Podcasts about commonwealth fusion systems

In 2021, Commonwealth Fusion Systems proved it had built the most powerful magnet in the world. The breakthrough was based on a specific material - a tape - that conducts massive amounts of current with very little loss.  Rick Needham, Chief Commercial Officer for CFS, says the breakthrough led to a $1.8 billion Series B fundraising round. Since then, the company has turned its attention to turning this scientific breakthrough into a commercial technology. And in late 2024, the company announced it had signed a deal with Dominion Energy Virginia to build the world's first commercial fusion power plant, ARC.  In this episode, Lara talks with Rick about how CFS plans to take its technology from the lab to real-world deployment. They discuss major milestones, like proving net energy gain and finding a customer for a technology that has never been proven in the field. And Rick makes the argument that fusion is much closer than most people think.    Credits: Hosted by Lara Pierpoint. Produced by Erin Hardick. Edited by Anne Bailey and Stephen Lacey. Original music and engineering by Sean Marquand. Stephen Lacey is executive editor. The Green Blueprint is a co-production of Latitude Media and Trellis Climate. Subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or anywhere you get podcasts. For more reporting on the companies featured in this podcast, subscribe to Latitude Media's newsletter.

MIT President Emeritus Dr. Rafael Reif joins host Michael Marks for a discussion about the state of U.S. competitiveness in technology, university research funding, current immigration policy, and more. Reif explains why universities remain the innovation engines of economies, educating top talent and generating the foundational research that powers emerging tech and creates new industries. He candidly assesses U.S.-China competition, warns that Chinese research output is rapidly outpacing our own, and urges renewed federal investment. The discussion explores how restrictive immigration policies threaten the flow of global talent into the U.S and his own impression of current policies as an immigrant from Venezuela himself. As a TSMC board member, Reif also touches on the strategic need for domestic semiconductor fabs, Intel's path forward, and TSMC's edge in advancing cutting-edge nodes. Lastly, he addresses gaps in the venture capital funding space and why he created MIT's The Engine incubator model to fund “tough tech” startups, which helped launch breakthroughs like Commonwealth Fusion Systems.If you enjoy this episode, please subscribe and leave us a review on your favorite podcast platform. Sign up for our newsletter at techsurgepodcast.com for exclusive insights and updates on upcoming TechSurge Live Summits.Connect with Rafael Reif on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/l-rafael-rief-b8977b231Dive deeper into Reif's career, publications, and awards. Read his full biography https://reif.mit.edu/biography Read Rafael's recent op-ed about government R&D funding: https://www.bostonglobe.com/2025/02/17/opinion/science-technology-research-development/Read Rafael's speech about the role of universities in building a strong U.S. economy: https://reif.mit.edu/speeches-writing/strong-universities-make-strong-united-statesExplore how MIT's Engine incubator is fueling “tough tech” startups like fusion power. Learn about The Engine https://engine.xyz/Watch Commonwealth Fusion Systems' plan to deliver commercial fusion energy. Discover CFS https://cfs.energy/Understand the roadmap to a 400 MW fusion pilot plant. Read the MIT News report https://news.mit.edu/2024/commonwealth-fusion-systems-unveils-worlds-first-fusion-power-plant-1217

Dr. Cyd Cowley, working at the intersection of fusion and AI at FIA affiliate member digiLab, gives today's global fusion news update. Links to all of the stories mentioned are included below.1. US firm unveils world's largest 350MW stellarator fusion power design basishttps://interestingengineering.com/energy/us-stellarator-fusion-power-design-basis?group=test_b2. Bill Gates-backed Commonwealth Fusion Systems hits key reactor construction milestonehttps://techcrunch.com/2025/03/25/bill-gates-backed-commonwealth-fusion-systems-hits-key-reactor-construction-milestone/3.Marvel Fusion secures €113 million in Series B fundinghttps://technews180.com/funding-news/marvel-fusion-secures-e113-million-in-series-b-funding/4. Germany plans 1 gigawatt nuclear fusion facility at famous Biblis reactor sitehttps://interestingengineering.com/energy/germany-1gw-nuclear-fusion-power-plant?group=test_b5.Thea Energy Hits Milestone in Quest to Simplify Fusionhttps://heatmap.news/climate-tech/thea-energy-fusion-stellarator-magnetsBonus: https://www.sustainability-times.com/low-carbon-energy/three-times-the-size-of-the-pentagon-this-giant-fusion-research-center-rising-in-china-is-rewriting-the-rules-of-energy/ https://www.fusionindustryassociation.org/fusion-industry-association-ceo-andrew-holland-highlights-key-reports-at-iaea-fusion-webinar/

Commonwealth Fusion Systems marked a major milestone Tuesday morning, announcing the installation of a key component of its Sparc demonstration reactor. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week on Everybody in the Pool, we're going to keep talking about tech and climate innovation with a longtime technologist turned climate tech investor. Mike Schroepfer runs the investment fund Gigascale Capital, which has invested in some of the biggest names in climate tech: Commonwealth Fusion Systems, Mill, Form Energy, and a couple other names that will be appearing soon on this very show. Schrep, as he's known, is also the former CTO of Facebook, so he's someone with a long view of how tech evolves and gets adopted. Join us for a fascinating conversation about the inflection point we're at with climate tech, how AI can in fact lead to cleaner energy, and how a better world is still within reach.LINKS:Gigascale CapitalCommonwealth Fusion Systems on EITPMill founder Matt Rogers on EITPAll episodes: https://www.everybodyinthepool.com/Subscribe to the Everybody in the Pool newsletter: https://www.mollywood.co/Become a member and get an ad-free version of the podcast: https://plus.acast.com/s/everybody-in-the-poolPlease subscribe and tell your friends about Everybody in the Pool! Send feedback or become a sponsor at in@everybodyinthepool.com! To support the show and get an ad-free listening experience, please jump in and become a member of Everybody in the Pool! https://plus.acast.com/s/everybody-in-the-pool. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Dr. Cyd Cowley, working at the intersection of fusion and AI at FIA affiliate member digiLab, gives today's global fusion news update. Links to all of the stories mentioned are included below. 1. Fusion Start-Up Plans to Build Its First Power Plant in Virginia  https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/17/climate/commonwealth-fusion-power-plant.html  2. Ministers pledge record €410m to support UK nuclear fusion energy  https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/jan/16/ministers-pledge-record-410m-to-support-uk-nuclear-fusion-energy 3. Is the world ready for the transformational power of fusion?  https://www.weforum.org/stories/2025/01/fusion-energy-future/  4. Fusion-grade steel produced at scale in UK-first https://www.gov.uk/government/news/fusion-grade-steel-produced-at-scale-in-uk-first  Bonus:  https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/ai-opportunities-action-plan-government-response/ai-opportunities-action-plan-government-response 

We're experimenting and would love to hear from you!In this episode of Discover Daily, we explore OpenAI's innovative 1-800-CHATGPT service. This new initiative allows users in the US and Canada to interact with ChatGPT through voice calls, with a monthly limit of 15 minutes per phone number. The service extends globally through WhatsApp integration, demonstrating OpenAI's commitment to democratizing AI access across different platforms and user needs.We delve into Commonwealth Fusion Systems' ambitious project to construct the world's first grid-scale commercial fusion power plant in Chesterfield County, Virginia. This revolutionary facility, known as ARC, promises to generate 400 megawatts of zero-carbon electricity, potentially powering 150,000 homes. The multi-billion dollar project, set to connect to the grid in the early 2030s, represents a significant leap forward in clean energy innovation and economic development.Our main story examines the fascinating Magic Spell Hypothesis, revealed by MIT researchers, which challenges traditional understanding of legal document complexity. Through extensive analysis and creative experiments comparing legal texts to magic spells, the study suggests that the intricate language of legal documents is intentionally designed to convey authority and special status, rather than being a product of historical evolution. This groundbreaking research has important implications for the future of legal communication and accessibility.From Perplexity's Discover Feed:https://www.perplexity.ai/page/1-800-chatgpt-aUk5561qS3mKVsXMcMgsZAhttps://www.perplexity.ai/page/world-s-first-fusion-power-pla-cvpvbLC1T3CpQUdSNceExAhttps://www.perplexity.ai/page/the-magic-spell-hypothesis-n5tkbs1JR4OGww9A25c9ZAPerplexity is the fastest and most powerful way to search the web. Perplexity crawls the web and curates the most relevant and up-to-date sources (from academic papers to Reddit threads) to create the perfect response to any question or topic you're interested in. Take the world's knowledge with you anywhere. Available on iOS and Android Join our growing Discord community for the latest updates and exclusive content. Follow us on: Instagram Threads X (Twitter) YouTube Linkedin

En el episodio de hoy de "10 Minutos con Sami", exploramos tres noticias revolucionarias. Comenzamos con el anuncio de Commonwealth Fusion Systems sobre la construcción de la primera planta comercial de fusión nuclear en Virginia, un proyecto que promete transformar el panorama energético mundial. Continuamos con la sorprendente noticia de que ChatGPT ahora es accesible por teléfono y WhatsApp, democratizando el acceso a la inteligencia artificial incluso sin conexión a internet. Finalmente, analizamos el impacto de los cierres gubernamentales en Estados Unidos, explorando cómo estas interrupciones afectan a millones de ciudadanos y generan pérdidas económicas millonarias. Un episodio que nos muestra cómo la tecnología avanza mientras los desafíos políticos persisten en nuestra sociedad. Fuentes: https://cfs.energy/news-and-media/commonwealth-fusion-systems-to-build-worlds-first-commercial-fusion-power-plant-in-virginia/, https://www.laptopmag.com/ai/new-chatgpt-feature-makes-literally-every-phone-an-ai-phone, https://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/congress-has-to-pass-another-stopgap-funding-bill-what-happens-in-a-shutdown/3784733/ Redes: Puedes buscarme por redes sociales como Threads, Twitter e Instagram con @olivernabani, y puedes encontrarme habitualmente en Twitch: http://twitch.tv/olivernabani Puedes encontrar tanto este Podcast como otro contenido original en YouTube: https://youtube.com/olivernabani Además si quieres participar en la comunidad mashain, tenemos un server de Discord donde compartimos nuestras inquietudes: https://discord.gg/7M2SEfbF Un canal de Telegram donde os aviso de novedades y contenidos: https://t.me/sedicemashain Y un canal de Whatsapp: https://whatsapp.com/channel/0029VaCSKOzFCCoavMoLwX43 Y por supuesto lo más importante, recuerda: No se dice Machine, se dice Mashain

In this episode of the BIC Magazine Weekly Industry Report, we discuss INEOS Energy's acquisition of Gulf of Mexico oil and gas assets, Venture Global's milestone at the Plaquemines LNG facility, the resolution of the Detroit Marathon refinery strike, Commonwealth Fusion Systems' plans for the world's first grid-scale fusion power plant, and the EPA's approval of California's 2035 gas-only vehicle phase-out plan. This episode is sponsored by Dräger, your industrial plant safety and rental solution.   For more news on the renewable energy industry, manufacturing industry, oil and gas industry and more, visit bicmagazine.com.   #EnergyNews #EnergyIndustry #CleanEnergy #EnergyTransition #SustainableEnergy #EnergyStock #EnergyInvesting

From the White House & the Department of Energy to founding SustainabiliD, Catherine McLean spoke with Kerry Duggan about how to foster public-private sector collaboration to advance sustainability goals. They spoke from the WRISE Leadership Forum in D.C. about this & the intersection of environmental justice & sustainability consulting. Kerry is a corporate Board Director at BlueGreen Water Technologies, Envergia & Perma-Fix Environmental Services, & in this episode she “shared the password” (as she says) on strategies to earn board positions, & tactfully ensure your expertise & qualifications become known. SustainabiliD has partnered with leading organizations, including think tanks, major universities, national laboratories, philanthropy, global manufacturers, global investment banks and funds, climate tech companies and business accelerators, including Elemental Impact, Emerson Collective, Our Next Energy, LuxWall, Aeroseal, ClearFlame Engine Technologies, Commonwealth Fusion Systems, Mill, Wallbox, Aclima, Walker-Miller Energy Services, Newlab, BlueConduit, Yardstick Management, Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF), Asian Development Bank, Ceres, University of Michigan School for Environment and Sustainability (SEAS), Syzygy Plasmonics, Adaptive Energy, Aspen Institute, Milken Institute, National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, Argonne National Laboratory, Energy Foundation, ONsemi, Whirlpool Corporation, RockCreek Global Investment, University of Michigan Erb Institute, Vesta.Thank you, Kerry, for sharing sustainability success stories from some of these companies in this episode!If you're a clean energy employer & need help scaling your workforce efficiently with top tier staff, contact Catherine McLean, CEO & Founder of Dylan Green, directly on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/3odzxQr. If you're looking for your next role in clean energy, take a look at our industry-leading clients' latest job openings: bit.ly/dg_jobs. 

