by James A. Bacon
Has fusion power finally arrived? Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS), a Massachusetts-based developer of high-temperature, superconducting magnets used to jam hydrogen molecules together and release massive amounts of energy, has announced that it will invest “several billion dollars” to build the world’s first grid-scale, commercial fusion power plant.
“This is an historic moment for Virginia and the world at large,” said Governor Glenn Youngkin in a prepared statement. “Commonwealth Fusion Systems is not just building a facility, they are pioneering groundbreaking innovation to generate clean, reliable, safe power, and it’s happening right here in Virginia. We are proud to be home to this pursuit to change the future of energy and power.”
The power plant, capable of generating 400 megawatts of electricity, enough to power about 150,000 homes, will be located at the James River Industrial Center in Chesterfield County, Virginia, on a site owned by Dominion Energy.
This is blockbuster news. Fusion power (as distinct from conventional fission power) has been the long-heralded “power source of the future” but for decades has seemed out of reach. Now, it appears, the technology has reached economic critical mass. Even environmentalists should rejoice. Fusion power is clean. It generates no pollutants, and it could provide a source of base-load energy to support the grid’s evolution toward renewable sources like solar and wind.
Not to look a gift horse in the mouth but I must ask: How much will this electric power cost? And who will pay for it? The press release provides few details.
The Virginia Clean Energy Bank will contribute a $1 million grant, while Chesterfield County will chip in another $1 million grant. But that’s small potatoes for a multibillion-dollar project. It’s nice to see that Virginia won’t be handing out zillions of dollars like it did with Amazon’s second headquarters. The money will come from somewhere else.
CFS has been awarded $16.5 million in grants from the U.S. Department of Energy. But even that’s a drop in the bucket. It looks like the big money comes from the private sector; the company has raised $2 billion so far. But even that sum falls short of the “multi-billion-dollar investment” described in the press release. Will CFS borrow the balance? Will it be asking for taxpayer-backed loans? We’ll see.
Another big question is what level of technological and operational risk exists with this commercially untested fusion process. Will the technology produce electricity as efficiently at scale as it does in the lab? The CFS website says the company is building — not has built, but is building in Massachusetts — the world’s first “fusion device” that will generate more energy than it consumes. If the company hasn’t built the pilot yet, how do we know it will translate into economic power production at commercial scale?
Is someone insuring CFS against the risk that power production might fall short of projections? The U.S. Department of Energy, perhaps?
Or will Virginia ratepayers be on the hook? Will CFS be a regulated utility akin to Dominion Energy, in which case ratepayers almost certainly will be at risk? Or will it sell power into the PJM interregional market for electric power? It is inconceivable that anyone would commit to an investment of this magnitude without knowing the answer.
The powers that be — and that includes Virginia elected officials from both parties at the state, local and federal levels of government — have lined up behind the project, so the political momentum is considerable. But I’m always uncomfortable when the preliminary announcement doesn’t address basic questions like the ones I’m asking. The longer it takes to answer those questions, the more I’ll become convinced that there are aspects to the story that we’re not being told until the project is a political slam-dunk.
But assuming that answers are forthcoming soon, I’m pretty stoked. Fusion power is a historic game changer. It’s bigger than the development of fission power. It could well surpass fossil fuels, solar, and fission as a contributor to human progress. And it’s awesome that Virginia will be the first in the world to put fusion to commercial use.
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