In 2010, Brandon Sorbom graduated from Los Angeles’s Loyola Marymount University. Straight away, he flew to Boston with nothing but a “couple of thousand dollars” in savings and a credit card to try and get a job at MIT’s fusion energy lab.
Sorbom had wanted to get his Ph.D. in nuclear fusion from the university but was rejected from all five programs, so this was his “Plan B.” MIT didn’t accept him because he didn’t have enough hands-on lab experience. As an undergrad, he studied electrical engineering and engineering physics.
Sorbom said:
It was probably a foolish strategy looking back. But I was 22, and I was like, ‘Oh sure, I’ll be able to make this work.’
Fortunately, he got the job and made it work. Twelve years later, he has his doctorate from MIT and is a chief scientific officer and co-founder of a rapidly growing company – called Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS) – spun out of his and his colleagues’ research.
Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos already fund the company through Breakthrough Energy – an energy innovation investment fund.
Nuclear fusion is a virtually limitless source of safe “clean energy.” It doesn’t depend on the elements (like wind or sun), and it’s emissions-free. It’s the same energy that powers the sun. The process involving two atoms slamming into each other and fusing into one heavier atom, thus generating energy. CFS aims to commercialize it to combat climate change.
Other companies and research teams, including a 35-country collaborative in France and another in China, are also building “sun machines.”
According to CFS, as reported by CNBC:
Because an isotope of hydrogen is the main fuel of fusion, the right technology could one day make a glass of water, aka H2O, foster enough fusion reactions to generate the amount of energy consumed by one person for a lifetime.
And thanks to their relative safety, reactors can be located near cities (population centers). That helps with infrastructure, localizing the source of power. Andrew Holland, the Fusion Industry Association’s executive director, said it would “fit directly into existing grids, and not require significant upgrades.”
He said:
Fusion can provide both electricity generation and heat — meaning that it can meet all sorts of energy demand, including power homes, recharge batteries, create clean fuels, drive chemical processes, or other industrial uses.
There is a downside. Fusion usurps all the energy it generates just to sustain the reaction with the present technology. Meaning it leaves no “net energy” to power other things. But CFS is working on a solution.
To create and capture the sun’s energy, a unique form of hydrogen is heated until it becomes plasma – the fourth state of matter.
Holland said:
If you heat a solid up, it turns into a liquid. If you heat that liquid, it turns into a gas. If you heat that gas, it turns into a plasma; and you get a charge soup of particles.
However, plasma is exceptionally fragile. If the matter is interrupted, the fusion reaction stops. To keep this from happening, scientists developed a machine – called a tokamak – which holds a doughnut of plasma in a container using magnetic fields.
#DidYouKnow that the word "#tokamak" stands for "ТОроидальная КАмера с МАгнитными Катушками" (TOroidal'naya KAmera s MAgnitnymi Katushkami) – "toroidal camera with manetic coil" in english? #DYK #FusionEnergy @iterorg pic.twitter.com/mjQ6bg2vKm
— ИТЭР РФ | ITER RUSSIA (@iterrf) February 3, 2021
Sorbom and colleagues are focused on improving the tokamak by making better magnets, which would insulate the plasma more and enable it to be heated higher. The hotter the plasma is, the more energy it can generate, thus enabling net energy production.
CFS’s current machine will reach around 180 million degrees Fahrenheit (100 million degrees Celsius).
Making these magnets is very expensive. CFS’s most recent funding round of $215 million will take the company through 2021. It will seek additional funding to continue.
When the research is complete, and fusion ultimately replaces other power sources, it will be competitive in one of the world’s largest markets. CFS will then be designing nuclear fusion power plants for its customers.
It’s also working on other commercial applications for its magnet technology, like wind turbines and MRI machines.
CFS plans to debut its magnet technology in the summer of 2021 and develop a SPARC by 2025. A SPARC is the machine to demonstrate that its technology can generate net energy. Once proven successful, CFS will develop ARC – its first fusion power plant linked to the energy grid. CFS aims to make fusion a part of the energy mix by the early 2030s.
Troy Carter, a UCLA physics professor, thinks such a short timeline is possible. He said:
With the private and public sectors working together, I think we can make this happen, but we need to start now, and more investment is needed.
Holland said: “Fusion power is a solution to global warming. The challenge is getting it onto the grid fast enough.”
Sorbom is worried about the dangers of the climate crisis. He said:
Climate change is a huge problem. People think the pandemic is bad, but if you look at projections of what [climate change] could look like by 2050 … it’s pretty scary.
However, he is also encouraged by the Biden administration’s focus on climate change.
We are living through very turbulent times, but there are glimmers of hope that light the path to a better future.