This week on the show, Molly talks with Bob Mumgaard, CEO of Commonwealth Fusion Systems, at an event that was held during New York Climate Week. Fusion energy is one of the most promising and biggest swings we can take toward solving the climate crisis and potentially reversing some of the damage we've already done. Fusion energy is the same type of energy that powers the sun; if we can generate that kind of energy economically on Earth, we could have a nearly limitless source of energy that emits no carbon emissions and with minimal long-lasting radioactive waste. It's the kind of technology that really could change everything, and companies like Commonwealth Fusion Systems are a lot closer to this reality than you might think.LINKS:Commonwealth Fusion Systems: https://cfs.energy/All episodes: https://www.everybodyinthepool.com/Subscribe to the Everybody in the Pool newsletter: https://www.mollywood.co/Become a member and get an ad-free version of the podcast: https://plus.acast.com/s/everybody-in-the-poolPlease subscribe and tell your friends about Everybody in the Pool! Send feedback or become a sponsor at in@everybodyinthepool.com! To support the show and get an ad-free listening experience, please jump in and become a member of Everybody in the Pool! https://plus.acast.com/s/everybody-in-the-pool. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Scientists have been trying to understand — and mimic — the way the sun produces energy for centuries. But recreating the energy-generating process of nuclear fusion here on Earth presents an array of technical challenges. Bob Mumgaard, CEO of Commonwealth Fusion Systems, began working on some of those challenges as a doctoral student at MIT. Now backed by more than $2 billion, CFS is well on its way to making the long-held dream of nuclear fusion a reality. On this week's Zero, Mumgaard breaks down the science behind CFS's bagel-shaped tokamak reactor, and explains why he believes the nuclear fusion industry is just getting started. Explore further: Past episode with Bill Gates on why he is investing big in nuclear power Past episode with Tim Latimer about why he founded geothermal startup Fervo Past episode with BNEF's Claire Curry about how startups can succeed in a difficult investment environment Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Mythili Rao. Special thanks this week to Kira Bindrim, Monique Mulima, and Jess Beck. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at zeropod@bloomberg.net. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit https://www.bloomberg.com/green.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Jeff Peachman, PhD student at the University of Wisconsin, gives today's Fusion News update - summarizing the major recent headlines in fusion energy. Links to all of the stories mentioned are included below. 1. Fusion pioneer Commonwealth Fusion Systems is selling core magnet tech to the University of Wisconsin https://techcrunch.com/2024/07/12/lets-not-kick-down-the-ladder-commonwealth-fusion-systems-shares-its-secret-sauce/ 2. How China's huge industrial supply chain may lead to ‘artificial sun' via nuclear fusion https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3269357/how-chinas-massive-industrial-supply-chain-may-help-give-rise-artificial-sun 3. China Outspends the U.S. on Fusion in the Race for Energy's Holy Grail https://www.wsj.com/world/china/china-us-fusion-race-4452d3be 4. The nuclear fusion industry is having a growth spurt https://www.axios.com/2024/07/17/nuclear-fusion-companies-funding Bonus: WHAM! Nuclear fusion experiment hits new record for magnet strength https://techcrunch.com/2024/07/18/wham-nuclear-fusion-experiment-hits-new-record-for-magnet-strength/ Advancements in Z-pinch fusion: New insights from plasma pressure profiles https://www.llnl.gov/article/51431/advancements-z-pinch-fusion-new-insights-plasma-pressure-profiles Kiwi physicist puts New Zealand in the nuclear fusion race https://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/on-air/the-sunday-session/audio/dr-ratu-mataira-openstar-founder-on-his-mission-to-unlock-the-power-of-fusion-energy/ Split of Fusion Regulation from Fission Codified by New Law https://ww2.aip.org/fyi/split-of-fusion-regulation-from-fission-codified-by-new-law

Strong magnets are essential for the type of fusion power being pursued by Commonwealth Fusion Systems and a number of other startups. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Fusion power may still be a few years away, but one startup is laying the groundwork for what it hopes will become a bustling sector of the economy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The longtime dream of a commercial fusion plant, supplying the nation with abundant clean energy, may soon be a reality. Brandon Sorbom, co-founder and chief scientist at Commonwealth Fusion Systems, talks with Host Llewellyn King and Co-host Adam Clayton Powell III about how his work on superconducting magnets, which began as a student at MIT, has moved at a fast pace to a company marketing star power on Earth.

As private and government interest in nuclear fusion technology grows, an array of startups have arisen to take on the challenge, each with their own unique approach. Among them: LaserFusionX. Today on Faster, Please!—The Podcast, I talk with CEO Stephen Obenschain about the viability of fusion energy, and what sets his approach apart.Obenschain is the president of LaserFusionX. He was formerly head of the Plasma Physics Division branch at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory.In This Episode* Viability of commercial fusion (0:58)* The LaserFusionX approach (7:54)* Funding the project (10:28)* The vision (12:52)Below is a lightly edited transcript of our conversationViability of commercial fusion (0:58)Pethokoukis: Steve, welcome to the podcast.Obenschain: Okay, I'm glad to talk with you. I understand you're very interested in high-tech future power sources, not so high tech right now are windmills…Well, I guess they're trying to make those more high tech, as well. I recall that when the Energy Department, the National Ignition Laboratory [NIF], they had the—I guess that's over about maybe 15 months ago—and they said they had achieved a net gain nuclear fusion, using lasers, and the energy secretary made an announcement and it was a big deal because we had never done that before by any means. But I remember very specifically people were saying, “Listen, it's a great achievement that we've done this, but using lasers is not a path to creating a commercial nuclear reactor.” I remember that seemed to be on the news all the time. But yet you are running a company that wants to use lasers to create a commercial fusion reactor. One, did I get that right, and what are you doing to get lasers to be able to do that?I don't know why people would come to that conclusion. I think we are competitive with the other approaches, which is magnetic fusion, where you use magnetic fields to confine a plasma and get to fusion temperatures. The federal government has supported laser fusion since about 1972, starting with the AEC [Atomic Energy Commission]. Originally it was an energy program, but it has migrated to being in support stockpiled stewardship because, with laser fusion, you can reach physics parameters similar to what occur in thermonuclear weapons.Yeah. So that facility is about nuclear weapons testing research, not creating a reactor—a fusion reactor.Yeah. All that being said, it does advance the physics of laser fusion energy, and what the National Ignition Facility did is got so-called ignition, where the fuel started a self-sustaining reaction where it was heating itself and increasing the amount of fusion energy. However, the gain was about three, and one of the reasons for that is they use so-called indirect drive, where the laser comes in, heats a small gold can, and the X-rays from that then that drive the pellet implosion, which means you lose about a factor of five in the efficiency. So it's limited gain you get that way.Your way is different. It sort of cuts out the middleman.Okay. The better way to go—which, we're not the only ones to do this—is direct drive, where the laser uniformly illuminates the target at the time that Livermore got started with indirect drive, we didn't have the technologies to uniformly illuminate a pellet. First at NRL [Naval Research Laboratories], and then later at University of Rochester in Japan, they developed techniques to uniformly illuminate the pellets. The second thing we're doing is using the argon fluoride laser. The argon fluoride laser has been used in lithography for many years because it's deep UV.The unique thing we have been trying to do—this was when I was supervising the program at the Naval Research Laboratory—was to take it up to high energy. We started years ago with a similar Krypton fluoride laser, built the largest operating target shooter with that technology, demonstrated the high repetition rate operation that you need for energy and NIF will shoot a few times a day—you need five to 10 shots per second to do a power plant—demonstrated that on a krypton fluoride laser, and, more recently, we switched to the focus to argon fluoride, which is deeper UV and more efficient than the Krypton  fluoride. And that basically—at NRL when I was supervising it—reached the energy record for that technology. But we've got a long ways to go to get it to the high energy needed for a power plant.Now, what the immediate goal of my company is to get the funds and to build a beam line of argon fluoride that would have the energy and performance needed for a power plant. One of the advantages to laser fusion: you want have a situation where I'm building more than one of something, so for an implosion facility, you have many beam lines, so you build one and then you have the advantage of building more, and a learning curve as you go toward a power plant. We developed a phase program where first we build the beamline, then we build a NIF-like implosion facility only operating with the argon fluoride, demonstrate the high gain—which is a hundred plus for a power plant—and then, after doing that, do the physics in parallel, develop the other technology you need, like low-cost targets. (They can't be expensive. The NIF targets are probably tens of thousands. We can't spend that.) We're going 10 shots per second. All the technologies required for a pilot power plant build a pilot power plant, which, in my view could be maybe 400 megawatts electricity. However, its main function would be to develop the procedures, test the components, and so forth for the follow-on, mass-produced power plants. So one, when you build a pilot power plant, you want to operate it for a few years to get the kinks out before going to mass production. The vision is to go from the beginning of that to the end in about 16 years.So the challenges are you have to generate enough heat, and you have to be able to do this over, and over, and over again.Right. That's right. It has to be high reliability. For an implosion facility, a hundred-thousand-shot reliability is okay. For a power plant, it's got to be in the billion-shot class.And at this point, the reason you think this is doable is what?I think we have confidence in the pellet designs. I have a lot, and I have colleagues that have a lot of experience with building large excimer systems: KrF [Krypton Fluoride Excimer Laser], ArF [Argon Fluoride Excimer Laser]…Those are lasers?Yes. And we have credible conceptual designs for the facility.There's a lot of companies right now, and startups, with different approaches. I would assume you think this is the most viable approach, or has some other advantages over some of the other things we're seeing with Commonwealth Fusion Systems, which gets mentioned a lot, which is using a different approach. So is the advantage you think it's easier to get to a reactor? What are the advantages of this path?The LaserFusionX approach (7:54)Well, for one, it's different. It's different challenges from the Commonwealth Fusion Systems. There is overlap, and there should be collaboration. For example, you have to, theirs is also deuterium-tritium. However, the physics challenges are different. I think we're farther along in laser fusion to be able—it's a simpler situation than you have. It's very complex interactions in tokamak, and you also have things… have you ever heard of a disruption? Basically it's where all of the magnetic energy all of a sudden goes to the wall, and if you have something like what Commonwealth Fusion Systems—they've got to be careful they don't get that. If they do, it would blow a hole in the wall. We don't have that problem with laser fusion. I think we're further along in understanding the physics. Actually, the National Ignition Facility is ahead of the highest fusion gains they've gotten in facilities. I think that they're somewhere just below one or so with the jet. They're up at one and a half. To what extent are the challenges of physics and science, and to what extent are the challenges engineering?Well, the physics has to guide the precision you have on the laser. And I won't say we're 100 percent done in the physics, but we're far enough along to say, okay. That's one reason where I envision building an implosion facility before the pilot power plant so we can test the codes and get all the kinks out of that. Nothing's easy. You have to get the cost of the targets down. The laser, okay, we've demonstrated, for example, at NRL—And NRL is…?Naval Research Laboratory.Naval Research Lab, right.A hundred-shot operation of the KrF laser. We use spark gap for that. We need to go to solid state pulse power, got up to 10 million shots. We need to get from there to a billion shots. And some of that is just simply improving the components. It's straightforward, but you've got to put time into it. I think you need really smart people doing this, that are creative—not too creative, but where you need to be creative, you are creative, and I think if, basically, if you can get the support, for example, to build (a beam line is somewhere around a hundred million dollars). To build the implosion facility and pilot power plant, you're getting into the billion shot, billion dollar class and you have to get those resources and be sure enough that, okay, if the investors put this money in, they're going to get a return on it.Funding the project (10:28)I think people who are investing in this sector, I would assume they may be more familiar with some of the other approaches, so what is the level of investor interest and what is the level of Department of Energy interest?Well, one of the challenges is that, historically, the Department of Energy has put money into two pots. One, laser fusion for stockpile stewardship, and magnetic fusion for energy. That's starting to change, but they don't have a lot of money involved yet, to put money into laser fusion or inertial fusion energy. And one of my challenges is not that the companies are aware of magnetic fusion, they don't understand the challenges of that, or laser fusion, or what's a good idea and a bad idea. And like Commonwealth Fusion systems I think has a good technical basis. If you go the next one down to Helion Energy, they're claiming they can burn helium three made from deuterium interactions, which violates textbook physics, so I'm very… I wonder about that.Would it surprise you, at the end of the day, that there are multiple paths to a commercial fusion reactor?Oh no. I think there are multiple paths to getting to where I get fusion burn, and maybe I make electricity. I think ultimately the real challenge for us is: Can we go reasonably fast? At 16 years, I'm considered somewhat slower than others. The ones that are saying five years I think are delusional. The ones that are saying 50 years, or say never, I don't think understand that yeah, we're pretty far along in this.How big, or rather, how small, theoretically, could one of these reactors be? I know there's been talk about using nuclear fusion as a way to provide power for these new data centers that gobble up so much power that they're using AI for. Would this be the kind of reactor that would power a city power, a big factory power, a data center, all of the above?I think you can get down, at least with our approach, to a couple hundred megawatts. However, my own vision is you're probably better off having power stations for some of the nuclear—with these, the big nuclear plants have multiple reactors at one place, and you'd get the advantage, for example, in our case, to just simply have one target factory and so forth. I don't think we're going to be able to compete. I don't know how small modular reactors go—a hundred megawatts or so, I would guess, and probably can't get down there, but one of my own goals is to get the size down as much as possible, but I think we're talking about hundreds of megawatts. The vision (12:52)What's the big vision? Why are you doing this?Why am I doing it?Yeah, what's the vision? What drives you and where do you think this goes over the next two decades?I may have the best route to get there. If I thought one of these other ones were going to get there, no problem… but all of us have challenges, and I think we can get there. I think from a standing start. As far as getting investment, I've just had pre-seed money, I don't have the big bucks yet. I've brought on people that are more experienced than me at extracting money from VCs and investors. (I was told you know a few billionaires.) Basically, for me, I need a few tens of millions to get started—like I'd say, about a hundred million to build the beamline. And then after that… actually I have a conference call on Friday with a representative of the investment bank industry that is very dubious about fusion.I mean, you can understand the skepticism, as a technology. What do they say? “It's the future of energy and always will be.”But the really good thing, I think, about the private investment is that the public investment has been too much focus on big machines which will give you physics, but have pretty much zero chance of being a direct path to fusion energy. You know, $25 billion and I make 500 megawatts thermal, occasionally, and we show that to a power plant executive, they're going to say, “You're kidding me.” We hope to get down cost for the power plants in the few-billion-dollar range.Faster, Please! is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit fasterplease.substack.com/subscribe

