`ULTIMATE TOUGH TECH'
Team at MIT developing fusion power
MIT and a startup company, collaborating with a $50 million investment, are taking aim at the white whale of electrical power generation — a commercially viable fusion plant that doesn’t rely on carbon fuels.
“We’re in a position today to potentially commercialize fusion energy,” said Maria Zuber, vice president for research at MIT. “If we succeed, the world’s energy systems will be transformed.”
The collaboration between MIT and Commonwealth Fusion Systems, backed by an initial $50 million investment from Italian energy company Eni, aims to create a working fusion power plant within 15 years. Fusion power is seen as fundamentally world changing because of its ability to provide dependable power without pollution or waste. The scientists behind the effort said their goal is not simply to experiment, but to bring a complete fusion power system to market.
If MIT succeeds, Zuber said, the new form of power “has the potential to end the trajectory of climate change.”
Robert Mumgaard, chief executive of CFS, said, “What this is really about is science, it’s about scale, and it’s about speed, and that takes a collaboration across a wide breadth of people. It’s not just a moral imperative due to climate change, it’s also a technical imperative and economic imperative.”
Fusion power is based on harnessing the energy that is released when light elements — including hydrogen — collide and form heavier elements, such as helium. The fusion process only produces enough energy at hundreds of millions of degrees Celsius, so the plasma resulting from the fusion process must be suspended by a strong magnetic field.
“What we seek to do in the next three years is develop superconducting electromagnets,” said Dennis Whyte, director of MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center.
Advancements in superconductors and the ability to make high-strength magnets have made fusion a possibility, the researchers said. Stronger electromagnets mean the device can be built smaller — about 20 feet in diameter — and can be more easily installed around the world.
“This allows us to make a machine much smaller and therefore much less expensive and faster to build,” said Martin Greenwald, deputy director of the PSFC.
Still, successfully developing a fusion power plant is no guarantee.
“This is the ultimate tough tech,” Mumgaard said.
Mumgaard said the cost of developing the technology will be hundreds of millions of dollars, and said the company will be seeking additional investment from others.
In a statement, Eni — known primarily for its oil and gas business — said fusion power is a key goal for the company.
“Fusion is the true energy source of the future, as it is completely sustainable, does not release emissions or long-term waste, and is potentially inexhaustible,” Eni chief executive Claudio Descalzi said. “It is a goal that we are increasingly determined to reach quickly.”
A number of other companies and organizations are in the midst of fusion research and development, including a large international research group that has built an experimental site in France.
‘What we seek to do in the next three years is develop superconducting electromagnets.’ — DENNIS WHYTE MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center director