The UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) is set to invest £200m in its Lithium Breeding Tritium Innovation (LIBRTI) programme to advance the development of fusion fuel.
The new investment is in line with the UK’s Department for Energy and Net Zero’s recent support for the nation’s fusion programme and budget plans for 2025/2026.
LIBRTI, a part of the broader Fusion Futures initiative, focuses on advancements and stimulating general industry capacity through global collaboration.
The four-year programme is designed to demonstrate controlled tritium breeding, a critical step for future fusion power plants.
As part of the programme, UKAEA plans to purchase a neutron source, which will serve as the foundation for the advanced testbed facility to be built at Culham Campus in Oxfordshire.
UKAEA is also committed to providing £9m to support 12 small-scale experiments focused on tritium breeding and digital simulation.
LIBRTI director at UKAEA John Norton said: “The neutron source selected shall provide neutrons of the same energy as those emitted from a fusion machine, enabling LIBRTI to experiment with a wide range of materials and engineering configurations to shape and advance the breeding models required for next step blanket designs.”
According to UKAEA, future of the fusion power plants depends on two hydrogen isotopes, deuterium, and tritium, to produce energy.
Deuterium can be readily sourced from seawater, but Tritium is scarce, which makes it essential to develop sustainable production methods.
To address the limitation, Tritium must be produced or ‘bred’ within a lithium-containing blanket that surrounds the fusion reaction.
The breeder blanket performs multiple critical functions including Tritium production by reacting with high-energy neutrons produced during fusion to generate tritium.
It absorbs heat by capturing the immense heat generated by fusion reactions for energy conversion and protects the machine’s components from radiation damage.
US-based scientific equipment supplier SHINE Technologies would deliver a 14 MeV deuterium-tritium fusion system to provide the LIBRTI neutron source in 2027.
SHINE Technologies CEO Greg Piefer said: “Our partnership with UKAEA’s LIBRTI program is a key milestone for fusion energy. Today, our systems are already achieving up to 50 trillion fusion reactions per second, which makes them the world’s brightest steady-state deuterium-tritium neutron sources.
“These fusion spectrum neutrons are essential to validate tritium breeding materials critical for scalable fusion energy systems.
“We’re excited to work with UKAEA to develop next-generation fusion solutions to help pave the way to clean, abundant energy.”
