Development of REBCO Coated Conductors for Spherical Tokamak Fusion Reactors

Tokamak Energy is a private company building compact spherical tokamaks for nuclear fusion power generation who recently succeeding in achieving a temperature of 15 million K in their ST40 device. Critical to the success of these devices is the development of high-field and temperature superconducting magnets made from commercial rare-earth barium copper oxide (REBCO) coated conductors. Fusion is an emerging market for these conductors, and improvements in their properties and manufacturing processes could drastically improve the performance and economics of future reactors. Factors such as critical current density in high magnetic fields, anisotropic critical current, tape construction, resilience against neutron irradiation and the speed and economy of manufacturing processes, may all be customised for this novel application. The aim of this project will be to explore new ways in which REBCO coated conductors can be optimised for use in spherical tokamaks, in order to accelerate the generation of commercial nuclear fusion reactors.