Massachusetts-based Commonwealth Fusion Systems is planning to build a nuclear fusion plant in Chesterfield. (Images courtesy Commonwealth Fusion Systems)
A startup that was spun out of MIT is planning to build what it hopes will be the world’s first commercial nuclear fusion power plant in Chesterfield County.
Massachusetts-based Commonwealth Fusion Systems announced Tuesday its plans to build a 400-megawatt fusion plant, and has identified a 94-acre property outside Chester for the project.
The proposed power plant, which is known as ARC, is expected to be operational in the early 2030s. The facility is expected to generate enough electricity to power about 150,000 homes. CFS declined to share a cost estimate for the project.
The company would build and operate the power plant at 1201 Battery Brooke Parkway, which is currently owned by Dominion Energy.
The undeveloped site had previously been eyed by Dominion for a natural gas plant called the Chesterfield Energy Reliability Center, but now is expected to be leased by CFS for its fusion plant, though a lease agreement hasn’t been signed yet.
Kristen Cullen, vice president of global policy and public affairs at CFS, said the company spent a couple years looking for the right spot before it settled on Chesterfield County as the home to what it intends to be a history-making project.
“This has been a more than two-year global siting search that we embarked on to find the home to what will be not only Commonwealth Fusion Systems’ first fusion power plant, but the world’s first fusion power plant,” Cullen said.
Cullen expected that around 150 full-time employees would be needed to operate the plant when it first becomes operational.
The Chesterfield facility is anticipated to be CFS’s first power plant. The company is working on a prototype fusion machine called SPARC in Massachusetts that is slated to produce its first plasma, which is needed for nuclear fusion, in 2026.
A rendering of the ARC nuclear fusion tokamak. (Courtesy Commonwealth Fusion Systems)
CFS describes SPARC as the most advanced version of a machine called a tokamak, which is a donut-shaped device that uses magnetic fields to create plasma particles hot enough to fuse together, creating the conditions necessary for nuclear fusion to happen. The company is building its take on the tokamak design, which is intended to be smaller and cheaper than other tokamaks, at its campus in Devens, Massachusetts.
CFS calls itself as the world’s largest private fusion company. It has more than 800 employees and says it has raised more than $2 billion in its quest to be the first to construct the world’s first, commercial-scale nuclear fusion plant.
The startup was founded in 2018 when it was spun out of MIT as a business venture to commercialize fusion power, which the company says would result in a cheap and safe means to meet the world’s growing appetite for electricity in an environmentally friendly way.
“In any sci-fi novel, movie, whatever, at least 20, 30 years in the future, what they’ll all have in common about energy is humans have mastered fusion,” said CFS Chief Commercial Officer Rick Needham said. “It’s the end game. Our mission is to make that end game come sooner.”
This is breaking news. Stay tuned to BizSense tomorrow for more detail on the project.