United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) welcomes two new C-suite appointments with Ruth Elliot joining as Chief Financial Officer and Director of Corporate Services and Justin Kingsford as Chief Operating Officer.
Ms Elliot was formerly Deputy Chief Finance Officer for UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) and has held a number of policy and finance roles across the public sector including at the former Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS). She qualified as an accountant with Deloitte in 2001.
Mr Kingsford joins from the Army and brings a wealth of experience in operations, major project management and team building. He was commissioned into The King’s Royal Hussars in 1996 and deployed on operations to Bosnia, Kosovo, Northern Ireland. He also spent two tours in American Headquarters on operations in Afghanistan and Qatar.
More recently, he spent five years as Programme Director for two programmes in the Government Major Projects Portfolio, and in the Defence Infrastructure Organisation.
UKAEA’s CEO, Professor Sir Ian Chapman, said:
“I’m delighted to welcome Ruth and Justin to the UKAEA team. They bring considerable experience to their respective roles and will both play a vital role in progressing UKAEA’s mission of leading the delivery of sustained fusion energy and maximising the scientific and economic benefit.”
Fusion promises to be a safe, low carbon and sustainable part of the world’s future energy supply. It has the potential to provide ‘baseload’ power, complementing renewable and other low carbon energy sources as a share of many countries’ energy portfolios.
UKAEA is a world-leader in fusion science and engineering. Current programmes include the development of a prototype fusion energy plant, STEP (Spherical Tokamak for Energy Production) with plans to produce net electricity in the 2040s from West Burton A site in Nottinghamshire.
For further information, visit: ccfe.ukaea.uk.
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About United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority
United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) is the national research organisation responsible for the development of fusion energy.
Fusion energy has great potential to deliver safe, sustainable, low carbon energy for generations to come. It is based on the same processes that power the Sun and stars, and would form part of the world’s future energy mix. Achieving this is a major technical challenge that involves working at the forefront of science, engineering, and technology.
UKAEA’s programmes include the MAST-Upgrade (Mega Amp Spherical Tokamak) fusion experiment and the JET (Joint European Torus) fusion research facility, operated for scientists from around Europe in Culham, Oxford. STEP (Spherical Tokamak for Energy Production) is UKAEA’s ambitious programme to accelerate the delivery of fusion energy, with plans to deliver a prototype powerplant producing net electricity in the 2040s in Nottinghamshire.
UKAEA also undertakes cutting edge work with academia, other research organisations and the industrial supply chain in a wide spectrum of areas, including robotics and materials.
More information: https://www.gov.uk/ukaea. Social Media: @UKAEAofficial
About fusion energy
When a mix of two forms of hydrogen (deuterium and tritium) is heated to form a controlled plasma at extreme temperatures – 10 times hotter than the core of the sun – they fuse together to create helium and release energy which can be harnessed to produce electricity.
There is more than one way of achieving this. UKAEA’s approach is to hold this hot plasma using strong magnets in a ring-shaped machine called a ‘tokamak’. The energy created from fusion can be used to generate electricity in the same way as existing power stations.
