Commonwealth Fusion Systems, a startup that was spun out of a project at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s research labs, announced plans this week to break ground on what it calls “the world’s first grid-scale fusion power plant.” The plant which is expected to come online sometime in the early 2030s, according to the company, will be built in Chesterfield County, Virginia.
The plan is certainly an ambitious one, starting with how the energy will be generated. Nuclear fusion is a notoriously difficult process that involves fusing together two light atomic nuclei into a single heavier one, resulting in the release of a massive amount of energy—it’s estimated to produce four times as much energy as nuclear fission reactions. The reaction that nuclear fusion generates is the same kind of reaction that powers the sun.
It’s not hard to imagine why one would want to be able to harness the energy of the sun. It is hard to actually, ya know, do that, though. To date, nuclear fusion has proven elusive—at least in a way that would produce usable energy. In 2022, scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California reached nuclear fusion “ignition” for the first time, meaning they successfully produced an excess of energy from the reactions. Prior to that breakthrough, which has since been replicated, it took more energy to produce the reaction than energy that came from it.
Commonwealth Fusion Systems has not yet accomplished the feat of producing excess energy, per Futurism. In fact, the company has yet to finish construction on its smaller reactor which was designed to serve as a proof of concept for a larger future plant. That project will continue, but it seems that the startup has decided to start working ahead under the assumption that everything will work out rather than check the boxes first.
The company is promising that once this larger reactor goes 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 based on the 0 megawatts currently generated from the process.
There is a reason nuclear fusion has proven so elusive thus far, but maybe now that the seal has been broken on ignition, the developments in space will come in fast and steady. With a reported $2 billion in funding behind it already, Commonwealth Fusion Systems has as good a shot as anyone of figuring it out. And if it can’t, maybe it can figure out a way to harness energy from burning through all that cash.
