The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has been involved in nuclear fusion research for over twenty five years. Dennis Whyte is the head of MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center. In 2014 he taught a class whose class project was aimed at reducing the cost of nuclear fusion reactors. The class developed a new fusion reactor design that they called “ARC” which stands for affordable, robust and compact. Unfortunately, the cost estimate for the ARC reactor was still a few billion dollars which was considered to be rather high to attract investors. The class continued working to develop a reactor design which would be the cheapest possible design for a fusion reactor that would produce more energy than it consumed.
Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS) is a private startup that is result of the work by Dennis Whyte’s class. CFS received its first sixty-four million dollars from several investors. These investors include Eni, an Italian energy company, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, a consortium of some of the world’s richest individuals and The Engine, an MIT program dedicated to investing frontier technologies. Another fifty million dollars has just been raised from Future Ventures, Chris Sacca’s Lowercase Capital, Moore Strategic Ventures, Safar Partners, Schooner Capital and Starlight Ventures.
CFS hopes to have its smallest possible nuclear fusion reactor built by 2025. One of the key elements of the new CFS fusion reactor is reliance on proprietary magnetic technology for plasma confinement developed at MIT.
Bob Mumgaard is the chief executive of Commonwealth Fusion Systems. He says, “CFS is on track to commercialize fusion and deliver an inherently safe, globally scalable, carbon-free, and limitless energy source.” The goal for the first CFS reactor is to produce fifty megawatts of electricity. Their next goal will be a model that can generate two hundred megawatts of electricity.
Mumgaard says that “The hazard profile of fusion continues to put it in [the category of] an industrial facility. The laws exist, but we haven’t gone out and built the plant yet, so no one has the precedent. You have to keep track of moving towards vs. going to get to. The consensus is we do not have a solution in hand for deep decarbonization of the electricity grid. if you look at where the biggest gains even in renewables. the biggest gains are in the utility scale where you’re talking hundreds of megawatts of power per site.” Mumgaard does not believe that renewable sources of energy can provide the huge energy demand of modern cities.
Steve Jurvetson is the chief executive of Future Ventures. In a recent statement, Jurvetson said, “We have been looking for the right clean energy investment opportunity in fusion for the past 20 years. We wanted a company that was ready to make a business of fusion and we have finally found it with Commonwealth Fusion Systems. The hard science from which their approach is based has been proven by this team as well as leaders in the field around the world. With some clever engineering, CFS is ready to harness the power of the solar cycle to change the world and usher in the era of clean baseload energy generation for the betterment of all.”