General Atomics delivering Tokamak Energy waveguide for U.S.-UK Fusion Project

Tokamak Energy is working with General Atomics (GA) on a crucial upgrade to its record-breaking fusion machine as part of a transatlantic program.

The American energy and defense giant will build a waveguide to transfer plasma-heating electromagnetic waves from a new gyrotron as part of a series of experiments on the path to delivering clean, limitless fusion power.

The crucial fuel-heating technology, which will be used in future fusion energy power plants, will start being installed on Tokamak Energy’s high field spherical tokamak ST40 this year.

The waveguide is an essential part of a project between the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), the UK’s Department of Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) and Tokamak Energy that will accelerate the path to commercial fusion. Once the waveguide is in operation, the partners will advance the fusion science and technology needed to deliver a future pilot plant by testing lithium on the inner wall of ST40.

Warrick Matthews, Tokamak Energy CEO, said: “We have a strong relationship with General Atomics and are delighted to be working together on this crucial upgrade. Our record-breaking fusion machine has always punched above its weight and the new heating capabilities will be another exciting addition towards achieving our goal of abundant fusion energy for all.”

Michael Ginsberg, President, Tokamak Energy U.S., said: “We are delighted to work with General Atomics on this vital project. GA is a key enabler for a campaign that will advance joint U.S.-UK leadership in fusion, a critical step forward in the global race, particularly with China, for the future of energy.”

Anantha Krishnan, senior vice president for General Atomics Energy Group, said: “We’re thrilled to collaborate with Tokamak Energy on this important upgrade to their ST40 spherical tokamak. By combining GA’s expertise in high-power microwave technology and plasma heating with Tokamak Energy’s innovative technology program, we aim to advance fusion energy research and move closer to making clean, limitless power a reality.”

Tokamak Energy’s ST40 has reached a plasma ion temperature greater than 100 million degrees Celsius, the threshold required for commercial fusion energy and the highest achieved in a privately funded spherical tokamak.

Tokamak Energy recently presented the first details of its fusion energy pilot plant being designed as part of the DOE Milestone-Based Fusion Development Program, established for private firms to bring fusion towards technical and commercial viability.

The new gyrotron, built by Kyoto Fusioneering, will generate high-power electromagnetic waves for controlling and heating a hydrogen plasma many times hotter than the centre of the sun. Enabled by the GA waveguide, it will also be used to start up and drive plasma current.

2000 1334 Stuart White
Share
Previous Post
Tokamak Energy registers as legal entity in Japan to expand global operations
Chris Martin

Dr Chris Martin

Chairman

Chris Martin is the Tokamak Energy Chairman and a non-executive director. He has considerable international experience successfully growing businesses in the healthcare, energy and environmental sectors. He co-founded ADC Therapeutics in 2011, after launching Zynlonta for blood cancer and leading a NYSE IPO, he stepped down as CEO in May 2022.

He was also Co-Founder of Spirogen Ltd and its Chief Executive Officer leading up to the company’s sale to AstraZeneca in October 2013. Chris has a DPhil from Oxford and an MBA from IMD, and is a Fellow of the Institution of Chemical Engineers and a Sainsbury Management Fellow.

Close

Warrick Matthews

Warrick Matthews

Chief Executive Officer

Warrick Matthews joined Tokamak Energy in January 2023. He spearheads the company’s efforts to develop the technology and build the strategic partnerships to deliver fusion energy in the 2030s and commercialise their groundbreaking high-temperature superconducting (HTS) magnet technology.

Leading a team of over 260 people, with world-leading scientific, engineering, industrial and commercial expertise, Warrick brings a wealth of experience to the role. Before joining Tokamak Energy, he spent 24 years at Rolls-Royce, where he held various operational leadership positions, most recently serving as Chief Procurement Officer for the Civil Aerospace division.

Close

David Kingham

Dr David Kingham

Executive Vice Chairman

David is our Executive Vice Chairman and one of the founders of the company.

As CEO he led the company from 2009 to 2017, through several investment rounds, raising about £20m. During that time, the company developed and tested the world’s first tokamak (ST25-HTS) to use exclusively high temperature superconducting (HTS) magnets and grew to 50 staff.

David initiated the ST40 high field compact spherical tokamak project which achieved 100-million-degree plasma temperature in 2022. At the other end of the temperature scale, he started to build an outstanding team of superconducting magnet engineers to develop high performance HTS magnets. One of these magnets achieved the remarkable field strength of 26.2 tesla when tested at a temperature of 4K at CERN in 2020.

Prior to establishing Tokamak Energy, David was CEO of Oxford Innovation, a company supplying premises and innovation support services to high tech ventures.

Close

Mikhail Gryaznevich

Dr Mikhail Gryaznevich

Chief Scientist

Mikhail is a founder of Tokamak Energy and our Chief Scientist. He is a leading global authority on tokamaks and has performed experiments on 16 different tokamak during his distinguished career.

