Tokamak Energy of the UK announced it has built a world-first set of new generation high temperature superconducting magnets to be assembled and tested in fusion power plant-relevant scenarios.

The UK Atomic Energy Authority and First Light Fusion have signed an agreement for the design and construction of a facility to house the company's new net energy gain demonstrator, Machine 4, at the authority's Culham Campus in Oxfordshire.

Construction of General Fusion's Fusion Demonstration Plant at the UK Atomic Energy Authority's Culham Campus near Oxford, England, is expected to start later this year following the granting of planning permission by the South Oxfordshire District Council Planning Committee.

The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor fusion project has given a progress update on tackling the defects discovered last year in the thermal shields and vacuum vessel sector. It hopes to tender for the thermal shield work, and have a contractor in place, by the end of March.

Tokamak Energy has signed an agreement with Japan's Furukawa Electric to supply "several hundred kilometres" of specialist high temperature superconducting tape for its ST80-HTS prototype fusion device.

A new mode of improved plasma confinement has been demonstrated at the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak, the Hefei Institutes of Physical Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences announced. It said the new high-confinement and self-organising Super I-mode "represents the reliability and advancement of the machine itself but also offers insights into how to better maintain the plasma operating stably and for long duration".

The first ever controlled fusion experiment to produce more energy from fusion than the laser energy used to drive it was conducted at the National Ignition Facility at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory on 5 December - a breakthrough that has been decades in the making.

The UK Atomic Energy Authority and the UK Satellite Applications Catapult have partnered to demonstrate how advanced remote handling and robotics technology developed for fusion energy research can be used to provide maintenance for in-orbit satellites.

The UK's First Light Fusion plans to build a 60 MW pilot power plant based on its unique projectile fusion technology to prove the integrated engineering for electricity generation and the production of tritium. It has partnered with Canadian Nuclear Laboratories to design a system for extracting tritium from the reactor.

China National Nuclear Corp's Southwestern Institute of Physics says that the first piece of the enhanced heat flux first wall for the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor has been produced, with its core indicators better than design requirements.

The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor project has announced defects have been discovered in the thermal shields and vacuum vessel sectors and warned that the consequences on schedule and cost "will not be insignificant".

Canadian Nuclear Laboratories and private fusion developer General Fusion will pursue a series of joint projects to accelerate the deployment of commercial fusion power in Canada.