A SPARC of Fusion Energy

Some news that’s fit to print in the NYT today:
Compact Nuclear Fusion Reactor Is Very Likely to Work, Studies Suggest

TLDR; “in seven peer-reviewed papers published Tuesday in a special issue of The Journal of Plasma Physics, researchers laid out the evidence that SPARC would succeed and produce as much as 10 times the energy it consumes.”

“Scientists developing a compact version of a nuclear fusion reactor have shown in a series of research papers that it should work, renewing hopes that the long-elusive goal of mimicking the way the sun produces energy might be achieved and eventually contribute to the fight against climate change.

Construction of a reactor, called SPARC, which is being developed by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a spinoff company, Commonwealth Fusion Systems, is expected to begin next spring and take three or four years

Bob Mumgaard, Commonwealth Fusion’s chief executive and one of the company’s founders, said a goal of the Sparc project was to develop fusion in time for it to play a role in mitigating global warming.

A fusion plant would not burn fossil fuels and would not produce greenhouse-gas emissions. But its fuel, usually isotopes of hydrogen, would be far more plentiful than the uranium used in most nuclear plants, and fusion would generate less, and less dangerous, radioactivity and waste than fission plants.

“Reading these papers gives me the sense that they’re going to have the controlled thermonuclear fusion plasma that we all dream about,” said Cary Forest, a physicist at the University of Wisconsin who is not involved in the project.”

FD: Future Ventures is an early investor in Commonwealth Fusion. This third party analysis verifies our investment thesis; tokamak fusion is an engineering project, not a science project. If they can build it, the scientific community agrees on the performance that will result.

And if you want to hear the CFS presentation, here is the CEO today at AC Global