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Abstract To support the pre-concept design of Tokamak Energy’s (TEs) ST-E1 fusion power plant, we developed a new systems code, PyTok. PyTok codifies plasma physics and engineering constraints within a pure Python, object-oriented framework designed for rapid design iteration and exploration of the power-plant parameter space. The code base and its human- and machine-readable data structures enable coupling to external physics codes and data-analysis tools. Informed by TEs design philosophy and techno-economic analyses, the code was used to identify an initial reference design point for ST-E1. A commercially competitive fusion power plant is achievable with a tokamak power core of major radius 5. 0 m, aspect ratio 1. 9 ⩽ A ⩽ 2. 3 and toroidal field 3. 25 ⩽ B T ⩽ 5. 25 T. The selected design point serves both as a pilot plant and as a commercially competitive reactor using the same permanent power core hardware, enabled by an in-vessel component upgrade phase. The commercial phase targets steady-state operation and a normalised capital expenditure of 12 000–15 000 per kW e, corresponding to a fusion power of 2. 0–2. 5 GW and a net electric power of 800–1000 MW.
Wilson et al. (Fri,) studied this question.