Crucially, the scientists were able to maintain that temperature -50 million degrees celsius – for 102 seconds.

This was followed by researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics (IPP) in Germany, who used an experimental nuclear fusion reactor called the Wendelstein 7-X stellar fusion device to create hydrogen plasma – a step in the right direction to nuclear fusion.

However, despite the impressive feats in these respective countries, one of the UK’s leading researchers in the field has said that it will be us who makes the major breakthrough.

Dr Kingham said: “We have the world leading device here at Culham Laboratory – the Jet Tokamak.

“It still holds the record for producing the most power at 16 megawatts and Tokamak Energy is based here – partly because of the history history of fusion research at Culham, and partly because of the cluster of activity in superconducting magnets.

The Oxfordshire-based CEO goes on to say that this will create a booming industry in the country.

Dr Kingham: “At the moment there are about 1000 people employed in southern England in fusion, mainly supplying publicly funded research.

“But we’d be talking about many tens of thousands employed in the future if we can get a technology that will roll out to large scale deployment.”