We are joined by Noah Rabinowitz, CLO at Commonwealth Fusion Systems and contributor in CLO Lift. Noah shares three unresolved problems facing the learning and development industry over multiple decades, despite meaningful activity and investment to solve them. Noah and group of about 40 CLO's (CLO Lift from the Learning Forum) are partnering together to solve them. Noah shares the three, explains why they are complex, why they continue to be unresolved, what CLO Lift is going to solve them, and how you can learn and apply their findings in your organization.   LEARN ABOUT CLO LIFT https://thelearningforum.org/clo-lift/   CONNECT WITH US If you have any feedback or want to join in on the conversation, connect with us via LinkedIN, Twitter (@bobbyhollywood), or email our show at learninggeekspod@gmail.com.   DISCLAIMER All thoughts and views are of our own.   CREDITS Local Elevator by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Source: http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/index.html?isrc=USUAN1300012 Artist: http://incompetech.com/

When it comes to Learning & Development, why are we so focused on new bright shiny objects?How can you improve the Return on Investment from L&D initiatives?My guest on this episode is Noah Rabinowitz, VP Talent Development at Commonwealth Fusion Systems and Brian Hackett, Founder, The Learning ForumDuring our conversation Noah, Brian and I discuss:Why L&D needs to stop being driven by trends and start being driven by common standardsHow HR leaders need to rethink the “value of time” when it comes to investing in learningWhy “skill surging” is an faster and better alternative to implementing a skills-based organizationWhy you should be refining, not reinventing your L&D governance modelNoah's advice to next-gen L&D leaders who want to increase their influence and impactConnecting with Noah Rabinowitz and Brian HackettConnect with Noah Rabinowitz on LinkedInConnect with Brian Hackett on LinkedInLearn more about the CLO LIFT and The Learning ForumEpisode Sponsor:BizLibrary - Where Learning Happens

Join Sarah Sherman, Managing Director at NFP, as she dives into the intricate world of risk management within the fusion industry. This episode sheds light on the importance of working closely with clients, the requirements for industry-specific knowledge in managing risks, and the value of clear communication and honesty in building professional credibility. Sarah discusses her journey into risk and insurance, her pivotal role in The Wattles Fellowship, and her unique position in outsource risk management at Commonwealth Fusion Systems.   Key Takeaways: A little bit about Sarah and her work at NFP. How did Sarah get into risk and insurance? How did Sarah first get involved with The Wattles Fellowship? Sarah explains her role as an outsource risk management in the fusion industry. Sarah shares why she feels very integrated at Commonwealth Fusion Systems, even though it's a client of NFP. It's quite common for the client or third-party company to want to continue working with an insurance provider and have them brought on full-time/in-house at their company. If you do a good job, people will want you, no matter what! How much do you need to know about fusion systems to accurately calculate and manage the risk? Sarah's top industry secret is understanding who she needs to get involved in critical conversations early on. This way, her real risk expertise can shine through and the more senior fusion experts can provide guidance and support. Sarah breaks down how she thinks about risk and mitigates risk. Do not underestimate the power of picking up the phone and talking to people! Text and email are slow and can be misinterpreted. Don't be afraid to say, “I Don't Know.” It builds credibility as you seek to find the right and honest answer. Are there groups and communities for risk professionals within the fusion industry?   Mentioned in This Episode: Nfp.com Cfs.energy Wattlesfellowship.com Sarah on LinkedIn  

The founders of Commonwealth Fusion Systems.

This is a conversation with Bob Mumgaard and Steve Renter, founders of Commonwealth Fusion Systems in Cambridge, Massachusetts. So these guys spun out of MIT. An incredible, ambitious, company to figure out how to commercialize fusion, and it's really the first fusion company in the world that has been able to show publicly that they have no new science needed in order to make it work, which is a major milestone. They also published a series of seven papers a couple of years ago now, showing exactly how they can build a fusion reactor. This is the kind of thing that has been a joke my whole life with physicists saying that fusion is only 20 years away and always will be. That might not be true anymore... Commonwealth Fusion Systems had a major breakthrough when they figured out how to make a super magnet, using a new kind of super conductor that's appropriate for the task, and that really changed the game. Almost everything else they do, the science is the same as it was in 1970. They make a plasma that floats inside of what is called a "tokamak", which is a kind of donut shaped toroid that has plasma floating on a magnetic field inside. So all this is like crazy, hard, technical science. None of it would have been possible without decades of government funded research. Multiple governments funding research. These guys were standing on the shoulders of a lot of giants who came before them. And they are very careful to acknowledge that all the time, which is great. And they've been very successful at showing that they can really make fusion happen. Now there's a lot of engineering work that has to happen between here and there, but know they're going at it with an extraordinary amount of ambition and they've hired a lot of really smart people. They have probably the best shot at achieving fusion of anything that I have seen. This would be the biggest upgrade for humans in our lifetime if we get there. And so it's a very exciting project. I'm thrilled that I've gotten to know these guys a little bit and got to hang out with them their operation that keeps growing. I hope that you learned something from this conversation with Bob and Steve. Important Links: Commonwealth Fusion Systems Linkedin page Commonwealth Fusion Systems About Bob Mumgaard and Steve Renter Bob is the co-founder and CEO of Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS), a fusion energy startup company spin-out of MIT. He drives the company's vision to accelerate the path to commercial fusion energy by managing its strategic partnerships and technical approach. He also believes in the power of technical and organizational innovation to facilitate the breakthroughs needed to combat climate change. The CFS team and Bob are working in collaboration with MIT's Plasma Science and Fusion Center (PSFC) to realize the holy grail of renewable energy: fusion. Steve Renter is the Chief Growth Officer at Commonwealth Fusion Systems, designing and building commercial fusion systems to provide limitless, clean energy to the world. Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS) has the fastest, lowest cost path to commercial fusion energy. The ultimate mission is to deploy fusion power plants to meet global decarbonization goals as fast as possible. CFS has assembled a team of leaders in tough tech, fusion science, and manufacturing with a track record of rapid execution. Supported by the world's leading investors, CFS is uniquely positioned to deliver limitless, clean, fusion power to combat climate change.

