It will be located in Chesterfield County, Virginia (USA), and will deliver electricity to no less than 150,000 homes. The first commercial power plant equipped with a nuclear fusion reactor will be ready in the early 2030s. This is at least what CFS promises (Commonwealth Fusion Systems), the company formed by researchers from MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) that is developing the SPARC experimental nuclear fusion reactor (Small Plasma Accelerator and Reactor Compact).

At techopiniones we have been tracking this project for more than four years, practically since its managers launched it. And, it seems, they are faithfully following the itinerary they have set. In fact, in 2026 they plan that the reactor will be able to confine the plasma and give rise to the strict conditions that must be achieved inside the vacuum chamber for the fusion reaction to come to fruition. There it is nothing.

“It will be a historic moment. In the early 2030s all eyes will be on the Richmond region, and more specifically on Chesterfield County, Virginia, because it will be the place where commercial fusion energy will be born,” says Bob MumgaardCEO and co-founder of CFS. It sounds extraordinarily good. So much so, in fact, that if they finally reach their goal they will have been no less than three decades ahead of ITER (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor), the experimental fusion reactor that is being built by an international consortium in the French town of Cadarache.

SPARC proposes several new ideas

Like ITER, the SPARC reactor uses the magnetic confinement of the deuterium and tritium nuclei that make up the fuel used in this reaction inside a type reactor. tokamak. These nuclei have a positive electrical charge, so a high-power magnetic field can prevent them from coming into direct contact with the walls of the vacuum chamber in which nuclear fusion takes place. And, above all, it is capable of bringing the nuclei together enough so that their kinetic energy first, and the strong nuclear interaction later, manage to overcome the natural electrical repulsion that tries to separate them and fusion takes place.

The magnetic field can keep the plasma at bay, but at times turbulence arises in the outermost part of this gas at 150 million degrees Celsius that can compromise the integrity of the nuclear fusion reactor. To avoid this, SPARC has high-power, high-temperature superconducting magnets that, according to simulations by MIT researchers, effectively keep the turbulence that causes plasma destabilization at bay.

According to Martin Greenwald, the deputy director of the center specialized in nuclear fusion at MIT and one of the founders of CFS, the energy required by these magnets to generate the magnetic field responsible for confinement of the plasma is much less than what is necessary to invest in other engines. magnetic, such as, for example, the one used by ITER. This property on paper allows SPARC to achieve a positive energy balance, so that the energy that needs to be supplied to the reactor to start and sustain the fusion reaction over time is less than what it produces.

The proposal of the team led by Greenwald seems too optimistic, but it has something in its favor that is worth not overlooking. In October 2020, MIT and CFS researchers published seven peer-reviewed articles in the journal Journal of Plasma Physics in which they explain the keys to your technology. And already at that time Greenwald defended that these articles allow them to trust that the strategy they have developed is reliable enough to bring the construction of the SPARC nuclear fusion reactor to a successful conclusion.

In addition, this project has another asset in its favor: its reactor tokamak It is much smaller than the one used by ITER, so the time that needs to be invested in its construction should theoretically be less. Some important questions still remain in the air, such as how CFS engineers plan to deal with the irradiation of mantle materials, regenerate tritium or eliminate impurities present inside the vacuum chamber to avoid degradation. of the plasma and the loss of yield of the fusion reaction. But his project is exciting. It is very exciting. I hope they achieve their goal.

Image | CFS

More information | Interesting Engineering

In techopiniones | One of the challenges of nuclear fusion has been solved thanks to an exotic ingredient: boron