Commonwealth Fusion Systems

The central solenoid is the magnet that’ll run down the center of our fusion machine, SPARC. Its job is to drive electrical current in the plasma to heat and control it inside the donut-shaped chamber that gives the tokamak its distinct look. With the recent successful test of our prototype magnet, the Central Solenoid Model Coil (CSMC), we’re taking a moment to celebrate the four-year journey that got us here. The path to that success required multiple engineering breakthroughs that could only have been achieved with steady, clear-eyed focus on making SPARC a reality. #FusionEnergy #ToughTech?

Our top priority at CFS is building our fusion energy demonstration machine, SPARC, but we’ve got longer-term work underway with ARC. That’s the tokamak we’re designing to put clean, zero-carbon fusion power onto the grid. This piece from Bloomberg offers a glance at some of that work. It also details the successful test of our CSMC magnet prototype. That result, along with the TFMC test in 2021,? means we’ve proved out both the magnet types — steady-state and pulsed power — that SPARC and ARC need. This kind of test, along with the independent scrutiny our technology receives through peer-reviewed research, is necessary to build confidence in fusion energy and to power our progress. That’s how we’ll soon transform how we power our world. Read the full story here: https://lnkd.in/esw5dsDD #FusionEnergy

To run a tokamak, the type of fusion energy device we’re building now, we need electromagnets that can handle colossal pulses of power — and we need to know they’ll work. That’s why we built a pulsed-power magnet prototype called the Central Solenoid Model Coil (CSMC) and ran it through the wringer. It passed a battery of tests with flying colors. That’s a big deal for validating the design of our first tokamak, SPARC. The CSMC test showed that electromagnets made of coils of high-temperature superconducting (HTS) cables can deliver the powerful performance and handle the extreme conditions required to operate in SPARC. The strength of those magnets is what lets us make SPARC a more compact and economically competitive tokamak. And that accelerates the delivery of clean, abundant fusion energy to the grid. Thanks to MIT for their help designing and building CSMC then testing it at the Plasma Science and Fusion Center at MIT, a repeat of the successful TFMC magnet collaboration in 2021. Learn more about the test here: https://bit.ly/4fJiZJG #FusionEnergy #ToughTech

“If there’s a big fish in the commercial fusion pond, Commonwealth is it.” To see why, read this nuanced look at the fusion energy industry from the The New York Times. It covers not just our “hard-core execution mode” building our SPARC fusion machine but also the industry’s efforts to establish supply chains, talk to regulators, and build up a workforce. Our approach is straightforward: build what we know best will work. By focusing on proven technology, we’re accelerating fusion energy to deliver real-world impact with our SPARC and ARC machines. The full story here: https://lnkd.in/esU3zbYH #FusionEnergy

Fusion isn’t 30 years in the future. We’re bringing it to life right now on our campus in Massachusetts, with experts in everything from welding to commercialization pulling together to put our clean, zero-carbon power onto the grid. The progress is palpable. Step onto our production floor and you'll see daily changes as we install new equipment and streamline manufacturing. Because once our team proves out a necessary component of our first fusion machine, SPARC, we quickly shift into production mode. The world’s need for #fusionenergy is urgent, and our job only starts with SPARC. After that comes our first power plant, ARC, and after that, thousands more ARCs. It's a big job, but our team is united by that common purpose, moving smart, moving fast, and moving together to build the future. #PowerMoves

