MIT-Linked Company Says It Will Build ‘World’s First Grid-Scale Nuclear Fusion Power Plant’

Commonwealth Fusion Systems, a startup that grew out of a project at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology research labs, this week announced plans to break ground on what it calls “the world’s first grid-scale fusion power plant.” The plant, which is expected to come online in the early 2030s, according to the companywill be built in Chesterfield County, Virginia.

The plan is certainly ambitious, starting with how the energy will be generated. Nuclear fusion is a notoriously difficult process that involves the fusion of two light atomic nuclei into a single heavier one, resulting in the release of an enormous amount of energy. It is estimated that it will produce four times more energy. as nuclear fission reactions. The reaction that generates nuclear fusion is the same type of reaction that powers the sun.

It’s not hard to imagine why we would want to be able to harness the sun’s energy. Although it’s hard, you know, to do that. To date, nuclear fusion has proven elusive, at least in a way that produces usable energy. In 2022, scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California reached the “ignition” of nuclear fusion for the first time, meaning they managed to produce excess energy from the reactions. Before that advance, which has It has since been replicatedMore energy was needed to produce the reaction than the energy that came from it.

Commonwealth Fusion Systems has not yet achieved the feat of producing excess energy, for futurism. In fact, the company has not yet finished construction of its smallest reactor which was designed to serve as a proof of concept for a larger future plant. That project will continue, but it seems like the startup has decided to go into business with the assumption that everything will work out instead of checking the boxes first.

the company is promising that once this largest reactor comes online in Virginia, it will produce 400 megawatts of electricity, enough to power about 150,000 homes. That would be great! It also seems a bit ambitious considering the 0 megawatts the process currently generates.

There is a reason Nuclear fusion has proven so elusive. until now, but perhaps now that the seal has been broken upon power-up, advances in space will occur quickly and steadily. With $2 billion in funding, Commonwealth Fusion Systems has as good a chance as anyone to solve it. And if you can’t, maybe you can find a way to harness the energy that comes from spending all that cash.