According to researchers around the world, fusion could be a nearly waste-free, carbon-free, and all-geography answer to creating enough dispatchable power to get us through the energy transition. To achieve this, all components of a fusion power plant need to be built so that when fusion energy becomes a reality, we have the industry, infrastructure, and processes in place to distribute the power, and it has to be cost competitive. This is exactly what Bob Mumgaard, Co-Founder and CEO of Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS), is building. Today, CFS has more than 600 employees, has raised $2B, and is executing on their plan to make the “holy grail” of fusion energy possible. Guest host Lara Pierpoint sat down with Bob to learn more about his journey, the CFS story, and the work being advanced by his team.Sponsors Watt It Takes is brought to you by Shell Ventures and SPAN.Shell Ventures specializes in unlocking deployment opportunities to help their portfolio companies scale, access customers and commercialize their solutions. Visit shell.com/ventures to learn more about how they can help your company reach the next level of growth.SPAN are the makers of the award-winning SPAN Panel—a smart electrical panel that enhances how homeowners interact with their energy. Interested in advancing your career at one of the premier companies in Climate Technology or getting SPAN installed in your home? Visit www.span.io to learn more.About Powerhouse and Powerhouse Ventures Powerhouse is an innovation firm that works with leading global corporations and investors to help them find, partner with, invest in, and acquire the most innovative startups in clean energy, mobility, and climate. Powerhouse Ventures backs seed-stage startups building innovative software to rapidly decarbonize our global energy and mobility systems. You can learn more at powerhouse.fund, and you can subscribe to our newsletter at powerhouse.fund/subscribe.To hear more stories of founders building our carbon-free future, hit the “subscribe” button and leave us a review on Apple podcasts.

Vinod Khosla is the Founder of Khosla Ventures, one of the leading venture firms of the last decade with investments in OpenAI, Stripe, DoorDash, Commonwealth Fusion Systems and many more. Prior to founding Khosla, Vinod was a co-founder of Daisy Systems and founding CEO of Sun Microsystems. In Today's Episode with Vinod Khosla We Discuss: 1. The State of AI Today: Does Vinod believe we are in a bubble or is the excitement justified based on technological development? What are the single biggest lessons that Vinod has from prior bubbles? What is different about this time? What is Vinod concerned about with this AI bubble? 2. The Future of Healthcare and Music: How does Vinod evaluate the impact AI will have on the future of healthcare? How does Vinod analyse the impact AI will have on the future of music and content creation? Does Vinod believe that humans will resist these advancements? Who will be the laggards, slow to embrace it and who will be the early adopters? 3. Solving Income Inequality: Does Vinod believe AI does more to harm or to hurt income inequality? What mechanisms can be put in place to ensure that AI does not further concentrate wealth into the hands of the few? Does Vinod believe in universal basic income? What does everyone get wrong with UBI? 4. The Future of Energy, Climate and Politics: Why is forcing non-economic solutions the wrong approach to climate? What is the right approach? Why is Vinod so bullish on fusion and geothermal? How does fusion bankrupt entire industries? How does the advancements in energy and resource creation change global politics? Does Vinod believe Larry Summers was right; "China is a prison, Japan is a nursing home and Europe is a museum"? 5. Vinod Khosla: AMA: What is Vinod's single biggest investing miss? What does Vinod know now that he wishes he had known when he started investing? Why did the Taylor Swift concert have such a profound impact on him? What was Marc Andreesen like when he backed him with Netscape in 1996?

Climate Advancing Solutions For Planetary Health: Sophie Bakalar, Partner at Collaborative Fund   Sophie Bakalar is a Partner at Collaborative Fund, a leading New York based venture fund with over $1 billion in assets under management to invest at the intersection of for-profit and for-good. Sophie leads the firm's climate investments, including a new dedicated $200M+ climate fund called Collab SOS, to fuel a more sustainable economy across materials,ingredients, energy, and supply chains. Key investments: AMP Robotics, Brimstone Energy,Commonwealth Fusion Systems, Dandelion Energy, Kula Bio, Lyft, Mango Materials, Natural Fiber Welding, Quaise, among others.   Bard MBA's Arielle Chaifetz speaks with Sophie for this episode of the Impact Report.   ImpactReportPodcast.com

Pre-IPO Stock Market Update - Apr 21, 2023 | Tech billionaires + fusion, Klarna ad revenue growth, Discord financials disclosed, 'ChatGPT for Business'00:33 | Tech billionaires invest into nuclear fusion companies- Sam Altman (OpenAI), Peter Theil (Founders Fund); Helion Energy ($3.7b val, Nov 2021)- Marc Benioff (Salesforce), Bill Gates  (Microsoft); Commonwealth Fusion Systems ($1.8b val, Dec 2021)- Jeff Bezos (Amazon); General Fusion- Vinod Khosla (Khosla Ventures); Realta Fusion- Chris Sacca (Lowercase Capital); Avalanche Energy ($130m val, Apr 2023)03:05 | Klarna app  updates to drive ad revenue- added; AI discovery feed (like TikTok), customized shops for social media content creators, ability to sell secondhand goods- AI will build a personal profile of shoppers based on shopping behavior, brands they like and provide recommendations to merchants- Klarna already generates 10% of revenue from advertisements- Klarna management forecasting monthly profitability in a few months time04:59 | Discord financial update- 2022 revenue $445m; up 44% yoy- 2021 revenue was up 126% yoy- 2022 ebitda $66m- Q1 2023 ebitda -$11m, nearly double Q1 2022 ebitda -$6m- Fidelity marked Discord's valuation at $9.4b; -36% from last primary round in 2022 ($14.7b)05:58 | OpenAI for Business- Businesses will maintain control over the data they generate- Controls include; turning off their chat histories to prevent OpenAI from using the data to train its language models and customizing models for individual users so their privacy is not compromised07:16 | Large capital raises- Getir | $300m Series F, $6.5b valuation- Razor Group | $88m Series C, $1.2b valuation- Odeko | $54m Series D, $604m valuation- Coronet | $75m Series D, $575m valuation- Cosmose AI | Series B, $500m valuation08:26 | Pre-IPO stock market performance- Pre-IPO stocks were down for the week -1.41%, S&P 500 -0.09%. - YTD pre-IPO stocks trail the S&P by about 21%.- YTD Kraken and SpaceX are the stars, up 6% and 2% respectfully. 7 pre-IPO stocks in the index are down over 20% YTD; Discord, Stripe, Airtable, Brex, Epic Games, Chime, and Flexport.- Kraken +8.78%. Brex -14%, Stripe -8%, Revolut -5%, Flexport -3%.AG Dillon & Co venture capital funds...- SpaceX Fund = www.agdillon.com/spacex- OpenAI Fund = www.agdillon.com/openai

In this episode, Desiree speaks with Kike Miralles and Josh Goldman, an alumnus of Imperial College, about mining critical minerals. They focus on exploration and discovery innovation to boost the output needed to fill the mineral demand and supply gap. Kike and Josh both share their experiences and insights working in this field - Josh by founding KoBold Metals, a startup backed by top investors like Bill Gates' Breakthrough Energy Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz and Kike by working in deep-tech venture capital and investing in the new mining innovation at Starlight Ventures. They also talk about how founders, investors, and companies should make sense of the geopolitical complexity in mining in addition to talent and research gaps in the mining industry.    Kike Miralles is a Principal at Starlight Ventures, a Miami-based venture capital firm for founders addressing the world's most pressing challenges and opportunities. Starlight partners early with unstoppable entrepreneurs leveraging breakthrough science to pursue progress at scale. Starlight Ventures has a strong investing track record in decarbonization; Starlight's portfolio includes Carbon Engineering, Commonwealth Fusion Systems, Impossible Metals, and Quaise among others. Prior to Starlight Ventures, Kike consulted for McKinsey and Company, completed his MBA at MIT, and earned his Bachelor's and Master's in the field of physics at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid in Spain and Ulm University in Germany.      Josh Goldman is the co-Founder and President of KoBold Metals, a startup aiming to leverage artificial intelligence to identify mineral deposits needed for transition to a low-carbon economy. Prior to founding KoBold Metals, Josh worked in oil and gas private equity, and also consulted for McKinsey and Company. He earned his PhD. in Physics at Harvard University, holds Master degrees in Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics from Cambridge University and in History of Science at Imperial College, and earned a Bachelors of Physics at Cornell University.        Selected resources:   Email for suggestions:  podcast.greenminds@gmail.com 

Imagine a power source that produces hardly any waste and is carbon-free. That's the tantalising promise of controlled nuclear fusion, which physicists have been trying to achieve for 70 years. It is a simulacrum of the process that powers the sun, colliding atomic nuclei of various sorts to release huge amounts of energy. Fusion research was once the provenance of governments and national laboratories, but now private companies are getting in on the act. Dozens of them are exploring different ways to create the extreme conditions needed to achieve fusion here on Earth. And, contrary to the old joke that fusion power is thirty years away, and always will be, some of them think they can get there in a decade.Fernanda Rimini, an experimental fusion scientist with the UK Atomic Energy Authority, explains how nuclear fusion works. Geoff Carr, The Economist's science and technology editor, explores why fusion is coming back into fashion for private companies. Geoff also speaks to Bob Mumgaard of Commonwealth Fusion Systems, Warrick Matthews of Tokamak Energy and Nick Hawker of First Light Fusion. Plus, Stephen Cowley, the director of the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory assesses how helpful the latest private fusion ventures are in advancing the field. Alok Jha hosts. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Imagine a power source that produces hardly any waste and is carbon-free. That's the tantalising promise of controlled nuclear fusion, which physicists have been trying to achieve for 70 years. It is a simulacrum of the process that powers the sun, colliding atomic nuclei of various sorts to release huge amounts of energy. Fusion research was once the provenance of governments and national laboratories, but now private companies are getting in on the act. Dozens of them are exploring different ways to create the extreme conditions needed to achieve fusion here on Earth. And, contrary to the old joke that fusion power is thirty years away, and always will be, some of them think they can get there in a decade.Fernanda Rimini, an experimental fusion scientist with the UK Atomic Energy Authority, explains how nuclear fusion works. Geoff Carr, The Economist's science and technology editor, explores why fusion is coming back into fashion for private companies. Geoff also speaks to Bob Mumgaard of Commonwealth Fusion Systems, Warrick Matthews of Tokamak Energy and Nick Hawker of First Light Fusion. Plus, Stephen Cowley, the director of the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory assesses how helpful the latest private fusion ventures are in advancing the field. Alok Jha hosts. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Harnessing fusion power has been an elusive goal of physicists and researchers for decades. However, recent scientific advances are helping to make that goal a reality. Described as a star in a bottle, fusion is what powers our sun and stars, offering us the prospect of limitless clean energy. But here on earth, it has presented unresolved engineering challenges—until now. Commonwealth Fusion Systems is on the brink of delivering commercial fusion energy thanks to their revolutionary magnet. But how does a safe, limitless, carbon-free, fusion power plant operate? What does it look like? How and when will this technology be replicated to meet the world's energy needs? We'll learn more from Bob Mumgaard (Commonwealth Fusion Systems); Katie Rae (The Engine); and Theresa Hajer (Cambridge Associates).

