Purportedly, not a science project anymore – an actual plan with a deadline.
I’m putting this in the same category as a colony on Mars. Do-able, I guess, but you’ll have to show me.
That said, the video above is very well done and informative.
Commonwealth Fusion Systems is looking to join a power grid that is operated by PJM Interconnection and provides 182,000 megawatts of power to more than 67 million people living in 13 states and Washington, D.C. But technical hurdles to bringing fusion online remain—one major obstacle is actually producing a stable fusion reaction that generates more energy than it consumes.
The application process requires a potential energy provider to provide extensive technical information to the grid operator, including descriptions of the planned fuel type. In Commonwealth’s case, the company is developing a tokamak reactor design that uses powerful magnetic fields to create and insulate a highly energetic cloud of particles called a plasma until it’s hot enough for those particles to fuse. It’s a process that mimics the nuclear reactions in the sun, including the particles involved: isotopes of hydrogen called deuterium and tritium. The promise of the device is that a fusion reaction could feasibly generate limitless clean energy. That energy, in the form of heat, is used to boil water into steam, which then pushes a turbine to produce electricity.*
Much of that process remains theoretical, however, because physicists have yet to prove that fusion can work as a large-scale power source. Recent results from Germany’s Wendelstein 7-X demonstrated it could contain superheated plasma for 43 seconds. And its rival, the Joint European Torus, was apparently able to accomplish that feat for a full minute before its reactor was retired in 2023. While such capabilities are impressive, there is still a long way to go before a fusion device could be connected to a grid. Commonwealth plans to open its first power plant, called ARC (for “affordable, robust, compact”), in Virginia in the early 2030s. And the company aims to demonstrate an initial model, called SPARC (for “smallest possible ARC”), in 2027.
Commonwealth has demonstrated some success: The company’s toroidal field magnet technology was validated by the Department of Energy in September 2025. The superconducting magnets generate the magnetic field that is used to contain the high-temperature plasma generated by a fusion reaction. But Commonwealth has yet to test the full system.