Let’s say you want better fusion power plants. How about designing some better metals — using a computer? CFS won a $2.5 million award to employ advanced computing technologies to design better materials for our ARC fusion power plant. The funds, from DOE’s ARPA-E program, will fund CFS to design the materials by combining multiple integrated computing models, then in combination with three partners, manufacture candidates and test them under conditions similar to our fusion power plant. The reason for the work: Developing new materials superior to today’s options will make power plants like ARC easier to maintain and more economical as a result. We’re laser focused on commercializing fusion energy to meet rising energy demands and tackle climate change, and every improvement amplifies fusion’s success. We have to find two metal alloys best able to withstand all the arduous conditions inside our fusion machines: physical stresses, heat, and neutron bombardment. We have to figure out how to join the two materials to manufacture them into the donut-shaped vacuum vessel that houses the fusion process. And we have to make sure they can be manufactured affordably and at high volume. Finding materials that meet all those requirements is just the kind of job for the multi-model computer analysis approach called integrated computational materials engineering. We’re bringing three areas of accelerating progress together — computers, fusion, and fabrication — to deliver this new power source. https://lnkd.in/eU_5KxHU

When you come back to our campus, it’s hard not to notice the progress. One day there’s one welding robot or magnet test stand, and the next day there are two. We were glad to welcome Casey Crownhart again to our Devens headquarters to see that progress. As Casey noted in the MIT Technology Review, it’s becoming easier to envision a future with fusion energy, thanks to the daily efforts of our team working hard to build that better tomorrow. Click to find out more on the progress: https://lnkd.in/ecV-bcqf #FusionEnergy

Developing fundamental superconducting technology for fusion energy magnets is tough, but CFS now has done it twice — and done it fast. Our first approach, NINT, was for our magnets that carry steady electrical current. And this month we’ve detailed our second approach, a cable design called PIT VIPER, for magnets that must handle pulses of power that ramp up and down. It’s all in a peer-reviewed paper published in the journal Superconductor Science and Technology. It took us just four years to take PIT VIPER from concept to our factory floor and then to a full-scale, functioning test magnet. Comparable advancements in superconducting magnet technology have typically taken decades, but that’s not fast enough to put fusion watts on the grid in time to fight climate change. PIT VIPER cables can: - handle the same electrical current as 250 American homes would need if maxing out their grid connections; - withstand forces like a SpaceX rocket trying to pull it apart and pressures triple that of the deepest ocean on earth; and - detect budding hot spots within a second to fend off overheating problems. It’s all detailed in our peer-reviewed paper, because independent verification of our work is the best way to prove we know what we’re doing. Transparency builds trust in fusion energy. https://bit.ly/3C4kBPv

SPARC’s fusion operation is a carefully choreographed dance of power, heat, and data. At the heart of it all is Tokamak Hall, but we need more than the tokamak itself to produce fusion power. Here's a closer look at what’ll go in and out of each part of our SPARC facility: 1?? The radio frequency (RF) heating building generates powerful radio waves that piped into the tokamak. That helps heat its plasma to temperatures over 100 million degrees Celsius, triggering and sustaining the fusion process. 2?? In the power building, advanced power supplies will supply some of SPARC’s magnets with the pulses of electricity that drive the fusion process. 3?? Opposite the RF building, the utility building draws heat out. This building’s cryogenic system uses helium to keep SPARC and its magnets cool, in particular after a pulse of fusion energy warms them up. 4?? The operations building’s labs gather the data that flows out of SPARC and nearby diagnostic equipment. Specialized scientific instruments measure what’s happening inside the plasma within SPARC, which helps us understand how to control and optimize the fusion reactions and to plan ARC, the power plant successor to SPARC. Together, these buildings create an integrated flow of energy and information that will make fusion energy possible. Want to see a full tour of the SPARC facility? Watch here: https://bit.ly/3yMWjrY

This month, CFS received a broad-scope radioactive materials license from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts for our SPARC fusion machine. By showing we’ve equipped ourselves with the people and procedures to safely handle and store these materials, we’ve taken a big step ahead on the path toward operating SPARC. The license also shows our ability to tackle the broad range of real-world requirements to get SPARC working. Although our effort started with fusion’s science and engineering challenges, it’s extended much farther to jobs like scaling manufacturing, building supply chains, and selecting sites. All that expertise will extend from today’s SPARC project to our work on its power plant successor, ARC. https://lnkd.in/eykCGY5V