Hypersonics, space, nuclear, carbon capture... Complex hardware is making a comeback and creating an exciting future! Hermeus Founder and COO Skyler Shuford is joined by Darby Dunn of Commonwealth Fusion Systems, Casey Handmer of Terraform Industries, and space industry expert Lauren Lyons to discuss how hardware companies will change the world by 2050.

Dennis Whyte is a nuclear scientist at MIT and the director of the MIT Plasma Science and Fusion Center. Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors: – Rocket Money: https://rocketmoney.com/lex – MasterClass: https://masterclass.com/lex to get 15% off – InsideTracker: https://insidetracker.com/lex to get 20% off EPISODE LINKS: Dennis's Twitter: https://twitter.com/MIT_Fusion Dennis's LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/dennis-whyte-33474a54 Dennis's Website: https://www.psfc.mit.edu/whyte SPARC: https://www.psfc.mit.edu/sparc MIT Plasma Science and Fusion Center: https://www.psfc.mit.edu MIT Plasma Science and Fusion Center's YouTube: https://youtube.com/@mitplasmascienceandfusionc6211 Commonwealth Fusion Systems: https://cfs.energy Commonwealth Fusion Systems YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@CommonwealthFusionSystems PODCAST INFO: Podcast website: https://lexfridman.com/podcast Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/2lwqZIr Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2nEwCF8 RSS: https://lexfridman.com/feed/podcast/ YouTube Full Episodes: https://youtube.com/lexfridman YouTube

Skeptics joke that nuclear fusion is the energy source of the future … and always will be. But when the Biden White House made a big announcement about the progress of fusion research last week, even diehard skeptics surely took note. My guest on this episode of Faster, Please! — The Podcast is Arthur Turrell, plasma physicist and author of 2021's excellent and must-read The Star Builders: Nuclear Fusion and the Race to Power the Planet.In This Episode* The consequences of fusion's latest breakthrough (1:06)* Where does fusion go from here? (3:55)* The best path forward for fusion (8:14)* The importance of fusion for an energy-abundant future (13:13)* Will star power take us to the stars? (24:09)Below is an edited transcript of our conversation.The consequences of fusion's latest breakthroughJames Pethokoukis: On December 14, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm announced that researchers at Lawrence Livermore had succeeded in generating a net-energy-gain fusion reaction. Just how consequential is this?Arthur Turrell: Jim, I would say that we're witnessing a moment of history, really. Controlling the power source of stars, I think, is the greatest technological challenge humanity has ever undertaken. If you look back at human history, there are different stages where we've unlocked different types of energy sources. You can think about unlocking wood. You can think about when humans started to use coal, which packs in more energy than wood. You can think about nuclear fission, which has even more energy than coal. A lot more, because it's a nuclear technology instead of a chemical one. And then you can think about this moment when we have the first proof of concept of using fusion for energy. And of course, fusion unlocks huge amounts of energy: 10 million times, kilogram for kilogram, as compared to coal.There are two main approaches to fusion as I understand it. This was what they call inertial confinement, and then there's magnetic confinement. Does it make a difference, as far as where this technology goes, that it was inertial confinement versus magnetic?It's absolutely a huge scientific achievement. The level of precision and the level of innovation and invention that the researchers at Lawrence Livermore have had to deploy to get here is just an astonishing feat on its own, even if we weren't talking about how this could eventually change the supply of energy.Does it get us anywhere? I think the honest answer is we don't know. We, today, don't know what version of fusion, what way of doing fusion is going to ultimately be the one that is the most economical and the most useful for society. But what I think this result will do is have a huge psychological effect because throughout fusion's history, researchers have said, “Hey, I'd really like to, you know, build a reactor, a prototype reactor.” And funders have quite reasonably said, “We don't even know if the principle works. Go off and show us that it can produce, in principle, more energy out than is put in.” And of course, fusion research has been trying to do that since the 1950s. Now we finally and absolutely have proof of that. I think that it's going to crowd in innovation, interest, and investment in all types of fusion because even though this approach got to that milestone first, it doesn't necessarily mean that this is going be the most economical or the best in the long run.Where does fusion go from here?I think it's Benjamin Franklin who gets the credit, at least that's what I learned in third grade, for discovering electricity in the 1700s. We didn't get the first electric motor until the 1820s, and we really didn't get factories electrifying their factory floors really until the first decades of the 20th century. So this could be an amazing discovery, but it could be a long time just based on how fast it takes advances to be modified and diffuse into an economy. It could be quite some time, if ever, before this actually gets plugged into a grid.Right. Traditionally, these new energy sources take a long time to come onstream. One of my favorite facts, and I have to double check that I've got the year right here, but I think the first solar cell was working in 1883. And only now in the last few years has solar energy become commercially viable in terms of cost. These things take a long time, or they have historically. And here's the really important point. It's never about the amount of time. It's about the amount of investment and political will that we put behind it.If our elected representatives choose to really push this and put lots of funding behind it, and the private sector decides that it's really going to push this, things will move much faster. Correspondingly, if we don't put lots of investment behind it, things will move more slowly. But you are absolutely right when you say that there is a gap here between what we've seen — which is an astonishing experiment, but only scientific feasibility — and what you'd have to have for fusion energy to be on the grid — which is solving some of the engineering and economics challenges that stand in the way between this one-off experiment and doing this repeatedly and economically at scale.For decades, there was very little in the news about fusion research. And since 2019, there have been some big stories about the advances happening in government labs and about the work in the private sector. It seemed like there was already a lot of excitement before this advancement. I can't believe this won't generate even more interest.Absolutely. I think this has been building for quite a long time. It's very tempting to say not much has happened in fusion. But I think if you look back over the decades, there have been improvements. They've been quite steady, and they've probably been coming at the rate you would expect with the level of investment and dedicated resources it's had. But the improvements have been arriving quite steadily. And looking at the history of this particular experiment, the National Ignition Facility, when they've got improvements since 2012 when they really started this type of campaign, the improvements have resulted in a five- or six-times increase in the release of energy. Back in 2019 when the book I wrote about this came out, I sort of said, “Well, they're not actually that many improvements away, so if they can carry on the same trajectory, they're going to crack it at some point.” And last August in 2021, they got to 70 percent, which at the time was a world record as well. And it's kind of like, because fusion scales nonlinearly, especially in this type of doing fusion, this laser fusion, actually they're almost there and it's just a matter of time until they crack it. So I think it's been building for a while. And the huge successes, because things have just happened to have gotten close now after all of this time in both magnetic confinement fusion and in inertial or laser-based fusion, mean that has really stimulated the private sector as well. The whole thing is starting to build on its momentum. And I think that now this is going to cause the wave to crash over and we're going to see efforts to turn this into a power source be completely electrified by this news.The best path forward for fusionIf what happened at Lawrence Livermore Lab does not present an obvious path to commercialization, what else is going on that seems more obvious? We differentiated between magnetic and inertial confinement fusion. Other people will point to deuterium-tritium fusion versus aneutronic fusion. Where is the most likely path, and does it come from government, from the private sector, that will lead us to a commercial reactor?Of course, it's hard to know exactly, but we can certainly make some sensible guesses based on what we know today. To answer the second part about deuterium-tritium fusion or aneutronic fusion, just so your listeners are aware, these are about different types of fuel that we're putting into fusion reactions. So the first kind, deuterium-tritium, those are just special types of hydrogen. Frankly, all of the really serious attempts to do fusion today using these because they require much, much less extreme conditions than the other types of fusion reaction, though people get very excited about the type of fusion that doesn't produce any neutrons, aneutronic fusion, because it has less radioactivity. But it's much, much harder to do.Would it be a better power source? Some people have said that with deuterium-tritium fusion, you would still need some sort of boiler. You'd be using a steam turbine, just like you would if it was coal. While aneutronic actually creates electricity itself.In principle, yes. People haven't really demonstrated that principle in practice. But yeah, that's why people are excited about it, because every time you change energy from one type to another you lose some of the useful energy and you just have a more direct setup with the aneutronic fusion. But I think that's some way away. In terms of what's practical for the next steps to getting to an energy source, there are paths using both this inertial approach and using the magnetic approach.Some of the private-sector companies are using this magnetic confinement approach. I think Commonwealth Fusion Systems, that's what they do.That's right. And Tokamak Energy as well. There are pros and cons of both different approaches. In terms of the kind of approach that the National Ignition Facility is taking, there are some big technological gaps in terms of something that looks more like a power source. This was a single shot of a laser on a single experiment. If it was to be anywhere close to being a useful power source, they would have to do probably 10 shots on that laser a second. And instead of a gain of 1.5, so instead of getting 1.5 units of energy out for every unit of energy you put in, you'd have to probably get at least 30 units of energy out than you put in. Now, as I say, this thing scales nonlinearly, which means that you might get there faster than you think. But it's still a big technological gap.And even if you solve all of that, of course you've then got to do what you said. Ultimately, we're extracting the heat energy and we're using it to turn water into steam, and we're powering a turbine. Now, what some of the people who are working on this magnetic confinement approach would say is that even if they haven't got to net energy gain yet, they have created a lot of gross energy. So they have generated about 30 times more gross energy than NIF produced in output energy in a single experiment. And they would say that some of the steps further down the line are a bit easier to achieve on magnetic confinement fusion. But honestly, I don't think we really know yet. And because we don't know, it's a good thing that we have both public and private sector exploring a range of different options here.How seriously should I take anybody who gives me a date? How confident should I take any of these predictions at this point?Well, that does depend, Jim. Was it the president of the United States who said this to you? Because I feel like he's got some control over it. I think the first question to ask when anyone says that is, at what level of investment? Because that's the thing that's going to make the difference. If we stop all funding to fusion tomorrow, if people decide to do that, then it's going to take forever. But equally, if President Biden says it's going to take 10 years, and he makes a commitment to put in the money that could potentially make that happen, then I'd take it a bit more seriously. I think 10 years is a very tight time scale. But as I've probably mentioned before we saw in the pandemic how even untested technologies can be deployed at great speeds, faster than anyone could have imagined, where there is the political will and the societal need and the money to make it happen.The importance of fusion for an energy-abundant futureWhy is this an interesting source of energy?Nuclear fusion, it's interesting scientifically because every time you go outside on a sunny day, those rays you're feeling on your face from the sun are generated by nuclear fusion. So this is literally the reaction that lights up the universe. It's the reaction that created a lot of the elements that we are made out of, particularly bigger elements. And it was right there at the start of the universe as well, creating some of those fundamental building blocks of life. So it's an extraordinary reaction, and it's amazing to start to be able to control it. But there are practical reasons, even if you don't care about the science at all, to get excited about nuclear fusion as well.It's potentially a very safe source of energy. There's just no chance of meltdown. It's not a chain reaction. If you turn off the laser or you turn off the magnets, the whole thing just stops. So it's hard to start, easy to stop. It also, as far as we can tell, isn't going to produce any long-lived radioactive waste. It will produce some from the reactor chamber itself, so not as a byproduct of the fuel, unlike fission. Maybe the reactor chamber at the end of the plant's life might be rated low-level radioactive for about 100 years as opposed to the potentially thousands of years in fission. So that's another advantage. I should say, though, that fission is an amazing power source and we should be doing a lot more with it. And actually, if you look at the data, it's very safe. But some people don't like it, regardless. It's difficult to get it built. And then the other thing is that renewables are fantastic as well. They work today. They're never going to run out in any practical sense. But they do have this problem that they need to use a lot of land area or a lot of sea area to generate relatively small amounts of energy. I think you've always got pros and cons of these different energy sources.You would need batteries, too, right? Because of the intermittency, potentially, you would need a lot of batteries. Big batteries.Potentially you would need batteries too. Are batteries a bigger technological challenge than getting fusion working on the grid? I don't know. I'm probably a bit more relaxed about the batteries thing. Intermittency can be a problem with them, but also land is such a premium for other things — for food, for people to live — that I think that ultimately might be the bigger issue. And also people don't want to have these things built. They get blocked often. Whereas fusion and fission potentially — definitely in the case of fission, but almost certainly with fusion as well — the actual land area for the amount of energy generated is very, very attractive. So that's another reason. And finally, the fuel for nuclear fusion isn't going to run out anytime soon. There's enough of it on the planet to keep everyone on Earth…The fuel for the kind of fusion we're talking about, deuterium-tritium, where does that fuel come from?They're both special types of hydrogen. Ignore these quite wacky names. They're kind of special, rare types of hydrogen. But the thing is, they're not that rare. Deuterium is one of the ingredients, and about five grams of every bathtub of seawater is deuterium. So there's just absolutely phenomenal amounts of it in the sea. And chemically, it's exactly the same as normal hydrogen. So if we extract it, it doesn't really matter. It's not going to change anything, the fact that we're using it up. And then the other ingredient is a bit more tricky. It's something called tritium. It's very, very weakly radioactive. It's only harmful if you were to ingest it. But the problem is it decays over time into other things, so there's not very much of it around at any one time. But you can create it, and you can create it from another element called lithium.Lithium is very common in the Earth both in ore and in seawater, and there's plenty of that to go around as well. Although of course, it does have some other uses, for example in batteries. So between those two, that's how you do it. Now there are problems: how do we turn the lithium into tritium, that needs to be solved on the kind of engineering side. But in principle, we've got enough fuel for thousands, if not millions, of years of energy for everyone on the planet to have the same level of consumption as people in the US, which you might be surprised to hear is quite high.So this was net energy gain: more energy out than put in. But then you talk about wall plug energy gain in your book. Is that the next big step?You know what, it kind of depends on where we want to focus our efforts, actually. There are a few ways we could go right now. For the benefit of your listeners, in this experiment, what they're measuring is the energy in, the energy that was carried by those laser beams to the target, and the energy that came out of that target from fusion reactions. Now, to actually power up and create those laser beams took a lot more energy. While about three megajoules of energy came out of the target, it took 400 megajoules to actually charge up the batteries, or the capacitor banks that they're called, to actually create those laser beams that had the two megajoules of energy. Wall-plug efficiency would be generating more energy than this entire system, so more than the 400 megajoules and more than the entire facility.The thing to say about the National Ignition facility is it was built to do ignition. It was built to do the scientific bit. They never cared about the fact that their lasers are horribly inefficient, because they knew that wasn't really what they were aiming for. What I suspect they will do on this machine, which is really built for optimizing what happens at the target end, is to try and up the gain as much as they can. Perhaps to a factor of four or five times rather than one-and-a-half times as they've done here, which is probably about the limit of this particular machine.But in the long run, of course, we've got to generate more energy than the facility as a whole. And that means probably going up to gains of at least 30 times. And eventually, if you're doing this form of fusion in a power plant, you'd use way more efficient lasers. This thing was designed 20-plus years ago and the laser efficiency is below 1 percent. There are lasers around today that can fire much faster and which have a 25 percent efficiency. And they're still not quite there in terms of energy terms. But with a bit more technological tweaking, maybe they could be. There are lots of ways to get over this wall-plug efficiency issue in the future. We haven't optimized for that. That is a good next challenge. But there are other parts of the problem that you could work on too.When you look at what government is doing, what some of these private sector companies are doing, what ultimately is the path that you get most excited by and you're like, “I don't know for sure, but this could be it.” This is not investment advice!No, it's absolutely not. It really depends on what kind of a commitment… Assuming things carry on in much the way they did yesterday and the day before, which is not a given, of course, I think probably the most promising path is a big magnetic confinement fusion device called ITER, which is currently being built in the south of France. And ITER is very expensive and on a very big scale but will probably show net energy gain using the magnetic approach. We'll start to test out some of the engineering issues around a prototype power plant. Now, it is not a prototype power plant, but it will start to look at least some of those engineering challenges. I think one possible path for fusion could be ITER gets finished, they're successful in testing out net energy gain and showing it can work in the magnetic way, which I think they almost certainly will (previous experiments with magnetic confinement have got very close), and they'll test out some of the engineering things. And then the private sector could come in at that point and say, “If you're doing it on that scale, it's going to be really expensive and we're going to have really low learning rates” — the smaller you can make a technology, the faster you learn how to make it even cheaper. That could be the time when the private sector really comes in and says, “We can do it for you. We can make them smaller and cheaper, and therefore, we can make the learning rate higher, making this technology more effective.” But that's just one scenario. There are lots of other ones. If the US government, and maybe other nations too, decided to really, really push the laser-based approach, then maybe that could be the one where we see the most progress towards a prototype power plant.Do you think some of these existing private sector companies, like Commonwealth Fusion Systems, I think another one is TAE Technologies, do you see them as legitimate players?Absolutely. Some of them are working on really interesting approaches. And like I say, because we don't know what works, I think it makes a huge amount of sense to let entrepreneurs and innovators just see what sticks to the wall. A lot of them aren't going to get there, because a lot of the designs won't work or they'll have to pivot to slightly different designs. And that's absolutely fine. The ones that are looking at fusion reactions that aren't deuterium and tritium, I am more skeptical of, personally, because that reaction just takes so much more energy to get going. Obviously never say never. The one that I'm probably most excited about, on paper anyway, is Commonwealth Fusion Systems. What the public laboratories have done is build up this huge body of knowledge about what does work. And no one is anywhere near as far ahead as the public laboratories in the UK and the US and the international collaboration ones. They're really the only people who've gotten anywhere close to doing this, because they're the only ones who've actually run with real fusion fuel for a start. Or at least they were until about two years ago. The thing that's quite nice about Commonwealth Fusion Systems is they're really building on tried and tested tokamak technology, but then they're saying, “Hey, the thing that really makes this work is having really powerful magnetic fields. So if we could just find a way to dramatically improve that part of the technology, we could make this dramatically smaller and dramatically easier as well.” I like that approach because they're really just doing this one change. And they've got some really promising technology to do it as well. Some of the advances they've made in superconductors are really exciting and probably stand alone as inventions.Will star power take us to the stars?Finally, we talked about the use case for fusion. It seems to me that there would be a strong use case, as you just mentioned, right here on Earth. But also in space, where we're going to need energy. I haven't really heard much of that mentioned in all the excitement about fusion, but I've thought about it, and I bet you have too.I certainly have. Just for the benefit of people listening, once you are wanting to explore space — and I think it's part of the human psyche to want to explore unknown frontiers, so I think we want to do that; I think most people would take that as a given — if you want to go beyond the very local area, like the Moon and Mars, it's very difficult to do it with conventional rocket technology, because essentially you have to carry the fuel with you. Imagine if you are trying to have a wood-fired interstellar rocket: The amount of wood you have to carry with you is just going to make life much more difficult. It's going to be difficult to get into orbit and then to actually get the thrust you need.Now, one of the great things about nuclear fusion is that it is the most high-energy-density, so amount of energy per kilogram, reaction that we have access to on Earth. It's the highest energy fuel stuff that we can possibly imagine, and it is basically the only one that is going to be able to do this longer-distance travel, because it can get us up to the speeds that we need to actually make some real progress across space. As I like to say, star power is literally the only energy source that can take us to the stars. So we should be doing it for that reason as well. Absolutely. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit fasterplease.substack.com/subscribe

