Commonwealth Fusion Systems, a start-up founded by scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said on Tuesday that it planned to build its first fusion power plant in Virginia, with the aim of generating zero-emissions electricity there in the early 2030s.
The proposed facility is among the first to be announced that would harness nuclear fusion, the process that powers the sun, to produce power commercially, a long-elusive goal that scientists have pursued for the better part of a century.
In theory, a fusion reactor could generate abundant electricity without releasing planet-warming carbon dioxide, and with no risk of large-scale nuclear accidents. But moving the concept out of the lab and onto the power grid has proved immensely difficult.
Commonwealth is the best funded of a crop of start-ups that are hoping to realize fusion’s potential soon. The company is first building a pilot machine in Massachusetts, one it says will demonstrate the feasibility of its technology in 2027.
The new plant it intended to build near Richmond, Va., would be designed to provide electricity to paying customers, though the company hasn’t yet signed up any customers or secured regulatory approval to deliver power through the grid.
“We still have plenty of work to do, obviously,” said Bob Mumgaard, Commonwealth’s chief executive. But picking a site helps the company start working with local power customers to figure out how a fusion plant can be designed and operated to best meet their needs, Dr. Mumgaard said.
The company has agreed to lease the land, in the James River Industrial Park in Chesterfield County, from Dominion Energy, a power utility. Dominion currently doesn’t have plans to invest in the plant, nor does it have an agreement to buy the electricity it produces, said Tim Eberly, a spokesman for the utility.
Rick Needham, Commonwealth’s chief commercial officer, said it intended to make a “substantial” investment to build the plant, though he declined to say how much. The plant would have a peak capacity of 400 megawatts. That would be enough energy to power about 150,000 homes, Mr. Needham said, though the electricity would most likely go to large industrial customers.
“Our customers’ growing needs for reliable, carbon-free power benefits from as diverse a menu of power generation options as possible,” said Edward H. Baine, president of Dominion Energy Virginia, in a statement.
Electricity demand is starting to surge in the United States, after staying flat for more than a decade. Booming power use by data centers, electric vehicles, battery and solar factories, and more has led utilities across the country to propose building dozens of gas-fired power plants.
In Virginia, data centers are the main driver of rising energy needs, according to a new report commissioned by the state government. Last year, data centers accounted for more than a quarter of electricity consumption in Virginia, a higher fraction than in any other state, according to a report from EPRI, a nonprofit energy research organization.
Fusion plants could, in principle, help meet this demand without worsening global warming. But big science and engineering challenges remain before fusion power plants can be built and run safely, reliably and affordably.
Commonwealth isn’t the only start-up aiming to overcome the hurdles by the 2030s. Helion Energy, a company with headquarters near Seattle, has said it would provide Microsoft with electricity from its first fusion power plant starting in 2028. Helion also has an agreement with the steel producer Nucor to build a fusion plant for steel manufacturing.
Since it was spun out of M.I.T. in 2018, Commonwealth has raised more than $2 billion from investors including Bill Gates, Google and Eni, the Italian oil and gas giant. The company is developing a power plant that generates energy with a tokamak, or a doughnut-shaped machine that heats gas to temperatures well beyond those in the center of the sun.
Government labs worldwide have been building and running tokamaks for decades. Yet constructing a tokamak that can act as a real-world power supply is likely to require technologies that have yet to be mastered, and even materials that have yet to be invented.
Dr. Mumgaard, Commonwealth’s chief executive, said he was confident about how quickly the company was making progress. So much so, in fact, that he hopes to sign deals to sell electricity even before the company demonstrates the feasibility of its pilot reactor in 2027, he said.
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