Culham is the UK's fusion laboratory — a place of magnets, models, and people who measure time in decades without losing a sense of humour.
Industry collaborations tend to be in materials, diagnostics, and the unglamorous engineering that keeps a plasma from becoming a press release.
The Joint European Torus, which ran here for four decades, completed its experimental programme at the end of 2023 and is now the subject of an equally interesting repurposing and decommissioning exercise. MAST Upgrade continues to operate, and the site's forward work centres on the materials, remote handling and tritium engineering that any future plant will require.
For industrial partners the appeal is often oblique. High-heat-flux components, remote maintenance in inaccessible environments, radiation-tolerant instrumentation and joining of dissimilar materials are all fusion problems with immediate applications elsewhere, and the engineering standards here are correspondingly high.
Capabilities
- Fusion materials and diagnostics
- High-heat-flux engineering
- Modelling and control
- Remote handling and robotics for inaccessible environments
- Tritium and vacuum engineering
- Radiation-tolerant instrumentation
Ways in
The routes that exist, and what each is suited to.
Supply chain development
Structured programmes to bring firms into fusion supply chains, with the engineering standards made explicit rather than discovered during an audit.
Collaborative engineering projects
Joint work on materials, joining and remote handling, generally with a research question and a component at the end of it.
Facility and expertise access
Access to specialist test capability and to engineers with unusual experience of high-heat-flux and vacuum environments.
How to approach them
The site is used to industrial visitors and to explaining fusion timescales without defensiveness. Approach with a capability or a component rather than an interest in fusion generally.
Expect security and safety arrangements to add time to a first visit, and expect the engineering conversation to be conducted at a high standard once you are through the gate.
Known for
- Four decades of tokamak operation at the Joint European Torus, concluded in 2023
- MAST Upgrade and its work on exhaust and divertor configurations
- Remote handling systems developed for environments no person will enter again