Den forjettede kraftformen har alltid vært spådd klar om 20 år. De neste 20 vil gå fortere. Etter en tur til Commonwealth Fusion Systems og MIT i Boston er vi om mulig enda mer overbevist.

Recorded at the Institute of Physics in London, this is a discussion with Professor Dennis Whyte, the Hitachi America Professor of Engineering at MIT, a professor in the MIT Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering and the Director of the MIT Plasma Science & Fusion Center. He's the winner of numerous accolades, including in 2018 the Fusion Power Associates Leadership Award which is given annually to individuals who have shown outstanding leadership qualities in accelerating the development of fusion. This leadership extends to heading up the fusion project SPARC, a compact, high-field, fusion energy device, in collaboration with MIT-born private fusion startup Commonwealth Fusion Systems. The day before this interview I was lucky enough to listen to him speak at FUSION22, which took place at the Science Museum in London. It was incredibly exciting to learn more about the extraordinary strides that are being made towards a reality of commercial fusion energy. It's a really dynamic field and I hope you enjoy the conversation. The Galileo Interviews on: » YouTube | https://youtu.be/ozsRXzQ-S7w?sub_confirmation=1 » Instagram | https://www.instagram.com/thegalileoi... » LinkedIn | https://www.linkedin.com/company/theg... Chapters: 00:00:00 Introduction 00:01:31 Reasons to be a future employee 00:04:10 'The research bug' and finding your motivation 00:07:18 What is nuclear fusion and how are we trying to harness it for energy? 00:10:47 The SPARC project and extraordinary successes 00:17:20 Remaining challenges for young people to get excited about 00:22:10 Collaboration in fusion 00:27:13 Politics and development hurdles 00:29:35 Leadership 00:31:58 Advice for an 18 year old self

Nuclear fusion seems like something out of science fiction – a reaction created inside a machine that replicates the sun. But the technology behind this process could be inching closer to reality. And with it, new opportunities to harness electricity.   The recently passed Inflation Reduction Act allocates $280 million for fusion energy science. And experiments in China, the U.K., and California have some scientists feeling hopeful that fusion could play a role in the global energy transition.  But there's a problem. At lower temperatures, nuclear fusion requires more energy than it produces. It's only when the plasma used to combine atoms reaches an extremely high temperature that it sets off a chain reaction and makes the process sustainable.  There are different approaches to achieving this chain reaction. But are scientists actually getting close to commercialization? And when will nuclear fusion be powering our homes and businesses?  This week, host Bill Loveless talks with Dr. Dennis Whyte, Hitachi America Professor of Engineering at MIT and director of the MIT Plasma Science and Fusion Center. He also leads the Laboratory for Innovations and Fusion technology, which has energy company sponsorship to explore early-stage, disruptive fusion technologies.  Dr. Whyte played an integral role in Commonwealth Fusion Systems, a startup out of the Plasma Science and Fusion Center, that recently raised $1.8 billion in funding to commercialize fusion energy.  Bill talks with Dr. Whyte about the science behind nuclear fusion, his work at MIT, and the efforts to bring this technology to market.

