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"Commonwealth Fusion Systems announced today that later this year it will start to build its first test reactor, dubbed SPARC, in a new facility in Devens, Mass
by NortySpock 6y ago
"Commonwealth Fusion Systems announced today that later this year it will start to build its first test reactor, dubbed SPARC, in a new facility in Devens, Massachusetts, not far from its current base in Cambridge. The company says the reactor, which would be the first in the world to produce more energy than is needed to run the reaction, could fire up as soon as 2025."
The key takeaway, for those skimming.
- rbanffy 6y agoI wish this SPARC better luck than the CPUs.
- reaperducer 6y agoI wonder if the facility will be called a SPARCstation.
- ape4 6y agoOf course, they were from Sun - the sun does fusion.
- jsharf 6y agohaha this gave me a chuckle. underrated comment.
- mbgerring 6y agoYou mean to say that fusion is only 5 years away? Amazing!
- pintxo 6y agoA five time improvement over the previous estimates
- the-dude 6y agoSix.
- Veedrac 6y agoITER is aiming for Q>1 in 2035 IIUC, so 3x.
- Fordec 6y agoWasn't ITER supposed to be built by now? DEMO was supposed to start in 2033 as the successor to ITER.
- willis936 6y agoIt depends on which baseline you're referring to and how many more times the US would back out of its financial commitment after that baseline was made.
- Veedrac 6y agoITER, like many oversized government programs where funding and structure are almost entirely political, has had delays. First plasma (not full power) was originally scheduled for 2016, and is now 2025.
- gary_0 6y agoSee also: The SLS program (the "Senate Launch System").
- cygx 6y agoIf you try to coordinate design and manufacturing among 35 participating states, delays tend to happen. Perhaps also noteworthy from a historical perspective is that the whole thing was proposed by the Soviet Union, which doesn't even exist anymore. The US also pulled out of the collaboration in '98, necessitating a redesign; they rejoined in 2003, but congress periodically tries to pull the plug...
- 6y ago
- NortySpock 6y agoThe test plant is 5 years away, but yeah, net-gain in energy is the target.
- maxcan 6y ago5 years away and always will be is a 4x improvement over the previous 20 years away and always will be!
- api 6y agoFusion research has been steadily progressing for many years. The "50 years away and always will" quip is baloney.
- teachrdan 6y agoSo how far away would you say we are now? Because I remember "10 years away" being said in earnest since back in the early 90s.
- api 6y agoI don't know, and I don't think anyone does. It depends on lots of things including funding and what other unknown unknowns there are on the tech/eng tree. What I do know is that superconducting magnets have been getting cheaper, more powerful, and more compact for quite some time and that's one of the limiting factors on fusion reactor designs. I also know that there is no known physical barrier to net-positive fusion, only engineering barriers. If I had to totally guess I'd say someone will show net-positive fusion for a brief period of time before 2030... assuming the funding is present. It will not be a fully viable power plant yet but a proof of concept. This will be followed by a huge bump in funding and a race to produce power plants. ... but that's a guess. It's like asking "when will there be a human base on Mars?" We know it's possible and I think it will happen, but I don't know how long it will actually take. We could probably have one in 5 years if someone wanted to write a blank check. I would bet that we could have a fusion PoC in 5 years if someone wrote a blank check and fully funded many different credible efforts.
- simonh 6y agoI'm pretty confident it will make it over the line into viability eventually, but it's a really tough problem and it is going to take decades. There's still a lot about the engineering required we just don't fully understand, and it will take a lot of tests and investigation on a lot of different fronts to make meaningful progress. So I agree, we're in it for the long haul on this one.
- Florin_Andrei 6y agoThe "only X years away" jokes are predictable, but we'll know soon enough if they can do 20 Tesla - and if they can, then the time tables should be reset.
- asien 6y agoTechnically speaking we already have « fusion ». The problem is we don’t have « stable fusion » this one will take another 5-6 years. Then we need « positive yielding fusion » today fusion has negative yield... that’s another 5 -10 years at least. Finally we need «commercial scale fusion reactor » like France did with their Nuclear Reactor massive investment from post war to today in order to make cost and delay acceptable. That would be 2040 at least for industrial nuclear fusion. I have no idea what humanity will look like in that timeframe.
- garmaine 6y agoTFA is about stable, positive yield fusion in 5 years.
- fchu 6y agoThe key difference here is that it's a venture backed effort, which signals something very different from large state-financed research efforts like Iter. Namely, that there is a path to financial viability
- agumonkey 6y agoIF (if) everything goes to plan than 5 years is quite fundamental considering the amount of implications about safer cheaper energy.
- wongarsu 6y ago"produce more energy than is needed to run the reaction" is a great milestone, but "economically competitive method to produce electricity" is the real goal and requires a good bit of work beyond that
- mrfusion 6y agoBut even without that it could be immensely useful for space travel and colonization. And also for remote environments.
- DesiLurker 6y agoat this rate we might get fusion before James Webb space telescope becomes fully functional! ref: https://xkcd.com/2014/ https://xkcd.com/2014/
- ksec 6y agoA Micro Fusion system SPARC which is similarly named to the CPU from Sun Micro-System.
- Sniffnoy 6y agoWorth noting, though it's not in the article, that they're aiming for a commerical version (ARC) in 2030.
- anotheryou 6y ago"fire up" != energy positive and ripe for production