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Tokamak Energy Ltd
Tokamak Energy Ltd is a British company based at Milton Park, Oxfordshire, established to develop small spherical tokamak devices using high temperature superconducting magnets for the pursuit of harnessing nuclear fusion energy.

The company was founded in 2011 and originates from the Spherical Tokamak Group at the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy - the UK's national laboratory for fusion research.

The company believes devices that confine fusion can be much smaller than previously thought, and is based on calculations that show that the net power gain (Q) - the ratio between the energy required to produce a plasma and the energy it produces - can be achieved by achieving very high magnetic fields in a compact device.

Tokamak Energy has an eminent Scientific and Environmental Advisory Board chaired by Lord Julian Hunt FRS. Members include Professor Jack Connor FRS (one of the most influential theoretical plasma physicists in the international fusion programme), Professor George Smith FRS (emeritus professor of materials at the University of Oxford) and Bill Lee FREng (Director of the Centre for Nuclear Engineering and professor of ceramic engineering at Imperial College London) and Dr Colin Windsor FRS.

Contents

 * Operation and funding
 * Physics
 * Projects
 * Competition
 * Criticism
 * See also
 * References
 * Operation and funding

Physics

 * Reinterpretations of scaling laws

Several features, not apparent in 1986, may help reduce the size of tokamaks. These include the discovery of high temperature superconductors in 1987, the advent of the ‘Spherical’ tokamak (announced by Peng & Strickler in the US in 1986, and developed on START at Culham in the 1990’s); the realisation that a series of low power fusion modules may be more efficient (certainly capable of much more rapid development) than gigawatt size devices; and a re-interpretation of the ITER databases.


 * High Field Spherical Tokamaks

Since their development in the 1960's tokamaks have been mainly holding plasmas in a doughnut shaped va


 * High Temperature Superconducting Magnets

Projects

 * ST25
 * ST25HTS
 * ST40

Competition

 * ARK