Fusion Power: The Mission, an Engineer, and the Way Forward
Dr Tom Barrett, UK Atomic Energy Authority, Culham, Oxfordshire
17th December 2019
Fusion power has for decades promised to be humanity’s perfect energy source: safe, clean, abundant, sustainable and dependable as a baseload supply. Investment in experimental facilities has so far been focused on fusion physics, but fusion is now said to be entering the “delivery era”. A net-power reactor, ITER, is under construction in France as an international project, there are efforts across the globe on power plant design, and there are an increasing number of private fusion start-up companies. At UKAEA, Culham, the last decade has seen the establishment of new centres of excellence for materials research, remote handling, technology, and apprentice training. UKAEA has a rapidly expanding workforce of engineers, and not only the type that fix equipment and operate machines – engineers with the creativity to design power stations of the future. To deliver fusion power is going to need considerable and increasing investment in facilities for fusion technology development. One such facility is named CHIMERA, a device for testing large component prototypes under the harsh conditions of the fusion core, which is currently under design and due to come online in 2022. This talk gives a recap of the merits of fusion as a power source, gives an insight into the work of fusion engineers at Culham, and describes how the community is moving forward with increasing focus on fusion technology development.
Dr Barrett has a 1st class masters degree in mechanical engineering and completed his PhD in the subject of Computational Engineering from the University of Southampton in 2007. He then joined the UK Atomic Energy Authority at Culham, and has since worked on a range of projects, notably leading a crucial upgrade of the neutral beam injection systems for the MAST facility as well as leading research on the fusion reactor divertor and other high heat flux plasma-facing technologies. He is line manager of the Engineering Design section at UKAEA and has supervised a number of PhD. students on topics relating to fusion power plant design. He is currently technical lead for a new facility for testing fusion technology named CHIMERA, under design and to be constructed at a new UKAEA site in south Yorkshire.
He thoroughly enjoys the extreme challenges offered by fusion engineering and the inherent mix of “blue-sky” research and detailed component design, as well as the diverse, inclusive and friendly environment at UKAEA.
He is a Chartered Engineer and member of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers.