STEP
STEP is a tokamak fusion project run by UK Industrial Fusion Solutions / UKAEA in United Kingdom. It is planned. Like every fusion device built so far, it has produced no net electricity.
No hardware. Site selected at West Burton, Nottinghamshire; £1.3 billion committed.
A spherical tokamak prototype intended to demonstrate net electricity, targeted for 2040. The spherical geometry is more compact than ITER's but leaves very little room for the central solenoid and the shielding a tritium-breeding blanket needs, the engineering trade at the heart of the design.
| Organisation | UK Industrial Fusion Solutions / UKAEA |
|---|---|
| Approach | tokamak |
| Confinement | magnetic |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Status | Planned |
| First plasma | not yet |
| Target date | 2040 |
|---|---|
| Power target | none stated |
| Energy gain target | none stated |
| Net electricity | No. no fusion device has produced any |
Other tokamak projects
Fusion needs tritium, and the world's civilian stock comes mostly from CANDU fission reactors. See the fusion overview.
STEP in context
14 of the 24 fusion projects on record use the tokamak approach: 7 operating, 3 under construction, 3 planned and 1 closed.
It lists a target date of 2040, 14 years from now; of the 7 projects that list one, 6 list an earlier year. A target date is the project's own aim, not a forecast.
| Measure | STEP | Median of all projects | Standing |
|---|---|---|---|
| Target date | 2040 | 2028 | 7 of 7 (earliest first) |
Worked out from the entries on this site only, so a figure compares STEP with what is recorded here, not with everything that exists. An entry with no value for a measure is left out of that measure's ranking and median.
Sources
- World Nuclear Association, Nuclear Fusion Power · retrieved 2026-09-07
How these sources are used, including the corrections applied on top of them and what is deliberately left blank · download the underlying data