£7.4mln awarded for lithium technologies

United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority has awarded £7.4mln to five organisations to develop lithium technology for fusion energy.

The four universities and one company have received six contracts ranging between £700,000 and £1.5m from United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA’s) ‘Fusion Industry Programme’.

Bangor University, the University of Bristol, the University of Edinburgh, the University of Manchester and Frazer-Nash all have projects that have been awarded funding.

UKAEA launched the new Fusion Industry Programme challenge ‘Realising the potential of lithium in an economic, sustainable and scalable fusion energy fuel-cycle’ in early 2023, with the aim of encouraging organisations to develop and evaluate prototypes of lithium technology.

Tim Bestwick, UKAEA’s Chief Development Officer, said, ‘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 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.’