Comment by rozap
4 days ago
I had no idea that Commonwealth fusion was already well into their construction of a grid connected plant. Apparently it might finally be happening?
I'm not sure how this works, how are they confident enough that they can make it produce net power?
The location they have that's "well into construction" is SPARC, which is not intended to be a net power production facility. It will host their net gain demonstrator that they intend to have first plasma in next year and target a net gain demonstration in 2027.
ARC which they announced siting for and is intended to be their first grid-attached net power provider only just had the location selected so I don't believe its got much construction going on yet. The goal for that plant to be producing power is "early 2030s".
Ah, maybe not well into construction. But a friend of mine works with exotic materials and they are purchasing lots of things for ARC. Though I imagine these materials have a long lead time.
"The company plans to produce its first plasma in 2026"
They haven't even gotten to Q>1, let alone building a real power plant.