{
  "abstract": "Climate change and rapidly rising energy demand, driven in part by artificial intelligence and data-centre growth, create an urgent need for stable, low-carbon, and abundant power. Fusion is a promising long-term solution, yet its commercialisation faces a fundamental paradox in today’s investment environment: pilot plants are essential to de-risk physics, engineering, and operations, but their limited lifetime energy output and high upfront costs make them difficult to finance. This paper presents Tokamak Energy’s response: ST-E1, a pre-concept design for a low-aspect-ratio tokamak power plant engineered specifically to overcome this challenge. ST-E1 is designed from the outset for phased operation—pilot and commercial phases, with an upgrade phase in between—with emphasis on commercial viability, maintainability, nuclear engineering, modularity, and upgradability. A key design principle is the deliberate separation of long-lived assets, such as the magnet cage and vacuum vessel, from replaceable in-vessel systems. This provides an attractive and credible investment approach to generate operational data and de-risk key technologies while preserving most capital-intensive assets for later commercial phases. The architecture supports continuous optimisation toward high net electric power (targeting 800–1000 MW net electric), a normalised capital expenditure of $ 12–14k/kW of net electric power, and high availability (targeting > 80 % ). A tokamak core with a 5 m major radius, aspect ratio of 2.3, and on-plasma axis toroidal field of 5.25 T was selected to meet these objectives. This paper summarises the ST-E1 design philosophy, principal features, and development methodology. It introduces a Focus Collection of 11 papers detailing the pre-concept design of the entire tokamak and corresponding plant.",
  "abstract_shown": true,
  "affiliations": [
    "Tokamak Energy Ltd",
    "Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory",
    "Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL)",
    "Idaho National Laboratory (INL)",
    "Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL)",
    "Columbia University",
    "Tokamak Energy Inc"
  ],
  "article_type": null,
  "arxiv": null,
  "author_total": 85,
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  "bibtex": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/7dfvvhgrrcpx3.bib",
  "cited_by": 12,
  "doi": "10.1088/1741-4326/ae5545",
  "fulltext_url": null,
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  "issns": [
    "0029-5515",
    "1741-4326"
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  "landing_url": "https://doi.org/10.1088/1741-4326/ae5545",
  "language": "en",
  "licence": "CC-BY",
  "licence_label": "CC BY",
  "licence_source": "journal",
  "licence_url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
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  "native_subjects": [
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      "3106|Magnetic confinement fusion research"
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  "pdf_url": "https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1741-4326/ae5545/pdf",
  "pmcid": null,
  "pmid": null,
  "published": "2026-07-10",
  "publisher": "IOP Publishing",
  "ris": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/7dfvvhgrrcpx3.ris",
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  "subjects": [
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      "field": "physics",
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  "title": "Tokamak Energy’s pre-concept design for a fusion power plant: an overview of ST-E1",
  "title_text": "Tokamak Energy’s pre-concept design for a fusion power plant: an overview of ST-E1",
  "type": "peer-reviewed",
  "updated_at": "2026-11-05T13:20:42Z",
  "url": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/7dfvvhgrrcpx3",
  "venue": "Nuclear Fusion",
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