After graduating with an Honours Diploma in Plasma Physics from the Leningrad University in his homeland, Mikhail earned a PhD in Plasma Physics and Nuclear Fusion from the USSR Academy of Science. In 1990, he joined the Culham Laboratory in Abingdon and has been responsible for leading experimental programmes, preparing and performing experiments, designing, constructing and operating tokamak systems and diagnostics, as well as supervising students and scientific and engineering personnel.

Mikhail is a Visiting Professor at Imperial College in London and an editorial board member for the Plasma Science & Technology Journal and the Open Plasma Physics Journal. He regularly lectures about the physics behind spherical tokamaks at universities and plasma physics schools across the world.

Close

Erik Bonino

Non-Executive Director

Erik Bonino joined Tokamak Energy as a Non-Executive Director in January 2021.

Erik has over 30 years’ international experience in the energy sector in operations, major projects and technology development.

Erik is a mentor to Imperial College London’s IVMS program where he advises a number of technology start-up companies in energy and related fields.

Erik retired from Shell in August 2018, where he held the roles of UK Country Chair and Executive Vice President of Downstream Technologies. His portfolio included Shell’s Catalyst and Licensing business through which he developed Shell’s bio-fuel technology. He also established Shell’s Global technology campus in Bengaluru, India. Prior to this he served as the Executive Vice President of Project and Engineering Services with responsibility for the delivery of new production facilities, technology and technical support for both the Upstream and Downstream Businesses.

Prior to joining Shell in 2002 Erik spent 18 years in the oil and gas industry, first in the leadership of major capital projects and then in management consulting as Vice President of Energy and Utilities with Cap Gemini Ernst and Young. As a senior consultant he has advised many blue-chip energy companies on operational performance improvement and has led utility privatisations in Europe.

Erik holds an MBA from Cranfield School of Management and a B.Sc. (Hons) in Electrical Engineering from Southampton University. He is a Fellow of the Energy Institute.

Close

David Gray CBE

Non-Executive Director

David Gray joined Tokamak Energy as a Non-Executive Director in October 2019.

He has spent 30 years working in financial markets, mainly with HSBC, and has extensive experience of the energy sector including advisory roles on the initial privatisations of British Gas and the electricity sector.

He is currently Chair of Mutual Energy and the Energy Innovation Centre (EIC). Mutual Energy is an energy infrastructure company based in Northern Ireland. It owns the electricity and gas interconnectors between Scotland and Northern Ireland together with gas transmission assets in both countries. The EIC acts as an intermediary between innovators and energy network companies to optimise the effective adoption of innovative solutions by the industry.

David was previously Chair of the Gas & Electricity Markets Authority (the board of the energy regulator, Ofgem) from 2013 – 2018 and was Ofgem’s Managing Director, Networks from 2003 – 2007. After leaving Ofgem in 2008 he was a member of a panel advising the Department for Transport on the economic regulation of airports and subsequently led a review of Ofwat on behalf of DEFRA and the Welsh Assembly Government. He was also a non-executive Director of the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) from 2009 to 2019.

Close

David Harding

Sir David Harding

Non-Executive Director

Sir David Harding joined Tokamak Energy as a non-executive Director in March 2022. He is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Winton Group Limited.

Sir David graduated from Cambridge University with a First Class Honours degree in Natural Sciences specialising in Theoretical Physics. He then embarked on a career in the analysis of futures and trading markets, which led him to co-found Adam, Harding and Lueck Ltd in 1987 with Martin Lueck and Michael Adam. AHL rapidly became one of the leading commodity trading advisors in the UK and was acquired by Man Group plc in 1994. Sir David left Man Group plc in 1996 and in February 1997, he co-founded Winton with Martin Hunt and Osman Murgian with a commitment to applying financial mathematics and empirical scientific research to creating and developing trading systems for the financial markets.

Sir David has endowed a number of significant projects principally supporting the funding of basic science research in the UK and around the world, including the Winton Programme for the Physics of Sustainability at the Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge and the Winton Bio-informatics Suite at the Francis Crick Institute. In 2019, Sir David’s foundation gave US$130 million to Cambridge University.

He sits on the Advisory Board of the Royal Society and the University of Cambridge Development Board, and is an honorary Fellow of the Science Museum, and of St Catharine’s College, Cambridge.

Close

Warrick Matthews

Warrick Matthews

Chief Executive Officer

Warrick Matthews joined Tokamak Energy in January 2023. He spearheads the company’s efforts to develop the technology and build the strategic partnerships to deliver fusion energy in the 2030s and commercialise their groundbreaking high-temperature superconducting (HTS) magnet technology.

Leading a team of over 260 people, with world-leading scientific, engineering, industrial and commercial expertise, Warrick brings a wealth of experience to the role. Before joining Tokamak Energy, he spent 24 years at Rolls-Royce, where he held various operational leadership positions, most recently serving as Chief Procurement Officer for the Civil Aerospace division.

