By Caroline Delbert • December 2, 2020

Like future Olympic Games, the first nuclear fusion power plant site is being chosen a decade in advance.

• Coverage of fusion experiments ignores that these plants will also have staff, security, and more.

• Fission likely causes far worse "meltdowns," but there are still big safety questions to answer.

In the U.K., energy developers are making plans to choose a site for the world’s first fusion power plant. As with most fusion projects, this milestone is likely at least a decade away, and the site in question will be less than one half square mile—not exactly a high bar to clear, though complicated by its need to be adjacent to the existing grid.

But is this actually a real step, or is just energy pageantry?

There’s bureaucracy at play here, first and foremost. Getting far ahead of choosing sites is smart, especially when a fusion power plant will be one of the very first of its kind in the world. That means making new regulatory materials, doing environmental suitability testing, and much, much more. This site will theoretically hold the Spherical Tokamak for Energy Production (STEP), a next-generation tokamak fusion reactor planned for breaking ground in 2030 and productive fusion in 2040. (That's the concept art above.)

STEP itself has been in the works for a decade, with previous efforts followed by a fallow period and a series of conceptual renovations. Now, its makers say, it’s the most cutting-edge tokamak design in the running for the first feasible fusion power plant idea.

…

Read full article here