Following our report earlier this week that Britain is poised to become a world leader in ‘limitless atomic power’, we step inside the mainframe itself.
Launched with a £45 million budget, and a mission to delivery 1.4MW of non-carbon electricity, the UK’s Sunrise project has been heralded as a potential next step towards the a new ‘grand milestone in the evolution of our civilisation’.
Commercialisation of fusion energy has been a long-standing dream for many scientists, with this process potentially offering a limitless supply of power at a time when grids and sources are struggling to keep up with surging demand. But what exactly does this entail, and what can we expect to see in the near, mid and long-term from this unique endeavour?
According to the UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA), this technology is best understood as an attempt to ‘tame the heart of an artificial star, and in doing so create clean, safe and reliable energy’. Experimental in the ‘real world’ is too expensive and too slow, so the idea is that an exoscale supercomputer will be used to solve the challenges standing in the way of market rollout which could transform the future of electricity supplies.
This week, the organisation has released a new video which goes into more detail about what all this means, what needs to be overcome, and the secondary impacts of this. For example, a significant number of jobs in Cambridge, where the research campus is based. Hit play above to learn more about this world-leading and groundbreaking scheme.
Image: Luke Jones / Unsplash
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