Culham Campus

About Culham Campus

Culham Campus is the UK's headquarters for fusion energy research, operated by the UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) on an 80-hectare site near Abingdon. More than 3,000 people work across 45+ organisations, including 17 companies in the fusion supply-chain cluster and 150+ apprentices in advanced technical training.

The campus began as Royal Naval Air Station HMS Hornbill in 1944. UKAEA selected it for a plasma physics and fusion laboratory in the late 1950s, opening in 1965 — marking 60 years of fusion research in 2025. It is not a speculative future-energy site: it is where some of the world's most important fusion experiments have already taken place, and where a large part of the UK's fusion expertise, engineering capability and supply-chain knowledge is concentrated.

Culham focuses on fusion energy, robotics, materials science, decommissioning, apprentice training and increasingly AI and high-performance computing.

UKAEA and key programmes

UKAEA's mission is to lead delivery of sustainable fusion energy for scientific and economic benefit. With around 2,600 employeesacross its sites, it runs the UK's full fusion programme — from plasma science to engineering, robotics, materials, tritium systems and decommissioning.

UK's first AI Growth Zone

Sunrise AI supercomputer

The government committed £45m for Sunrise, a 1.4MW AI supercomputer at Culham targeted for operation in June 2026. It is designed to be the world's most powerful AI supercomputer dedicated to fusion energy, delivering up to 6.76 Exaflops of AI-accelerated modelling. Sunrise is a joint programme involving AMD, Dell Technologies, Intel, UKAEA, WEKA and the University of Cambridge. GOV.UK announcement

Sunrise applies AI where the problems are hardest: fusion energy. Use cases include plasma turbulence, materials development, tritium fuel breeding, high-fidelity simulation and digital twins for complex fusion systems.

Jobs the AI Growth Zone creates

Why Culham was chosen: power, position and ping

Data centres have three fundamental requirements — power, position and ping — and Culham combines all three. This is the cleanest explanation for why Oxfordshire rather than anywhere else became the UK's first AI Growth Zone.

Critical national infrastructure

In September 2024 the UK Government designated data centres as critical national infrastructure, placing them alongside energy, water and telecommunications. This shifts the Culham AI Growth Zone from a commercial development story to one about nationally significant infrastructure — relevant to planning policy, investment certainty and public-sector procurement.

The government's stated ambition is for the UK to be an "AI maker, not an AI taker" — building domestic compute capacity rather than depending entirely on overseas infrastructure. Culham is the centrepiece of that programme.

Statera Energy: 500MW battery storage at Culham

Statera Energy has secured planning permission for a 500MW battery energy storage systemat Culham, located near the Culham substation and UKAEA campus. Statera has said the project will help provide power stability for Culham Campus as the UK's first AI Growth Zone. This makes Culham not just fusion plus AI, but also a clean-energy infrastructure location — with large-scale grid storage as a fourth element alongside UKAEA, AI compute and fusion research.

RACE: robotics for extreme environments

Culham is not just fusion physics. It is one of the UK's most important centres for robotics in hazardous environments. RACE works across:

Jobs and careers at Culham

Culham supports a wide spectrum of roles — from plasma physicists and fusion engineers to software developers, AI specialists, roboticists, apprentices and professional services. Some roles require security and background checks (BPSS; occasionally DBS).

Getting to Culham

Culham Campus (OX14 3DB) is one of the most directly rail-connected science campuses in the UK. Culham station (GWR) is a short walk from the campus, with direct services to Oxford (~10 min), Didcot Parkway (~5 min, then Paddington ~40 min), and onward to the South West, West Midlands and Wales.

Bus routes serving the campus:

By road, the campus is off the A415 east of Abingdon, with access to the A34 and M40. Abingdon town centre is around 3 miles. The campus also has a growing cycling culture with Bike2Work events and cycling infrastructure.

See the Oxfordshire getting around guide for full commute matrices.

Where to live for Culham

Abingdon is the natural town base. Didcot is the rail and new-build base. Wallingford is the lifestyle base. Oxford is the city base.

Science Vale: Culham, Harwell and Milton Park

Culham is one of three complementary Science Vale employment anchors in southern Oxfordshire — and since the AI Growth Zone designation, a fourth layer has been added: large-scale AI infrastructure and compute. Together they make a dual-career household story credible: one person at Culham, another at Harwell, Milton Park, Oxford or Reading.