Dear reader,

The visits from the PM, Andrea Leadsom MP and the Science Minister Amanda Solloway, all pre-Covid-19, show the level of support for UKAEA as a Government organisation that is working at the edge of our technology capabilities. RACE has two primary objectives: supporting the UKAEA’s fusion mission and enabling short term industry impact in adjacent markets. We need to address today’s challenges otherwise our futuristic designs will become increasingly cartoonised, misleadingly divorced from friction, material properties and the variability of reality. It is with grave appreciation of the effect of Coronavirus that R-ACE considers what ‘Remote’ means.

 The Rt Hon Amanda Solloway MP visits RACE, March 2020

The RACE work hall is empty of people whilst full of motionless robots. We are still hard at work with the 200 RACE staff now remote working. But we can’t control our robots from home. The reasons are obvious - safety, switching on/off power and checking the surroundings. These would all test our processes, which have been designed to include manual intervention and assurance. So, could we build an IRTF mock-up completely remotely? Could we post everything into the work hall and control overhead cranes, robots and all things necessary to construct a one-off mock-up before conducting the experiment? There might be lasers and welding, certainly there would be no-one to pick up a dropped component. Then there’s contamination control and waste management ready for the next remote application.


We were just about to conduct a demo of CorteX and TARM, controlled from the RACE control room, before site access restrictions were imposed. When we are allowed back to Culham this will be a week one post C-19 objective. We live in challenging times with an increased respect for humans and hands-on.

Rob Buckingham

Cover photo: Prime Minister Boris Johnson visits RACE, August 2019