Rotherham’s Advanced Manufacturing Park now sits on what was once part of the Orgreave Colliery; now the former coal-mining area is home to a crucible for extremely ambitious plans to create a very different type of energy to meet the nation’s needs.

For the past three years, the UK Atomic Energy Authority has been operating from a £22m facility on the park designed to facilitate the long-hoped for birth of a feasible fusion technology industry for the country.

The site’s work complements UKAEA’s existing main base in Oxfordshire and is ideally located for plans to open a £20bn fusion powerplant by around 2040 in nearby West Burton, North Nottinghamshire at a location that is a former coal-fired power station itself.

It is hoped the plant will demonstrate how fusion energy can produce eco-friendly electricity in a process where two forms of hydrogen are heated together at 150 million degrees centigrade – 10 times hotter than the sun – to create helium and release large amounts of energy. But significant technical challenges currently remain in turning that energy into electricity at a commercially-viable level.

That is where the work of the Rotherham team comes in. They are developing and testing materials and components that can cope with the conditions found inside a fusion reactor.

Rather than a colliery supplying coal to a nearby power station, the hope is that Rotherham will be providing vital information that helps build a safe, sustainable and low-carbon part of the world’s future energy supply.

The Yorkshire Post was given a tour of the facility by Dr Matt Stephenson, UKAEA’s Head of Operations for Fusion Technology, and his colleague Jordan d'Arras, graduate development engineer. Amongst all the focus on the future, the site’s past is not forgotten with a photograph of the old Orgreave site on one of the walls.

Around 45 people work at the site and Stephenson, who has previously worked for Siemens and Rolls-Royce and lives in Mansfield, says the initiative is a genuine passion project for him and other team members.

"Effectively we are the ‘how’. The scientists are proving the ‘what’ and we’re looking at how we can translate that into a deliverable and sustainable and achievable technology solution ready for West Burton.

“I’m from the area and went to school in Yorkshire and Nottinghamshire. I’ve grown up in the 1980s and 1990s seeing the legacy of coal so this is a passion project for me.

"The really elegant thing is West Burton is going to be on an old coal-fired power station. Millions and millions of tonnes of coal that have come through those gates.

"One kilogramme of our fuel is the equivalent of 10 million kilogrammes of fossil fuel. That gives you an idea of how efficient it is. A one gigawatt fusion station needs less than one tonne of fuel per year.”

But while it all sounds good on paper, getting fusion energy to work at a commercial scale has eluded scientists thus far. The work in Rotherham is about changing that if possible.

Stephenson says: “It’s a very fragile environment within that fusion device and maintaining it and keeping it for the fusion reaction is key. If it anything changes, it stops very quickly.

"We’re working extremely hard through computer modelling and the research we are doing here to make it as reliable as possible.”

In the main hall of the facility, different pieces of complex equipment are being worked on by expert teams to try and solve some of the logistical issues around delivering fusion energy at scale.

There remains a large space set aside for what will eventually be a central plank of that work; a huge machine called CHIMERA which will expose components to high temperatures and magnetic loads in a way designed to simulate what they would be put through in a real fusion power plant.

Stephenson says: "We’ve got a lot of people working on extremely small parts of this problem to try and solve the bigger picture.

"This is the one thing that ties us all together and the scientific and economic benefits are substantial. Everything pretty much is pushing the boundaries of physics, material science and chemistry to a certain extent. That environment is so unique and we are trying to do maximise the scientific benefit and pursuing it with economic benefit in mind. It has to be economically viable and it has to work.

"This site wasn’t chosen at random. It was chosen in Yorkshire because of the nature of the materials expertise and the development expertise that this park brings and that’s already reaping benefits.”

In addition to the technical challenges, the Rotherham site is also involved in an outreach programme with local schools and universities to identity the potential fusion engineers of the future. D’Arras says there is growing interest in the site’s work. "People think what we do is really interesting because it is really interesting.”

If West Burton works as planned, it is hoped thousands of jobs – many of them in Yorkshire – will be created as part of a supply chain for the fusion energy industry.

Stephenson says: "When West Burton starts delivering energy to the grid it will do it in a very sustainable and efficient way. It is a world-leading technology and it is often referred to as the ultimate energy source. It will put us on the map as a country in taking that technology forward.

"This is a huge undertaking, it will be a world-first.

"I’ve given the second half of my career to this endeavour because it is so exciting. Being from the region, I’ve grown up with the legacy of coal and to bring fusion to Yorkshire and the surrounding area if huge for me. Socially and economically, the benefits are huge.”

As The Yorkshire Post prepares to depart, Stephenson explains succinctly what his team are striving to achieve: “It is the holy grail of energy.”

Meet the experts searching for 'the holy grail of energy' - in Rotherham