Commonwealth Fusion Systems

Commonwealth Fusion Systems

@cfs.energy

We’re on a mission to deliver clean fusion energy to the planet fast enough to matter for humanity’s biggest challenges.⚡️🔆💫 SPARC®, ARC™, and Fall Line™ Fusion Power Station are trademarks of Commonwealth Fusion Systems®.

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3/4 Fusion energy offers a clean, steady, and abundant energy source can be built just about anywhere, including places that rely on pipelines and tanker ships today. When we use SPARC to demonstrate Q>1 — net fusion energy — then fusion energy will be a big step closer to fulfilling that promise.

4/4 Says Brandon: “There are a lot of places, especially island nations, that are dependent on importing fuel from somewhere else, and I think those countries would be very happy to not have to do that.” #FusionEnergy

2/4 – That's CFS Chief Science Officer and Co-founder Brandon Sorbom on What’s Next with Philip Meissner, discussing the history of fusion energy, our progress building our SPARC fusion machine, and fusion energy’s potential to dramatically transform energy politics.

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5/6 We expect the proposed award from the CHIPS Research and Development Office (CRDO) to attract new suppliers and partners to the fusion sector. Building a more robust industrial base will help bring this clean, safe, nearly limitless form of energy to the grid as fast as possible. #FusionEnergy

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3/6 It would fund a variety of semiconductor-related innovation that applies to fusion energy, including improvements to power electronics, radio frequency power generators, controller chips, robotic maintenance equipment, and artificial intelligence for fusion.

4/6 “This award marks an important opportunity to drive development of semiconductors and power electronics unique to the fusion industry,” said Bob Mumgaard, CEO and Co-founder of CFS. “These innovations will be a vital part of our global effort to deploy commercial fusion.”

“We have a saying at CFS that in the future, the two markets that matter are energy and gray matter. It’s really human creativity and energy, and then the possibilities are endless.” 1/3 #FusionEnergy #TechCrunchDisrupt

2/3 Fusion has the potential to unlock a huge amount of clean energy. But first, a fusion machine has to prove it can make more energy than it uses. That’s what Q>1 means. It’s not the only thing a fusion power plant needs—but it’s a crucial first step.

2/3 We already have work underway to use AI to improve how SPARC will work, but this Genesis Mission Phase II award will help us expand and deepen that work — for example by tapping into decades of historical fusion data and marshaling the power of DOE supercomputers to improve AI models.

"SPARC was designed with the intent not to be connected to the grid but to have 13 of the 17 systems you need in a power plant to show the world that we have a near-scale fusion machine that can work as a power plant... 1/4

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3/4 That's Jennifer Ganten, Chief Global Affairs Officer, chatting with Dan Hewitt on the Everything Energy podcast from @iea.org, alongside other fusion observers. Jennifer and Dan discussed how the SPARC facility has become a beehive of daily activity with hundreds of people onsite.

"SPARC was designed with the intent not to be connected to the grid but to have 13 of the 17 systems you need in a power plant to show the world that we have a near-scale fusion machine that can work as a power plant... 1/4

3/3 Similar to what the Wright brothers achieved at Kitty Hawk, we're now approaching that moment when fusion "takes flight." CFS plans to turn on our SPARC machine next year, and shortly after it'll be clear fusion energy is on its way to the power grid. #FusionEnergy

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4/5 During that last day, researchers showed three separate paths to high performance in a competition to push the machine as far as it could go. It set a record that stands to this day, unmatched by any other tokamak.

5/5 Unmatched until we start running SPARC, that is. The knowledge gained from C-Mod helps propel us to achieving net fusion energy, aka Q>1, with SPARC. For more on how MIT’s C-Mod paved the way for CFS, check out our blog post.

blog.cfs.energyHow the Alcator C-Mod tokamak blazed the CFS trail to fusion power | The Tokamak TimesTen years ago today, a group of physicists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology pushed a fusion machine called a tokamak farther than any had ever been pushed. In that moment, they also helped...

2/5 That sprint took place during the last day of service for Alcator C-Mod, a type of fusion machine called a tokamak. C-Mod is the progenitor of the SPARC demonstration machine we’re building today and the ARC power plant we’ve begun designing. And we’re putting the C-Mod lessons to good use.

3/5 C-Mod showed that a compact tokamak employing very high magnetic fields is well suited not only for high fusion performance but also for economical power generation.

Fusion energy is often discussed as a matter of plasma physics, funding, and machine design, but bringing commercial fusion to the grid also requires a global industrial base that can manufacture critical components at scale. 1/4

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4/4 We already built a supply chain for our SPARC fusion demonstration machine, but this agreement helps secure HTS tape for our next chapter: building ARC power plants, starting with our first at the Fall Line Fusion Power Station in Virginia.

Fusion energy is often discussed as a matter of plasma physics, funding, and machine design, but bringing commercial fusion to the grid also requires a global industrial base that can manufacture critical components at scale. 1/4

2/4 Today CFS took an important step toward meeting that need, announcing an agreement to purchase more than 10,000 km (3 GA-m) of high-temperature superconducting (HTS) tape from Fujikura Ltd. It’s the largest single purchase order for HTS tape, a critical component of our breakthrough magnets.

3/4 This news is important evidence that our fusion industrial supply chain is taking shape. Our order allows Fujikura to invest in new manufacturing capacity for the long term, stepping up in our global network of more than 1,000 suppliers across 30 countries.

“Think about what [fusion] means in a technological race. Power is the thing that powers the next economy, right? All the geostrategic strife we have right now is about power in the form of natural resources... 1/5

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4/5 The world today is heavily influenced by the acquisition, management, and consumption of finite resources like fossil fuels that we currently use to power the globe.

“Think about what [fusion] means in a technological race. Power is the thing that powers the next economy, right? All the geostrategic strife we have right now is about power in the form of natural resources... 1/5

3/5 That's CFS CEO and Co-founder Bob Mumgaard speaking at the @heatmap.news House at #ClimateWeekNYC last week, discussing how commercializing fusion energy will radically transform how we think about energy creation and consumption.

#FusionEnergy costs are indeed key to its eventual success. Those costs are deeply connected to a fusion company’s choice of architecture, where it’s critical not only that the eventual power plants can be economical, but fundamentally, that a commercially relevant machine can actually work. 1/3

Michelle Ma@michellema.bsky.social

Fusion is having a moment: Investors have poured more than $14 billion into the tech. But proving fusion works is only the first step. The bigger question is whether it can ever make power cheaply enough to compete. From me and @willwwade.bsky.social: www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

2/3 That’s what we’re tackling with our SPARC machine outside Boston. Our project got a head start thanks to many years of collective operational experience that people have gained by running tokamaks around the world (over 150 machines over the last 50+ years).

3/3 Then add all our experience designing, manufacturing, constructing, commissioning, and operating #SPARC. That work confirms our understanding of the physics, engineering, supply chain, performance, reliability, and cost.

It was a bustling and productive week at #ClimateWeekNYC, and our team joined a variety of conversations about subjects on everyone's mind — not just climate, but also energy security, AI, and more. 1/3

2/3 Because one of the strongest tools to tackle climate issues — energy — also addresses other challenges around the world, and #FusionEnergy has a big role to play there.