Fusion startup plans reactor with small but powerful superconducting magnets

By Daniel Clery Mar. 3, 2021 , 7:00 AM A startup chasing the dream of plentiful, safe, carbon-free electricity from fusion, the energy source of the Sun, has settled on a site, timetable, and key technology for building its compact reactor. Flush with more than $200 million from investors, including Bill Gates's Breakthrough Energy, 3-year old Commonwealth Fusion Systems announced today that later this year it will start building its first test reactor, dubbed SPARC, in a new facility in Devens, Massachusetts, not far from its current base in Cambridge. The company says the reactor, which would be the first in the world to produce more energy than is needed to run the reaction, could fire up as soon as 2025. Commonwealth and a rival U.K. company have also chosen the technology they think will let them leap ahead of the giant, publicly-funded ITER reactor under construction in France and ever further ahead of a U.S. pilot plant being considered by the Department of Energy : small but powerful magnets, made from high-temperature superconductors. Commonwealth is assembling its first nearly full-scale magnet and hopes to test it in June. "It's a big deal," CEO Bob Mumgaard says. "It's beyond what… Read full this story

Fusion startup plans reactor with small but powerful superconducting magnets have 259 words, post on www.sciencemag.org at March 3, 2021. This is cached page on xBlogs. If you want remove this page, please contact us.