Towards compact and efficient nuclear reactors

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There is an ever pressing need to develop clean and green methods for energy generation. Fusion is an important part of the solution, in principal at least providing close to unlimited high grade energy with a close to zero carbon footprint. Fusion is at a cross-roads, the physics is well understood but the engineering still needs a great deal of effort to bring about practical fusion. High Temperature Superconductors (HTS) have recently emerged as a serious contender for achieving this goal. The purpose of this project is to overcome the major difficulty of AC losses which are a perennial problem with HTS. HTS are only lossless under DC conditions, this will not be the case with a fusion magnet which will be ramped up and down. In a reactor there are coils which need to be ramped rapidly this will induce AC losses. AC losses are a perennial problem for superconductors which needs to be solved. Once it is solved a huge range of applications will become practical, not only fusion but, for example electric flight, even more powerful wind generators and many more. We aim to solve this problem.