AtkinsRéalis expands role on UKAEA tritium facility

The Isotype Separation System will form part of UKAEA’s Hydrogen-3 Advanced Technology (H3AT) Facility, currently under construction at UKAEA’s Culham Campus in Oxfordshire based on designs delivered by AtkinsRéalis. Claimed to be a world-first, H3AT is a tritium fuel cycle research facility that will include a prototype-scale process plant and experimental platform, which is a scaled version of the design for ITER, the world’s largest experimental fusion project. 

Since tritium is practically non-existent in nature, a fusion power plant must breed its own tritium using the neutron produced in the fusion reaction and the light metal lithium, generating one tritium and one helium nucleus. According to AtkinsRéalis, the tritium capacity of the complex Isotope Separation System will make it the most advanced research facility of its kind, helping to enable the development of tritium infrastructure necessary for sustainable fusion power. 

“The H3AT Facility will be a first-of-a-kind research facility to strengthen UK and international efforts to advance tritium fuel cycle technology,” said Jason Dreisbach, head of Advanced Energy Technologies at AtkinsRéalis.