THE first nuclear fusion plants could be built in Oxfordshire and used to power homes in the next 15 years, the physicist behind a leading company has claimed.

Dr David Kingham said the county was at the heart of an international energy "revolution" that was set to create thousands of high-tech jobs over the next decade.

His firm Tokamak Energy – based in Milton Park, near Didcot – is developing a nuclear fusion reactor to produce energy the same way as the Sun.

Dr Kingham told the Oxford Mail: "The speed of development has been slow over the past 15 or so years, but there is an urgency now as demand grows to solve the world's energy problems and we have the looming issue of global warming.

"Oxfordshire is the ideal place to do research and development, but I would like to see manufacturing happen here as well.

"We want to generate electricity by 2025 and have the first power plant by 2030. It is a very challenging goal, but it can be done."

Fusion takes place when two atoms are fused together under extreme pressure and heat. Using it to generate electricity has long been seen as the 'Holy Grail' of energy production.

But despite governments pouring money into research for more than 50 years, scientists have been unable to make it produce more energy than the amount it takes for fusion to happen.

Dr Kingham hopes his firm's approach, using smaller fusion reactors the size of trucks, could lead to the "breakthrough moment" that could one day see fusion power plants replace those at Didcot.

The reactors are based on the 'tokamak' model widely adopted for fusion research. Oxfordshire already hosts the Joint European Torus (JET), the world’s largest and most powerful tokamak, at the Culham Centre for Fusion Research.

But the key feature of Tokamak Energy's reactor design is its size. It is far smaller than scientists originally thought such devices could ever be.

Dr Kingham added: "People always thought the devices would have to be huge, but now they actually can be smaller – just a few metres across – to create significant amounts of power.

"There are plenty of challenges and it is going to take hundreds of millions of pounds, but we can do a significant part of that work in Oxfordshire.

"The objective is to get there faster than big publicly-funded projects."

Since world leaders made the Paris Agreement to tackle climate change, an international race has begun to find clean energy technologies that can be developed and scaled-up quickly.

Dr Kingham's company faces tough competition to develop the first electricity-generating fusion power plant in America, including start-ups funded by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Paul Allen, Microsoft’s co-founder, and the aerospace giant Lockheed Martin.

But he says Oxfordshire's history as the home of the MRI scanner, developed by Oxford Instruments, and the presence of companies such as Siemens which still produce magnets here, gives it an edge.

There are already about 1,000 jobs reliant on fusion power research in the county, but Dr Kingham says over the next 15 years this could increase tenfold.

Tokamak Energy is building a reactor which it hopes will create temperatures of 15 million degrees centigrade – about the same as the Sun – next year and 100 million degrees by the end of 2017.

The next step would then be to generate electricity using fusion.

But Professor Steve Cowley, chief executive of the UK Atomic Energy Authority and head of the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy, said the public should be cautious about the claims of private companies.

He said: "Oxfordshire would be a great place to design the first electricity-producing fusion reactor and when they want to put one on a site somewhere, maybe it could be here.

"But there are a number of firms making claims about fusion at the moment and many of these devices are still a long way from replicating what JET can do.

"Culham is still the only place in the world where a significant amount of fusion has been done and we have some of the world's greatest experts here, so if it becomes a reality Oxfordshire will play a big role.

"The proof is always in the pudding, so we will have to wait until these companies have results. It could be very exciting."

Wantage MP Ed Vaizey said: "I'm thrilled that once again Oxfordshire is at the forefront of scientific innovation.

"To see both public and private funding helping us achieve the goal of fusion is very exciting. These ambitious projects will help us to continue to attract world class talent to the area."