Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS) will build high-temperature superconducting (HTS) magnets for Realta Fusion, a strategic partnership that will benefit both companies’ efforts to bring this new form of clean, affordable energy to the electricity grid.
The CFS-Realta partnership, announced today, means Realta can tap into CFS expertise not only in magnet manufacturing but also design, supply chain development, service, and operation. That helps Realta’s fusion development work move swiftly and economically.
The partnership extends CFS’ earlier work manufacturing the magnets in the University of Wisconsin’s WHAM fusion project, an effort that yielded record magnetic fields for the technology. Realta is a spinoff of the university, and WHAM is a precursor to Realta’s more sophisticated fusion machine work.
What’s behind the CFS–Realta magnet manufacturing deal
In fusion, the process that powers the sun and stars, lightweight elements like hydrogen combine to form heavier ones and release energy as a result. To make fusion work on Earth as the basis of a power plant, a machine must confine a superhot and hard-to-control fusion fuel called a plasma. CFS and Realta both use powerful electromagnets to do so, but we use different approaches to this magnetic confinement technology.
Specifically, while CFS is building a donut-shaped machine called a tokamak, Realta is working on an approach called a magnetic mirror, a linear fusion machine that confines plasma within a long cylinder between sets of powerful HTS magnets on either end. High-temperature superconductors, an improvement over earlier superconductors, enable much higher magnetic fields that dramatically expand fusion machines’ capabilities. (Superconductors are materials that carry electrical current with no losses.)
CFS will design and build magnets not just for the next device on Realta’s technology road map, known as Anvil, but also its commercial-scale successor, Hammir, and for the first-of-a-kind power plants that Realta aims to launch by the mid-2030s.
Under the partnership, CFS will provide fully integrated magnet systems, packages that encompass hardware like cryogenics to keep the magnet cold, power to provide its electrical current, and structural supports.
Why this fusion magnet partnership matters
For one thing, it means Realta can move faster by tapping into CFS’ world-leading expertise in magnet manufacturing. CFS has spent years developing its capabilities for designing, building, and testing magnets. To do so, we’ve developed a supply chain that can make high volumes of quantities of HTS tape and other critical components. Essentially, Realta is de-risking one of the hardest technologies of its fusion mission.
For another thing, it provides CFS with new revenue — potentially billions of dollars over the course of the agreement.
CFS isn’t changing course. We’re still pursuing our own tokamak technology and plan to connect our own ARC fusion power plants to the grid in the early 2030s.
But as our Chief Commercial Officer Rick Needham explained last year, CFS manufacturing HTS magnets for other fusion efforts is part of our mission to make the fusion energy transition happen as fast as possible. With Realta as an ally, there are more shots on goal — more chances for fusion to succeed with different technologies, different markets, and different customers.
CFS believes in a robust fusion ecosystem. This partnership helps CFS, helps Realta, helps fusion, and ultimately helps humanity.
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