UKAEA awards £7.4m to develop lithium technologies for fusion

These contracts, which range from £700,000 to £1.5 million, have been granted to four universities and one company as part of UKAEA's ‘Fusion Industry Programme’.

Launched in early 2023, the Fusion Industry Programme's challenge, titled ‘Realising the potential of lithium in an economic, sustainable and scalable fusion energy fuel-cycle’, aims to stimulate the development and evaluation of lithium technology prototypes.

Tim Bestwick, UKAEA’s Chief Development Officer, commented: “Fusion energy continues to feature on the world stage, with recent commitments being made at COP28 to develop fusion as a sustainable, low carbon source of energy for future generations. The Fusion Industry Programme is encouraging the development of UK industrial fusion capacity and preparing the UK fusion industry for the future global fusion power plant market. The organisations that have been awarded these contracts have successfully demonstrated their lithium technology concepts and will now develop them to the ‘proof of concept’ stage.”

These recent contracts are an addition to those awarded earlier in 2023 under the Fusion Industry Programme, which focused on digital engineering, fusion fuel requirements, materials, and manufacturing, as well as heating and cooling technologies.

The list of organisations awarded contracts in Cycle Three, Phase Two, of the Fusion Industry Programme, is dedicated to exploring ‘Realising the potential of lithium in an economic, sustainable and scalable fusion energy fuel-cycle’.

The contracts have gone to the following:

Bangor University

Lithium Isotope Microorganism Enrichment – LiME             

Identify optimum microbe for rapid and efficient 6Li removal. Assess total Li uptake into microbe versus enrichment efficiency will allow computation of batch size and residence time. Use laboratory scale techniques to provide data on enrichment efficiency (ICPMS)

Frazer-Nash       

Lithium Enrichment Prototype Project (LEPDOS)

Combining technical leadership from Frazer-Nash Consultancy Ltd and the University of Bristol to unlock innovative plasma-based technologies capable of meeting the enriched lithium needs of the UK and international fusion pilot-plant generation

University of Bristol       

CENTRAL – centrifugation applied to lithium isotope enrichment       

The University of Bristol supported by Urenco is proposing to modify and adapt existing centrifugation technologies for the purpose of isotopic enrichment of lithium.

University of Bristol       

LIBRA – Lithium Breeder Advancement through materials manufacture and testing         

To evaluate the feasibility of 6LiD as a T breeding material in a thorough and accurate way, the approach from UoB is the establishment of a breeding blanket testing platform to perform tests under quasi-real operating conditions using fusion neutrons

University of Edinburgh 

Development of efficient continuous tritium capture and gaseous release through chemical control

Deliver the requirements of the tritium extraction theme by developing and demonstrating an integrated process capable of effective coupled tritium production and T2 gaseous extraction from a molten salt through chemical and environmental control, at the required efficiency, rate, and robustness

University of Manchester            

Demonstration of a viable process for Li-6 enrichment to support tritium breeding       

A lithium isotope enrichment process based on solvent extraction using crown ethers, which has been reported to exhibit promise but has only been studied using batchwise small-scale tests