Commonwealth Fusion Systems just filed a permit to build what's being touted as the world's first grid-scale commercial fusion power plant — and the company wants to do it in Chesterfield County, Virginia.
The Massachusetts-based company is planning a 400-megawatt facility called ARC to be built at the James River Industrial Park on land leased from Dominion Energy, according to the CFS website.
If approved, construction would start in the late 2020s. They're aiming to be up and running in the early 2030s, with a planned operational life of 20 years or more.
Fusion is what powers the sun. It works by forcing two small atoms — often the hydrogen isotopes deuterium and tritium — to merge into one and become helium. When that happens, it gives off a ton of energy, without the long-term radioactive waste that comes from nuclear fission.
Scientists have been chasing this for decades. Now, it's starting to look more real. If successful, this could mark a major turning point in how we produce and consume energy.
The ARC design uses magnets to hold the fusion reaction in place and molten salt to absorb heat, according to reports from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and researchers at the Sapienza University of Rome. Heat captured in the process will turn water into steam, spin a turbine, and generate electricity, as detailed by BizJournals.com.
If it works the way it's designed to, this plant could provide massive amounts of power without relying on dirty energy or producing carbon emissions. It would also create a scalable model for future fusion development in other parts of the country.
Commonwealth started assembling the core tech — a tokamak, the magnetic device that makes fusion possible — back in March. That system, called SPARC, is being built in Massachusetts and is expected to go live in 2026.
The company spun out of MIT in 2018. It has raised more than $2 billion since and now has over 1,000 employees, according to the CFS website.
There are still approvals needed at the county, state, and federal levels — and the technology is under development — but if all goes as planned, the project could reshape what's possible for clean, stable power.
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