It turned out where and when the first of “thousands” of Commonwealth Fusion Systems thermonuclear power plants will appear

Commonwealth Fusion Systems will build its first commercial Arc fusion power plant near Richmond, Virginia, USA. In the early thirties, the company intends to put it into operation and connect it to the network.

Image source: cfs.energy

Fusion power has long been seen as something of the distant future, but recent advances suggest that commercial exploitation will be possible within the next decade: two years ago, the US National Ignition Facility demonstrated that a controlled fusion reaction produces more energy than required to run it. Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS) has raised more funding than its rivals and is believed to have the best chance of launching commercial fusion power in the next decade.

The Arc commercial power plant is expected to generate 400 MW of electricity. Many new power plants are being designed to directly power data centers, but CFS has enlisted the help of utility operator Dominion Energy to connect Arc to the public grid. To launch the first facility, the company was looking for a site with a developed transport infrastructure to simplify the construction process, and a nearby operating power plant to simplify connection to the grid and have access to qualified labor. After considering many options, CFS settled on a site in Virginia, in part because of its proximity to the capital. “We want to bring a lot of people here. We would like to conduct excursions. We want to show various ministers and heads of state what thermonuclear energy is,” the company said.

CFS leases the land from its partner Dominion, and there is no other monetary relationship between the two companies yet. CFS is counting on Dominion to help it obtain permits and bring the plant online, and in exchange, the utility operator will be the first, or one of the first, to have experience with a fusion power plant. The thermonuclear reaction at the facility will be carried out using a magnetic trap: the plasma will be held and compressed using powerful magnets in a tokamak – a toroidal installation in which particles are highly likely to collide with each other with such force that atomic nuclei will begin to merge and release huge volumes energy. The generated heat will be transferred to a steam turbine used to generate energy. The reactor wall will also absorb neutrons, which will be used to produce tritium, an isotope of hydrogen on which the reactor will operate.

Arc will not be CFS’s first facility—the company is currently building a Sparc demonstration facility in Devens, Massachusetts. Its commissioning will begin in 2025, and in 2026 the “first plasma” will appear – the first launch of a thermonuclear reactor. “We will achieve net energy gains shortly thereafter,” promised CFS Chief Commercial Officer Rick Needham. To build Arc, the company will need new funds, but now it is thinking about what will happen after the construction of the first two facilities: “Our goal as a company is not just to build a fusion power plant. And build thousands.”