A global professional services and project management company headquartered in Montreal, Quebec, announced it has been chose to develop the pre-concept design for a nuclear fusion pilot plant (FPP).
The pilot, announced by Canada-based Canada-based Atkins Realis on July 10 as part of Type One Energy’s FusionDirect program, will be a commercial-scale FPP. It will use stellarator technology to demonstrate its potential to generate power from fusion energy. Several companies are investing in fusion-related projects as issues of climate change and energy security move to the forefront of the power generation space. “Fusion has the potential to provide the world with a virtually limitless and environmentally responsible source of power to advance the global energy transition,” said Joe St. Julian, president of Nuclear for Atkins Realis. “By combining Atkins Realis’ global fusion experience and world-class design and engineering services with Type One Energy’s stellarator technology, together we’re advancing the commercial deployment of fusion energy.”
Type One Energy is based in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. The company earlier this year announced the selection of the Tennessee Valley Authority’s (TVA) Bull Run Fossil Plant in Clinton, Tennessee, as the building site for its prototype, a machine named Infinity One. The company said the “device will validate key design features that will then be incorporated into the FPP. Both Infinity One and the Fusion Pilot Plant will use Type One’s stellarator technology, a series of state-of-the-art superconducting magnets to control plasma with temperatures of over 100 million Celsius, generating a continuous fusion reaction and releasing energy to generate electricity.”
The companies on Wednesday said Atkins Realis’ UK-based fusion team “will work alongside U.S. capabilities and expertise to provide multi-disciplinary engineering services, to develop the full plant requirements, pre-conceptual facility designs, and a preliminary site layout. Working in close collaboration with Type One Energy, Atkins Realis will integrate established project delivery solutions alongside novel fusion technologies, seeking to de-risk the delivery of the fusion plant while optimizing cost.”
“This program of work is the first step in a strategic partnership with Type One Energy as they commercialize their technology and progress the potential of fusion to power the U.S. energy transition,” said Jason Dresbach, director of Advanced Energy Technologies at Atkins Realis.
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