At CFS, we sometimes call ourselves star builders. That’s because the machine we’re constructing right now in Massachusetts, called SPARC, will create here on Earth the same process that powers the sun.
That process is called fusion. It’s going to change the world when it arrives on the electricity grid. And we want you along for the ride.
We’re inviting everyone to learn about why we’re on this fusion energy journey, how far we’ve come already, and where we’re going next — a map and guidebook for anyone curious or interested. Fusion as a scientific concept can be complicated, but anyone can understand what it is and why it’s a big deal.
The basic idea of fusion energy is to generate power by capturing the energy released when lightweight atoms smash together — fuse — to form heavier ones. If you’re not inside a star, that’s really hard to do. SPARC will make it happen, and that success will pave the way for power plants that’ll bring fusion energy to a wall socket near you.
When our fusion power plants start arriving early in the 2030s, a new future will debut along with them. That future will have clean, safe electricity that’ll heat and cool our homes, power our vehicles, unlock useful new technology, and fuel economic growth. Energy is prosperity.
Trust us: You’re going to want to watch us turn on this future.
Where we are and where we’re going
Although fusion energy is hard, Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS) has the technology, the people, and the skills to make it happen. Year after year, we’ve been moving along the course we charted since our founding in 2018.
Our origins are at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where our co-founders worked on precursors to our SPARC fusion demonstration machine and laid the first plans to apply SPARC’s lessons to our ARC power plant. These machines, called tokamaks, use superstrong magnets to reproduce the intense conditions that enable fusion in the sun.
Our roots in rigorous, transparent, peer-reviewed research helped us to develop a roadmap that outside experts confirm make us the real deal. By focusing on steady progress, we’ve expanded from ideas to designs, from prototypes to production. Our magnet factory is humming, and now we’ve begun turning on the first support systems inside the SPARC plant. To keep these operations moving forward, we’ve raised nearly $3 billion in private funding and grown to more than 1,000 employees.
The next big step for us is turning on SPARC and showing that the machine can make more power from fusion than it takes to sustain the process. That threshold, called net fusion energy or Q>1 in scientific circles, will be a colossal development. Only one machine on Earth has done that, and it’s a scientific project, not the foundation for a commercial power plant.
Showing Q>1 will prove we have the physics, the engineering, the team, and the technology to build our next machine, the ARC power plant. It’s designed to put power onto the grid from a site we’ve selected in Chesterfield County, Virginia — the first of many power plants we expect to make.
We’d like you to share some of our excitement as we make this journey to Q>1 and beyond.
For some more details, check our posts on why fusion is an ideal energy source and the high-tech breakthrough that makes CFS possible.
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SPARC® and ARC™ are trademarks of Commonwealth Fusion Systems®.
