Atkins and Faithful + Gould scoop £132m nuclear fusion deal

Engineer Atkins and consultant Faithful and Gould have landed a £132m deal to work on an experimental nuclear fusion reactor in the south of France.

The companies have won the contract from Fusion 4 Energy, the European arm of an international collaboration set up to build the reactor, which, if successful, holds the promise of delivering limitless, cheap and waste-free energy.

Atkins won the job of architect engineer as part of the Engage consortium, which included French engineer Assystem and Iosis and Spanish engineer Empresarios Agrupados.

Faithful and Gould provided cost management advice. The consortium will assist F4E during the entire construction process, from detailed design to works completion.

This will be across the ITER buildings, site infrastructure and the distribution of the power supplies. At the peak of the design activity, more than 230 engineers and designers will work on the contract.

The ITER project to build the world’s largest experimental nuclear fusion facility gets half of its funding from the European Union, with the remainder provided by China, Japan, India, the Republic of Korea, the Russian Federation and the USA.

The reactor will be built in Cadarache in the South of France.

Martin Grant, managing director of Atkins’ energy business, said the project ranked as one of the most technically challenging projects the world has ever seen, which also had to be delivered to a very tight schedule.

“This is a remarkable opportunity for Atkins to showcase its engineering and management skills on the world stage and, together with our partners we are now at the centre of a scheme that will pull engineers together across country, company and skills boundaries,” he said.