Close

Thomas Pfisterer

Non-Executive Director

Thomas is Director of Direct Investments of the WILD Family Investment Office.  He joined the Family Office following the sale of WILD Flavors GmbH, one of the world’s leading suppliers of natural ingredients to the food and beverage industry, for which he served as Head of Strategic Development directing the company’s global M&A activities since October 2011.  Thomas currently serves on the Boards of Directors of several other companies, including TTTech Computertechnik AG.  He holds a Master’s in Finance from Cambridge University, UK, as well as a BA in Economics and a BA in Business Administration, both from University of St. Gallen, Switzerland.

Close

Daniel Freeman

Non-Executive Director

Daniel Freeman leads Dorilton Ventures, a venture capital firm investing in advanced technology companies. He has more than 20 years’ experience investing across a range of geographies and asset classes at firms including Lehman Brothers, Deutsche Bank, and Eton Park Capital Management. Daniel holds an AB in East Asian Studies from Princeton, was a Fellow at the Johns Hopkins-Nanjing University Centre for Chinese and American Studies, and received an MBA from the Harvard Business School.

Close

Warrick Matthews

Warrick Matthews

Chief Executive Officer

Warrick Matthews joined Tokamak Energy in January 2023. He spearheads the company’s efforts to develop the technology and build the strategic partnerships to deliver fusion energy in the 2030s and commercialise their groundbreaking high-temperature superconducting (HTS) magnet technology.

Leading a team of over 260 people, with world-leading scientific, engineering, industrial and commercial expertise, Warrick brings a wealth of experience to the role. Before joining Tokamak Energy, he spent 24 years at Rolls-Royce, where he held various operational leadership positions, most recently serving as Chief Procurement Officer for the Civil Aerospace division.

Close

Warrick Matthews

Warrick Matthews

Chief Executive Officer

Warrick Matthews joined Tokamak Energy in January 2023. He spearheads the company’s efforts to develop the technology and build the strategic partnerships to deliver fusion energy in the 2030s and commercialise their groundbreaking high-temperature superconducting (HTS) magnet technology.

Leading a team of over 260 people, with world-leading scientific, engineering, industrial and commercial expertise, Warrick brings a wealth of experience to the role. Before joining Tokamak Energy, he spent 24 years at Rolls-Royce, where he held various operational leadership positions, most recently serving as Chief Procurement Officer for the Civil Aerospace division.

Close

Warren East

Sir Warren East CBE

Non-Executive Director

Sir Warren East CBE, previously CEO of Rolls-Royce and Arm, joined Tokamak Energy as Non-Executive Director in May 2023.

After 11 years at Texas Instruments, he joined Arm in 1994, was appointed to the board in 2000, and was CEO from 2001 to 2013. Under his leadership, Arm became the world’s leading semiconductor IP licensing company.

In 2014, Warren became a non-executive director of Rolls-Royce Holdings and chair of the board’s technology committee. As CEO from April 2015, he led Rolls-Royce through the Covid-19 pandemic and championed the strategic shift to net zero. He retired from the company on 31 December 2022.

In April 2024, Warren was appointed Chair of The UK’s National Air Traffic Service (NATS). He is a Fellow of the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET), Royal Society and Royal Academy of Engineering, a Distinguished Fellow of the British Computer Society and a companion of the Chartered Management Institute. He has a degree in Engineering Science from Oxford University, an MBA from Cranfield, and honorary doctorates from Cranfield and Newcastle Universities.

Warren was made CBE in 2014 for services to engineering and technology, and received a knighthood in the 2025 King’s New Year Honours List for services to the economy and net-zero. With his wife, he has established The Relithan Charitable Trust, supporting science education.

Close

Rory Scott Russell

Non-Executive Director

Rory Scott Russell is head of Venture Capital at East Innovate, the venture capital arm of East X, a quantitative commodity technology and research company. East Innovate invests and partners with early-stage, research-driven start-ups addressing the global energy challenge. He is the founder and co-founder of several technology companies, following an early career in international energy. He has a BSc in Computer Science and Al from the University of Edinburgh.

Close

Martin Kleppe

Non-Executive Director

Since 2017, Martin Kleppe has been working as General Counsel at the Family Office of Dr. Hans-Peter Wild. In this role, he is responsible for all legal matters, particularly in connection with the various investments and holdings of the company group. Prior to this, he spent over ten years at an international law firm, specializing in Mergers & Acquisitions (M&A), joined the legal team of an investment bank in Sydney, Australia, and served as a board member of a real estate company.

Martin Kleppe completed his law studies at the University of Cologne, Germany. He also earned a Dr. iur. (Doctor of Law) degree from the University of Cologne.

He joined the Tokamak Energy board as a non-executive director in January 2025.

Close