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🌊 When Does Fusion Actually Become a Business?
Fusion is getting closer to producing net energy. The harder question is whether it can ever produce cheap electricity.
We’re joined by Dan Brunner, co-founder and former CTO of Commonwealth Fusion Systems, one of the companies at the forefront of the race to commercial fusion.
CFS has raised billions of dollars, signed power agreements with customers including Google, and is building SPARC, its machine designed to demonstrate net fusion energy.
But proving fusion works is only one step.
As Dan puts it, there’s ultimately another Q that matters: the dollar Q.
Can a fusion plant produce more money than it costs to build, operate, maintain, and continuously repair?
In this episode, we go from the basic physics of fusion all the way to the economics of a commercial power plant.
In our conversation, we covered:
→ What Q actually means — scientific Q, engineering Q and ultimately dollar Q
→ Why tokamaks may be the first fusion technology to put electricity on the grid
→ How high-temperature superconductors changed the economics of fusion
→ Why tritium supply and breeding could become a critical constraint
→ The overlooked problem of materials being bombarded by fusion neutrons
→ Why component lifetime and plant availability may determine whether fusion is economical
→ Whether fusion can ever compete with fission on cost
→ Why the first customers are likely to be Google, Microsoft and other power-hungry companies
→ Where early-stage investors can still play through fusion picks and shovels
→ Why SPARC achieving net energy could trigger a new wave of investment into the industry
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