Tokamak Energy

The FAST (Fusion by Advanced Superconducting Tokamak) project was officially announced on November 12, 2024. The project is a large collaboration comprised of several research institutions, private fusion companies, and industry partners. While FAST is set to be built in Japan, many international organizations are also involved in the project. The project is currently being spearheaded by the company Kyoto Fusion.

FAST will use a tokamak fusion device with high-temperature superconducting (HTS) magnetic coils. The project aims to create a successful tokamak device, develop a tritium fuel cycle, and develop the auxiliary systems necessary for a full-scale fusion power plant. The current goal of the project is to create a device that will generate electricity in Japan by the 2030s.

ST25 (Spherical Tokamak with a major radius 25cm) is a small tokamak device at Tokamak Energy. ST25 was built using conventional copper coils to demonstrate basic properties of a spherical tokamak. It was built as a precursor to ST40 device ST40. There is a subsequent ST25 device, ST25 HTS which uses superconducting coils.

ST25 HTS is a follow on device to ST25. It uses REBCO high-temperature superconductor coils in both the toroidal and poloidal field coils. ST25 HTS is the first tokamak to use these superconductors for both sets of coils. In 2015, ST25 HTS ran its magnets and sustained a plasma continuously for 29 hours.

ST40 is a high field spherical tokamak with a major radius of 40cm at Tokamak Energy. The device utilizes a 4m tall stainless steel vessel with copper toroidal field coils which produce magnetic fields up to 3T. ST40 uses a novel merging-compression method for plasma start-up.