Ltd Chartered Building Surveyors and Chartered Fire Engineers. Using information gathered over several years from a database of high-rise buildings in Scotland, the company has produced figures that reveal the ‘true extent of the problem of dangerous cladding’.

Phil Diamond, MD of Diamond & Company, said,

“The catastrophic loss of so many lives in the Grenfell Tower fire should have been the wake-up call for an immediate overhaul of the housing industry and planning system. Yet, seven years on, little has changed. In Scotland, only one building has had its cladding stripped and replaced through a Scottish Government pilot project.

“The stark reality is that it’s estimated a further 5,500 private and public high-rise buildings contain flammable cladding affecting around 25,000 people. The cladding used on Grenfell Tower is known as Aluminium Composite Material (ACM) but worryingly there are around eight other different types of combustible cladding that have been used in buildings up and down the country over the past 20-25 years.”

Mr Diamond claimed ‘decades of inaction’ has resulted in us reaching this ‘critical point’ and estimated the cost of remedying the situation could be as much as £7.5 billion.

A law to ban combustible cladding on high-risk buildings, and the highest risk metal composite cladding material from all buildings, was passed by the Scottish Parliament in April 2022. This was implemented by amendments to the Building (Scotland) Regulations 2004, introduced on 1 June 2022, which bans the use of combustible materials on domestic high-rise buildings above 36ft (11m), care homes and hospitals.

The Single Building Assessment (SBA) identifies life-critical fire safety risks and any mitigation or remediation required to make a building safer. The Aurora Apartments was identified to test the SBA as part of the government pilot programme.

Phil Diamond added,

“There is now an urgent need for government in Scotland and at UK-level, along with the building industry to work in partnership to make our high-rise buildings safe. Simplifying a cumbersome procurement system would speed up the risk assessments, to identify the dangerous cladding, and the work needed to remove and replace these flammable materials.

“One bit of positive news is that the methodologies for assessing these high-rise buildings is finally in place. We now owe it to those who died at Grenfell to have the courage to take the rapid action needed to ensure such a tragedy never happens again.”

Source: Project Scotland

Associate director in the Cardiff planning team of Savills, Rhys Govier, on the UK Government’s mission to speed up planning in England and whether the Welsh Government will be left behind.

We have never before seen planning reform take such centre stage as a key policy of the new Labour UK Government.

With little or no room for additional borrowing, and a manifesto pledge not to raise taxes, the new Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, borrowed the phrase ‘graveyard of ambition’, often cited (incorrectly) as Dylan Thomas’ description of his hometown of Swansea (it was actually coined by another poet, David Hughes), in the wake of English planning reform announcements. The new UK Government sees planning reform as critical to kickstarting higher levels of economic growth.

Planning, however, is a devolved matter. With Wales at the wrong end of the UK regional productivity league, with only 73% of UK GDP per capita, and assuming planning changes can trigger growth, this begs the question what reforms are required within our own planning system to ensure Wales does not fall further behind?

Housing need

In England there will be new, and bigger, housing targets. The National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) consultation proposes to change the focus of local plans to categorically meet identified housing need, rather than as much of it as possible, by imposing a revised standard methodology as a starting point. This is a marked change.

In contrast, Welsh local authorities set their own housing figures based on population projections and an analysis of various growth options. While these figures do undergo independent examination, the arguably less rigorous and potentially less ambitious starting point is in stark contrast to England.

In England, the Westminster government is returning to a five year housing land supply test, something removed altogether in Wales since 2018, with no sign of it returning.

In fact, the only nationally set housing target in Wales is for 20,000 new low carbon homes for social rent during this Senedd term (2021-26), which the former Minister, Julie James MS, conceded would be “touch and go”. This in itself seems an optimistic outlook given that official data suggests just over a quarter of that target – 5,775 homes – was achieved in the first two years. The commitment was, however, repeated in the Welsh Labour Party manifesto 2024.

Reeves accepts that private sector investment is integral to meeting need in England. With a target of 1.5 million new homes in five years, Wales’ ‘Barnett consequential’ could equate to a target of 75,000 over the lifetime of this UK parliament (2024-29). Yet, while Future Wales (Welsh Government’s national development framework to 2040) includes a target of 20,000 new affordable homes, it is silent on any contribution from private housebuilders – despite recent data suggesting they contribute towards 80% of dwelling completions.

Green belt

We might start to see a discrepancy in how UK and Welsh governments look at green belt policy in the future.

The consultation NPPF on green belt makes it explicit that authorities must review boundaries where it cannot meet its housing need, while Future Wales offers “areas for consideration” for new green belt designations in the north, south west and south east. Yet some of these areas could represent some of the most sustainable areas for growth in Wales, especially those in the south east.

Although Future Wales is clear that any new green belt should be designated via strategic development Plans (much-delayed regional development plan documents), in advance of their adoption, its policies also state that “decisions should not permit major development in the areas shown for consideration for green belts, except in very exceptional circumstances”.

Data centres

The NPPF consultation gives renewed prominence to the development of data centres and gigafactories. In contrast, there is no overriding economic development policy within Future Wales – which could be a missed opportunity, as Wales needs to be competitively placed alongside other home nations.

There also appears to be a widening gap between England and Wales on energy infrastructure, grid connections and pylons. The Welsh Government has invested significant effort and resource into the Infrastructure (Wales) Act 2024 which became law in June, but there is much to do through supporting secondary legislation and guidance for it to become the flagship consenting regime promised.

In England, the new government was quick to approve three large solar farms (including one against an inspector’s recommendation), with the presumption more will follow.

Wales has been busy legislating and producing policy outputs on planning but is it creating a framework for sustainable growth, or is there a risk of over-regulation – the unintended consequences of which could be a slower, more expensive and less predictable system?

There is no doubt that new reforms in England will have implications for Wales’ future economic development – a real challenge for the new devolved administration that will take shape under Eluned Morgan’s leadership.

The political alignment between UK and Welsh governments creates an opportunity for mutual learning and cooperation. It is my hope that the new Welsh Housing Cabinet Secretary embraces the potential for positive change recognising the economic and social dividends of ambitious growth.

Source: Business Live