5 questions with… Commonwealth Fusion Systems
Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS) featured in our ‘5 Questions With…’ interview in the March 2024 issue of the Fusion Energy Insights Quarterly.
Each issue we ask a founder or CEO of a private fusion company these 5 questions:
- What's your approach and how does it work?
- Why is it unique/what's the USP?
- What are your milestones to commercial fusion—where are you now and what is your timeline?
- How are you backed financially? What have you raised and how much do you estimate you will need to raise to achieve your goals?
- What are the key strategic partnerships that you have in place or in planning that will get you to commercial fusion?
Plus a couple of personal ones.
Here is a sneak-peek at some of the things CFS revealed.
What is the approach of CFS?
Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS) is leveraging decades of collective research and proven knowledge to create the fastest path to commercial fusion energy. Our tokamak device, SPARC, follows the approach taken by the fusion community over many years of using the tokamak. In particular, our approach follows the demonstration of fusion-relevant temperatures, densities, and confinement at MIT in its record-setting Alcator C-Mod tokamak, a high-magnetic field tokamak.
Building on this approach, we’ve developed high temperature superconducting (HTS) magnets, which allow for strong magnetic fields and a resultingly smaller and simpler tokamak than previously envisioned for a power plant. These HTS magnets will enable SPARC and open the door for more compact, high-performing commercial fusion power plants at significantly lower cost, while minimising the extrapolations for the plasma physics.
The SPARC facility on the Commonwealth Fusion Systems campus in Devens MA will house the SPARC tokamak, which will demonstrate commercially relevant net energy from fusion for the first time in history. The photo shows a life-sized rendering of SPARC inside the hall in which it will operate. ©Commonwealth Fusion Systems.
Why is CFS’ approach to fusion unique?
Our key technology breakthrough – and what sets us apart from the other 40+ fusion energy companies across the globe – is our high temperature superconducting (HTS) magnets combined with the demonstrated plasma physics of tokamaks. The tokamak approach is well-proven and has come closest to achieving commercially relevant net fusion energy. However, previous limitations to magnet technology have required tokamaks to be enormous in size – acceptable for scientific study but impractical for commercial use. Our groundbreaking HTS magnets will help us to create accessible, affordable fusion energy on a faster timeline. These magnets enable us to build machines that we could not have built five years ago – they’re an order of magnitude smaller with the same performance and the same science as the larger machines.
Leader Insight
Bob Mumgaard is the CEO of Commonwealth Fusion Systems.
Bob Mumgaard, CEO, CFS ©Commonwealth Fusion Systems.
How long have you been working in fusion?
I wasn’t always interested in fusion. I originally went to college for engineering, but I soon realised that I didn’t want to be an engineer. At the same time, I realised that climate change was going to be a really significant event in our lifetimes and that the energy transition was a necessary, but challenging, problem that needed to be solved.
While at MIT for graduate school, where I earned my PhD in Applied Plasma Physics, I joined the fusion project and got deep into the science behind the technology. I worked on MIT’s Alcator C-Mod and contributed to the design of several small superconducting tokamaks using high temperature superconductors (HTS). I was also an MIT fellow, where I gained valuable knowledge on how entrepreneurship, risk-management strategies, and strategic partnerships could accelerate the path of fusion from laboratory to market. I organized and led a team that identified ways to utilize private finance alongside traditional academic resources to speed up the path to commercial fusion energy, which eventually led to CFS and its collaboration model with MIT. The rest is history.
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