'No guarantee' £20bn fusion power plant will work

The body behind a £20 billion fusion power station set for the Nottinghamshire countryside says there is "no guarantee" it will work.

On Tuesday, the government announced that the state-of-the-art building will be built at the West Burton A plant.

Fusion is a potential source of almost limitless clean energy but is currently only carried out in experiments.

Specialists said there were "challenges" to overcome before the technology is able to power homes.

Ian Chapman, chief executive of the UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) said the project could be a "really big part" of the UK's plan to tackle climate change and may have a wider impact on the world.

"This has never been done before," he said.

"We have done it as experiments in the lab and we've shown that we can make fusion happen and we can control it, but we've never done it at the scale where it produces electricity and actually powers your home.

"This will be the first of its kind and I don't know that everything will work.

"For sure we have challenges that we have to overcome and that is the point of the next phase of the programme.

"There is no guarantee that this will work - this is cutting edge technology."

Fusion - the process going on inside the sun - creates energy by forcing atoms together.

It is the opposite of standard nuclear reactors which rely on fission, breaking atoms apart.

Fusion is viewed as safe and clean but has so far proved difficult to harness.

Critics have said there are still huge hurdles to overcome and some experts believe existing, proven renewable technologies offer a more economical and timely way of tackling climate change.

Read more: Nuclear fusion: 'A question of when, not if'

The UKAEA has said the plant should be operational by the early 2040s with the government pledging more than £220m for the STEP (Spherical Tokamak for Energy Production) programme.

Nottinghamshire County Council has estimated the project will cost about £20bn to complete.

Even though the prototype plant may never be completely functional, the project is set to bring thousands of jobs to the area.

Ben Bradley, leader of the county council and MP for Mansfield, said: "The opportunity to create that limitless clean energy can solve an awful lot of problems that are top of the agenda.

"But for us in Nottinghamshire, if it works that's incredible, but either way we're going to draw in billions of pounds of investment into this area.

"That is important for jobs, for local opportunities for people here. This part of the world used to power the county and it can do it again."

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