Proposed Commercial Fusion Power Plant Could Deliver a Game-Changer Clean Energy Source

Permits were recently filed in Chesterfield, Virginia for the proposed construction of a commercial fusion power plant. If the required permits are approved by the county, state and federal levels, the project that is “being touted as the world’s first grid-scale power plant using the fusion process will be constructed by Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS). The Massachusetts-based company spun out of MIT in 2018 has “raised more than $2 billion since;” and is seeking to build a 400-megawatt fusion multibillion-dollar facility on a 94-acre site at 1201 Battery Brooke Parkway in the James River Industrial Center, which CFS is leasing from Dominion Energy. Construction of the plant dubbed ARC, that will have a planned operational life of 20 years or more, would start in the late 2020s with the goal of having it up and running in the early 2030s. It would also “create a scalable model for future fusion development in other parts of the country.” Assembly work began in March of the “core tech — a tokamak, the magnetic device that makes fusion possible,” and that system, called SPARC, is expected to go live in 2026. The fusion process being utilized that combines two small atoms into one, producing a large amount of energy, “but without the radioactive byproduct that results from nuclear fusion” has been chased for decades by scientists and now appears to be approaching reality if successful and could “reshape what’s possible for clean, stable power.”

Source:    https://www.thecooldown.com/green-tech/fusion-power-plant-commercial-us-mit/