MIT alum Joy Dunn '08 spent a decade working in aerospace manufacturing at SpaceX before joining Commonwealth Fusion Systems, where she plays a key role in developing a commercially viable fusion power plant.  Read the article: https://energy.mit.edu/news/joy-dunn-08-bridging-careers-in-aerospace-manufacturing-and-fusion-energy-with-a-focus-on-intentional-inclusion Listen to more audio articles: https://energy.mit.edu/energyreads Join the mailing list or send us feedback: ⁠⁠https://energy.mit.edu/podcast/subscribe⁠⁠

In this week's episode of Fusion News, Cyd Cowley, PhD student at the University of York, gives updates on the latest in fusion from around the world. Links to the articles mentioned are included below: 1. Nuclear fusion investment hits £2.5bn in race for breakthrough https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/... 2. Laser-fusion facility heads back to the drawing board https://www.nature.com/articles/d4158... 3. UKAEA and Commonwealth Fusion Systems sign agreement to advance fusion energy https://www.gov.uk/government/news/uk... 4. Google and Chevron invest in nuclear fusion startup that's raised $1.2 billion https://www.cnbc.com/2022/07/19/googl... Bonuses: Fully Charged: This is the Secret to LIMITLESS Clean Energy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QjyR3... Bloomberg: Why Private Billions Are Flowing into Fusion https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dp6W7...

Si chiama SPARC, e se rispetterà la tabella di marcia, nel 2025 fornirà al mondo la prova che la fusione nucleare, il sacro Graal dell'energia sostenibile, è un'obiettivo fattibile.Spark è il reattore sperimentale a fusione in costruzione nel USA da parte di una joint venture tra il Plasma Science & Fusion Center del MIT di Boston, e Commonwealth Fusion Systems, una start-up che ha il suo principale azionista in ENI.Nella comunità dei fisici c'è molta eccitazione intorno a SPARC, e l'attesa è che l'esperimento sarà un successo per due ragioni fondamentali: la prima è che le condizioni fisiche che verranno all'interno del reattore sono oggi ben conosciute e studiate, e quindi non si attendono sorprese. La seconda è che la tecnologia che verrà utilizzata per realizzare i super-magneti in grado di intrappolare il plasma da fusione, di cui la start-up CFS è proprietaria, ha già dimostrato sul campo di funzionare. Ospite Francesca Ferrazza Responsabile Magnetic Fusion Iniziative di ENI

Maryanna Saenko, Co-founder and Partner at Future Ventures, talks about what attracts caring investors to venture capital. Maryanna shares examples of her successful investments in deep tech and gives useful tips to help technical founders convince the investor in the first meeting.In this episode, you'll learn:4:13 How can caring venture capitalists help in creating a more verdant future that is more equitable for all?11:28 Why you should understand your investor's fund term/investment timeline13:45 Bring your technical team to the first meeting24:06 Tips for increasing transparency within the venture capital industryThe non-profit organizations Maryanna is passionate about: World Central Kitchen, CAREAbout Guest SpeakerMaryanna Saenko is a co-founder of Future Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm that invests in frontier technologies across diverse industries. Maryanna has an interest in robotics, quantum computing, biotechnology, aerospace, and the future of food. Previously she was at Khosla Ventures, and prior to that at DFJ, where she focused on frontier technology investments. She was also an investment partner at Airbus Ventures where she led a series of venture investments strategically aligned with Airbus' future-of-aerospace initiatives. Before Airbus, Maryanna was a consultant at Lux Research and a research engineer at Cabot Corporation.About Future VenturesFuture Ventures is a Silicon Valley-based venture capital firm that invests in early-stage founder-led, mission-driven companies at the cutting edge of disruptive technology and new industry formation. The firm's areas of focus include commercial space exploration, deep learning, quantum computing, robotics, AI, blockchain, sustainable transportation, synthetic biology and clean meat. Recent Future Ventures' investments include: 64xBio, Alice Technologies, Beeflow, Cambrian, Commonwealth Fusion Systems, Copernic Catalysts, Deep Genomics, Doloromics, Earthshot Labs, Faeth, Gameto, Ockam, Opentrons, and Verdant Robotics.Subscribe to our podcast and stay tuned for our next episode.Follow Us:  Twitter | Linkedin | Instagram | Facebook

In this week's episode of Fusion News, Dr. Erica Salazar, Magnet Systems Lead at Commonwealth Fusion Systems, discusses several key fusion news stories. Links to the articles mentioned are included below. 1. Fusion start-up Tokamak Energy calls for investment into nascent sector https://www.ft.com/content/df82003b-d831-4147-865b-5c4d636d2b9d 2. Realizing the STEP fusion dream will require cryogenic innovation at scale and at pace https://physicsworld.com/a/realizing-the-step-fusion-dream-will-require-cryogenic-innovation-at-scale-and-at-pace/ 3. MIT expands research collaboration with Commonwealth Fusion Systems to build net energy fusion machine, SPARC https://news.mit.edu/2022/mit-expands-research-collaboration-commonwealth-fusion-systems-sparc-0510 4. Energy lifeline: Future fusion fuel may be ten times more abundant on Earth than thought https://www.express.co.uk/news/science/1610530/energy-lifeline-future-fusion-fuel-helium-3-ten-time-more-abundant-than-previously-thought Second published article: https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2021GC009985 Bonuses: https://www.gloucestershirelive.co.uk/news/gloucester-news/nuclear-fusion-plant-plan-gloucestershire-7017141 https://www.gov.uk/government/news/princess-astrid-of-belgium-talks-fusion-energy-at-ukaea--2

A roundup of the latest fusion news present by Dr. Erica Salazar, a Magnet Systems Lead at Commonwealth Fusion Systems. 1. Researchers examine the performance of a fusion power pilot plant to generate electricity https://phys.org/news/2022-02-fusion-electricity.html 2. Self-sustained diverter oscillation mechanism identified in fusion plasma experiment https://phys.org/news/2022-03-self-sustained-oscillation-mechanism-fusion-plasma.html 3. Innovative new magnet could facilitate development of fusion and medical devices https://phys.org/news/2022-03-magnet-fusion-medical-devices.html 4. Energy Singularity Completes Financing Led by miHoYo and NIO Capital https://pandaily.com/energy-singularity-completes-financing-led-by-mihoyo-and-nio-capital/ Bonuses: White House Summit: Developing a Bold Decadal Vision for Commercial Fusion Energy https://www.fusionindustryassociation...

Future energy technologies like fusion and hydrogen promise to be ‘game changers' that could power our world and fuel our future. Both solutions have been talked about for decades yet remain just out of our grasp - but for how long? Current renewables like wind and solar can't get us all the way to net zero while decarbonising carbon heavy sectors. Therefore, inventing, innovating and investing in future low carbon energy solutions such as fusion and hydrogen is key to success. But getting new technologies to commercial scale in time will require rapid collaboration on a global scale. So, what does the future of energy look like and what will the next five years hold?Here to help navigate the topic are a series of industry experts. Bob Mumgaard, CEO of Commonwealth Fusion Systems joins to extol the exciting potential of fusion energy, and what the technology means for the future of human development. Founding partner of AP Ventures, Kevin Eggers explains how to unlock the hydrogen economy and Lisa Rebora, Senior Vice President of Emerging and Future Business at Equinor discusses how to fund, support and foster future solutions.Show sources and credits: FT resources, UNFCCC, Politics and Prose Bookstore, The US State Department (DOE), BloombergNEF, ITER, CSPAN, IEA, UK Government. All soundbites used with permission. This content is paid for by advertisers and is produced in partnership with the Financial Times' Commercial Department. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Dr. Erica Salazar, a Magnet Systems Lead at Commonwealth Fusion Systems. 1. On the brink of a new era in nuclear fusion R&D https://www.nature.com/articles/s42254-021-00412-4 2. Department of Energy Announces Second Round of FY 2021 Public-Private Partnership Awards to Advance Fusion Energy https://www.energy.gov/science/articles/department-energy-announces-second-round-fy-2021-public-private-partnership-awards 3. World-leading experts join UKAEA fusion energy mission https://www.gov.uk/government/news/world-leading-experts-join-ukaea-fusion-energy-mission https://www.powerengineeringint.com/nuclear/uks-private-and-public-sectors-team-up-to-drive-fusion-energy/ 4. Breakthrough in efficient powering of high-temperature superconducting (HTS) magnets https://www.yahoo.com/now/breakthrough-efficient-powering-high-temperature-153300079.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAGRP0hB1weYCLJTThjpD1C2s26pWZ2PB8-cDdKWHYeDpWoWJiwAREvFvcdemsmdDJT51Q-HKUnsQg9xzh12savF9DrmSBm6KeGTAdiAnhtwr8Vh8q1Qw7kiCCRo1hTFYzhhFCfRvduVy0669D0NJGwLcbe4jrBdB4AEa9kjJoL3L IAEA webinar: “Pushing for Fusion Energy—What is happening now?” https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/news/unprecedented-progress-accelerates-fusion-research-thanks-to-private-sector-investment New US Fusion Energy Website https://scitechdaily.com/calling-all-fusioneers-new-us-fusion-energy-website-launched/ https://usfusionenergy.org/ Will fusion energy define our clean energy future? Al Jazeera https://www.aljazeera.com/program/the-stream/2021/12/8/will-fusion-energy-define-our-clean-energy-future

The common trope about fusion is that it has always been – and will always be – a decade away. So is something different happening now? Recently, we've seen technical achievements in fusion, like near ignition at the National Ignition Facility in August, yielding “a record 1.3 MJ in fusion energy, releasing, for the first time, more energy than the fuel capsule absorbed.” Fusion startups have also enjoyed a recent barrage of mega-funding. First, General Fusion raised $130 million. Then Helion Energy raised $500 million with another $1.8 billion committed based on whether it hits milestones. And then Commonwealth Fusion Systems closed a $1.8 billion venture round. (Energy Impact Partners, where Shayle is a partner, has also invested in Zap Energy). So what's happening here? To find out, Shayle talks to Dr. Scott Hsu, ARPA-E's program director for fusion R&D.  Shayle asks: what role will fusion actually play in the future of our energy supply?  Scott and Shayle cover technical advancements that have enabled rapid improvements in the size and cost of fusion systems. They also discuss key milestones, scaling to cost-competitiveness, and technical pathways. They also examine the economics and physics that will determine how rampable a fusion system might be and targets for the cost of a megawatt hour.  They also discuss the tritium-breeding blanket Shayle is getting for Christmas. Catalyst is a co-production of Post Script Media and Canary Media. Catalyst is supported by Atmos Financial. Atmos offers FDIC-insured checking and savings accounts that only invest in climate-positive assets like renewables, green construction and regenerative agriculture. Modern banking for climate-conscious people. Get an account in minutes at joinatmos.com.

