Commonwealth Fusion Systems' Quest for Commercial Fusion Energy

The transition to carbon-free baseload energy requires solutions that can meet the world's growing power needs. Capturing the energy released from fusion plasmas has long been deemed a ‘holy grail’ power generation solution, as it corresponds to a seven order-of-magnitude improvement in energy density over chemical combustion. While the tokamak configuration emerged as the leading candidate for fusion commercialization after decades of plasma physics research across hundreds of experimental devices, the leap to commercialization requires an ability to connect the physics understanding to production-scale engineering.

Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS) spun out of MIT in 2018 to combine the deep physics foundation developed in academia with the speed and agility of the private sector. Enabled by a novel REBCO high temperature superconducting magnet technology, CFS is able to achieve high fusion performance in a small form factor on an accelerated timescale. At its Devens, MA headquarters, CFS is constructing SPARC, a net-energy tokamak scheduled to begin operations in 2027. SPARC is projected to achieve an energy gain of Q~11 using deuterium-tritium fuel, validating the physics basis for ARC - a 400 MWe fusion power plant scheduled to deliver electrons onto the grid in the early 2030s.

This presentation summarizes the CFS roadmap, highlighting recent construction of SPARC and plans for ARC. Workflows that bridge the gap across technical disciplines will be presented, and the importance of collaborative partnerships across academia and industry will be discussed. Several examples will be provided that demonstrate how the CFS ecosystem of physics, engineering, and an agile business model, enables it to push the boundaries of fusion energy research.