UK Fusion Energy Launches £100 million Procurement

Recently, UK Fusion Energy officially launched a procurement program worth up to £115 million, aimed at finding partners for five key systems for the STEP (Spherical Tokamak for Energy Production) prototype fusion power plant located at West Burton, Nottinghamshire, UK.

This procurement focuses on the core engineering design and validation of the STEP fusion power plant, specifically covering the Breeding Blanket, Fuel Cycle, Test Operations, Control Systems, and System Engineering and Plant Integration. This arrangement marks the STEP project's formal transition from individual physics research to the collaborative delivery phase of complete engineering systems.

The selected industrial and engineering partners will be deeply involved in the technical solution optimization, interface coordination, and validation arrangements for each key system, ensuring that the relevant equipment can be precisely integrated within a unified plant-wide framework. By opening key engineering tasks to the industrial chain, UK Fusion Energy aims to promote the parallel advancement of equipment development, specialized design, and plant-wide integration, accumulating solid engineering conditions for the subsequent formal construction of the prototype power plant.