アマゾンの創業者ジェフ・ベゾス氏、マイクロソフトの創業者ビル・ゲイツ氏らが注目する、次世代テクノロジーの1つが「核融合発電」です。既存の原子力発電とは異なり、核分裂の暴走が原理的に生じないこと、高レベルの放射性物質が出にくいことなどのメリットがあり、現在各国で実用化に向けた動きが加速しています。そんな夢の次世代エネルギー、核融合発電の最新動向をお伝えします（出演：岡徳之 / リサーチ：細谷元 / 写真：Commonwealth Fusion Systems）。

A summary of recent fusion news stories presented by Dr. Erica Salazar, a Magnet Systems Lead at Commonwealth Fusion Systems. 1. < Government sets out vision for UK's rollout of commercial fusion energy> https://businessnewswales.com/the-vision-for-uks-rollout-of-commercial-fusion-energy/ https://www.neimagazine.com/news/newsuk-government-publishes-fusion-strategy-9129061 https://world-nuclear-news.org/Articles/UK-government-sets-out-fusion-ambitions https://www.gov.uk/government/news/government-sets-out-vision-for-uks-rollout-of-commercial-fusion-energy?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=govuk-notifications&utm_source=5ffeea57-f991-4ee8-9bc9-fa10b74bb1c4&utm_content=daily 2. < Harnessing the Power of the Sun on Earth: Major Advance in Stellarator Performance for Fusion Energy> < https://scitechdaily.com/harnessing-the-power-of-the-sun-on-earth-major-advance-in-stellarator-performance-for-fusion-energy/> 3. < Finland breeds business from cross-disciplinary fusion reactor research> https://www.vttresearch.com/en/news-and-ideas/finland-breeds-business-cross-disciplinary-fusion-reactor-research https://www.helsinki.fi/en/news/mathematics-and-science/eu-awards-significant-funding-finnish-ai-assisted-fusion-research https://finnfusion.fi/news/finland-breeds-business-from-cross-disciplinary-fusion-reactor-research/ 4. < Exhibition brings fusion power to the people of Marseille > https://www.euro-fusion.org/news/2021/october/exhibition-brings-fusion-power-to-the-people-of-marseille/ https://fusion-expo.euro-fusion.org/ Bonuses < Can Nuclear Fusion Put the Brakes on Climate Change?> https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/10/11/can-nuclear-fusion-put-the-brakes-on-climate-change < Clean energy from the fastest moving objects on earth> https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-58602159 Sponsored by Anthropcene Institute https://anthropoceneinstitute.com Music from Uppbeat: https://uppbeat.io/t/walz/library License code: SDSXIMJCRPQVXKAQ

A research team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has achieved a breakthrough in electromagnetics, producing the most powerful magnet in the world. Working with MIT spinoff Commonwealth Fusion Systems, the high temperature superconducting magnet can generate a sustained magnetic field of more than 20 T, which the team believes is enough to allow Commonwealth's compact tokamak to achieve net energy from fusion. If successful it will be a historic first for fusion energy. Industry advocacy group the Manufacturer's Alliance has released a survey of US manufacturers about their challenges during Covid-19 and beyond. With strained supply chains and rising costs, flexibility is the watchword, and workers agree. Novel labor arrangements and new ways to organize production processes will be needed for manufacturers to staff their operations optimally in a labor short US market. Access all episodes of https://www.engineering.com/viewAll?category=this-week-in-engineering (This Week in Engineering) on engineering.com TV along with all of our other series.

WBZ's Jordan Rich says Cambridge-based Commonwealth Fusion Systems has created fusion power with one strong magnet.

La semaine dernière, nous vous proposions un petit état des lieux de la fusion nucléaire. Où en est cette technologie, quelle est son principe, à quelle barrière se heurte-t-elle ? Bon timing au final puisque la semaine dernière, des chercheurs du MIT aux Etats-Unis ont tout simplement fait un bon de géant dans la construction d'un réacteur de taille modeste et potentiellement fonctionnel.Avant tout, rappelons que le principe d'un réacteur à fusion nucléaire consiste à reproduire dans une enceinte confinée les processus de fusion de l'hydrogène qui se produisent naturellement au cœur d'une étoile. En fusionnant, deux atomes d'hydrogène libèrent une quantité d'énergie immense sous forme de chaleur. Cette énergie peut alors alimenter une turbine à vapeur et donc produire beaucoup d'électricité, le tout avec un taux de pollution presque inexistant.Mais pour contrôler cette fusion, il faut reproduire les conditions qui règnent au cœur du Soleil, ce qui nécessite de chauffer un plasma à des températures extrêmes. On parle quand même de 150 millions de degrés. Clairement, rien ne résiste à ce genre de température. Alors pour contenir ce plasma et le suspendre loin des parois du réacteur, il est nécessaire d'utiliser un champ de force électromagnétique. Ce champ de force est le plus souvent créé par des électroaimants très puissants. Et c'est justement là que les recherches du MIT entrent en jeu.Le célèbre établissement scientifique américain s'est associé à la start-up Commonwealth Fusion Systems, pour repenser l'architecture conventionnelle des réacteurs dit tokamaks. En moins de trois ans, cette petite start-up a développé un électroaimant d'un nouveau genre permettant d'émettre un champ magnétique bien plus fort, dans un volume plus réduit, tout en nécessitant moins d'énergie pour son alimentation et son refroidissement. Et comme un champ magnétique deux fois plus puissant permet une puissance de fusion 16 fois plus importante, on comprend rapidement l'intérêt de tels gains sur les électroaimants !Pour les responsables, ces nouveaux électroaimants permettraient de construire un réacteur 40 fois plus petit que la moyenne. Avec cette démonstration technologique, le MIT et CFS annoncent être dans les temps pour appliquer leur très ambitieux calendrier de développement. Un démonstrateur à échelle réduite nommé SPARC, pourrait ainsi être opérationnel en 2025 et produire au moins deux fois plus d'énergie que la quantité nécessaire pour stabiliser le plasma. La première centrale opérationnelle, reliée au réseau électrique, pourrait alors être mise en ligne dès 2033. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

In this episode of Fusion Focused, Ella Fox-Widdows is joined by Dr Alex Creely, the Head of Physics-Engineering Integration at Commonwealth Fusion Systems. Listen here to their chat about plasma turbulence, Alex's fusion internships around the world and the Commonwealth Fusion Systems approach to fusion! Connect with Fusion Focused on Instagram & Twitter, @fusionfocused Music from Uppbeat: https://uppbeat.io/t/pryces/music-is License code: UKFIZQRLRSQAMP09

“We're building a machine we call Spark, where you show up and you push a button.  This thing turns on and it makes hundreds of megawatts of thermal energy from effectively nothing.” -Bob Mumgaard, Co-founder and CEO, Commonwealth Fusion Systems.Bob Mumgaard is Co-founder and CEO of Commonwealth Fusion Systems (@CFS_energy), where Bob leads the strategic vision for the company.  He received his PhD in plasma physics at MIT, focusing his work on developing techniques to measure the magnetic field inside tokamak plasmas.  During this time, Bob contributed to the design of several small tokamaks using high temperature superconductors (HTS). Bob's work has focused on strategies to leverage the collaboration of private finance and traditional academic resources to speed the path to commercial fusion energy. Enjoy the show!Climate Tech Cocktails (CTC) is a bootstrapped project.  Interested in sponsoring?  Please reach out to m@climatetechcocktails.comFor show notes and past guests, please visit the CTC Substack.Follow CTC:Twitter: https://twitter.com/ct_cocktailsInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/climatetechcocktails/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/climatetechcocktails/

Venture capital is the fuel powering most technology startups. Behind every future Google or Uber or Snapchat is a syndicate of venture firms hoping for outsize financial returns. But the vast majority of venture money goes into Internet, mobile, and software companies where consumer demand and the path to market are plain. So what happens to entrepreneurs with risky, unproven, but potentially world-changing ideas in areas like zero-carbon energy or growing replacement human organs? If it weren't for an MIT-born venture firm called The Engine and a tiny handful of other venture firms tackling "Tough Tech," they'd probably never get their ideas to market.VCs love to cultivate an image of themselves as risk-taking cowboys with a nose for great ideas and the ability to help book-smart inventors and programmers grow into savvy entrepreneurs. But in reality, the industry has spent a quarter century chasing Google-sized returns in the relatively safe, efficient, and low-cost markets such as consumer and enterprise software, mobile apps, and to some extent healthcare and drug development. Sure, smartphones and apps are fun—but how much is the next new video-sharing app or gaming platform going to contribute to human welfare?The Engine, created by MIT in 2016,  is one of the visionary counterexamples. Among the startups it backs is Commonwealth Fusion Systems, which is building a new kind of "tokamak" reactor and believes it can demonstrate the feasibility net-positive-energy fusion to power the grid within the next few years. Other portfolio companies at The Engine are tackling thorny problems like reducing food waste, replacing silicon chips with faster photonic ones, and building better batteries for grid storage of power from wind and solar installations.Such ideas have come to be known as Tough Tech because they often need more capital, more time, and more expert input to get to market. In this week's episode you'll meet Katie Rae, CEO and managing partner at The Engine, who leads us on a wide-ranging discussion of topics such asthe ways Tough Tech companies could change the worldthe causes of government and private underinvestment in these areasthe challenges of evaluating and managing Tough Tech startupsthe prospect of growing government support for high-risk innovationthe reasons why institutional investors who could just as easily put their millions into software-focused venture funds might want to consider Tough Tech instead.Rae thinks The Engine can outperform traditional software-focused VC firms—even though its companies face higher hurdles—because their chosen markets are more wide-open and the payoffs could be so enormous. "I don't think there's any reason that I should say to my investors, 'You should expect less of me.' In fact, maybe they should expect more of me," Rae says. "And they should also expect that what we invest into, they feel incredibly proud of as well—that they backed a company like that that had impact on the world."NotesThe Soonish opening theme is by Graham Gordon Ramsay. All additional music by Titlecard Music and Sound.If you enjoy Soonish, please rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts. Every additional rating makes it easier for other listeners to find the show.Listener support is the rocket fuel that keeps our little ship going! You can pitch in with a per-episode donation at patreon.com/soonish.Follow us on Twitter and get the latest updates about the show in our email newsletter, Signals from Soonish.

Fusion News Extra podcast featuring a chat between Ella Fox-Widows and Dr. Alex Creely of Commonwealth Fusion Systems. The discussion references one of our covered stories on 22nd January 2021 regarding the Department of Energy's new long-range plan to deliver fusion energy. It then branches out into wider topics of how CFS fits in with this plan and the delivery of fusion energy to the energy mix. You can watch the video version of the referenced story here: https://youtu.be/BfMJTzkLB1E Or listen to it here in your podcast app! Music from Uppbeat: https://uppbeat.io/t/mountaineer/kick-back License code: ZHNWD7EIBJFRBU10

アメリカのケンブリッジに拠点を置く「Commonwealth Fusion Systems（CFS）」は、「核融合エネルギー」を開発している。 核融合システム「SPARC」などを開発、核融合発電は、「地上に太陽を作り出すようなもの」、夢のエネルギーとも言われてます。 夢のエネルギーになる理由３つ ①CO₂などの大気汚染物質を発生させない ②原理的に核反応の暴走が生じない高い安全性をもつ。 ③その燃料の水素が実質的に無尽蔵であること。 ★Commonwealth Fusion Systems https://cfs.energy/ ★核融合エネルギーの業界団体「Fusion Industry Association」 https://www.fusionindustryassociation.org/members ★Youtube紹介動画 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JIQbo1kI3-s ★TECH　CRUNCH　JAPANの記事 https://jp.techcrunch.com/2020/05/28/2020-05-26-with-84-million-in-new-cash-commonwealth-fusion-is-on-track-for-a-demonstration-fusion-reactor-by-2025/ ★WIREDの記事 https://wired.jp/2020/03/28/general-fusion/ #海外　#スタートアップ　#核融合 #エネルギー #気候変動 #新エネルギー #核分裂 #太陽 --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/daijirostartup/message