MIT, energy company test their fusion power plant

Massachusetts Institute of Technology and start up Commonwealth Fusion Systems said they tested the world's most powerful high-temperature superconducting magnet successfully. Such test will help them build a fusion power plant to generate carbon-free power.

“Fusion in a lot of ways is the ultimate clean energy source,” says Maria Zuber, MIT’s vice president for research and E. A. Griswold Professor of Geophysics. “The amount of power that is available is really game-changing.” The fuel used to create fusion energy comes from water, and “the Earth is full of water — it’s a nearly unlimited resource. We just have to figure out how to utilize it.”

They said that the test showed that the superconducting magnet built could generate a sustained magnetic field powerful enough for a CFS device to achieve net energy from fusion.

"Developing the new magnet is seen as the greatest technological hurdle to making that happen; its successful operation now opens the door to demonstrating fusion in a lab on Earth, which has been pursued for decades with limited progress. With the magnet technology now successfully demonstrated, the MIT-CFS collaboration is on track to build the world’s first fusion device that can create and confine a plasma that produces more energy than it consumes. That demonstration device, called SPARC, is targeted for completion in 2025," they said in an article published at MIT news.

Fusion is the merger of two small atoms to make a larger one, releasing large amounts of energy.

Italian energy group Eni s a shareholder in CFS.