Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask Her Majesty's Government, further to the Written Statement by Lord Henley on 28 June committing a further £86 million to research on nuclear fusion (HLWS782), what is the total amount of financial support given since 1988 to supporting nuclear fusion; what tangible benefits have been achieved so far; and whether they have evidence that nuclear fusion will produce significant amounts of electrical energy at commercially viable cost in the foreseeable future.

In the 30 years since 1988, based on information provided by UKAEA, we estimate that total UK government funding for UK fusion research has totalled around £900m. A further approx. £1.6bn funding from EU sources has been spent on fusion research in the UK over the same time frame.

Since 2007, and as part of the UK’s contribution to the general EU budget, the UK has helped fund the EU’s contribution towards the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) fusion research project, based in France. The EU’s support for ITER totals around £5.4bn to date.

UK fusion research has made the UK a world leader in the field and created emerging spin-out industries in areas such as robotics, material sciences, and reactor design. The UK’s Culham Centre for Fusion Energy is a global hub for scientific talent, and the Joint European Torus fusion reactor based at Culham holds the world record for sustaining an energy producing fusion reaction. UK participation in ITER has already enabled UK companies to win around £430m of ITER construction contracts with a further £1bn of contracts being targeted.

Most major nations invest significantly in fusion energy research due to the transformative potential of the technology to provide a virtually limitless clean energy source. ITER is due to complete construction in 2025 and aims to produce net energy from a fusion reaction for the first time, and preparations for a demonstration fusion power plant to follow ITER are already underway. The Government supports UK fusion research to ensure we are positioned to benefit commercially from a technology the UK has pioneered for several decades.