Fusion reactor at Devens. 3-D Printing at Devens

[stellarfun]

Facility and associated 50 acre campus dedicated in mid-February by Secretary of Energy. Current staffing is 430 people. Link is a PR release.

https://www.businesswire.com/news/h...ath-to-Bring-Clean-Fusion-Energy-to-the-World

 

[stellarfun]

CNBC extensive profile on Commonwealth Fusion, timeframes to first fusion reactor coming on-line in 2025, and subsequent scale-up. Business plan is to be partly like Boeing, build and sell reactors to companies that generate and distribute electricity.

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/06/08/commonwealth-fusion-systems-tour-and-ceo-interview.html

Recent Globe profile of Vulcan

The most interesting startup in America is in Massachusetts. Youâve probably never heard of it. - The Boston Globe

VulcanForms eyes a radical transformation of manufacturing.

www.bostonglobe.com

VulcanForms and its competitors are already providing a glimpse of what’s possible; they can make some metal parts with half the energy and a tenth of the materials of a typical factory.

He’s imagining a time, 20 or 30 years from now, when companies like VulcanForms plug into fusion power or some other entirely green source, tap into an artificial intelligence many times more powerful than what’s available today, and turn out world-beating innovations that can’t even be conceived of now.

Here in Greater Boston, which has emerged as perhaps the most important 3-D printing cluster in the world, several companies have focused on building the machines themselves.

They include Desktop Metal (which is merging with the American-Israeli firm Stratasys), MarkForged, and Formlabs, a $2 billion company on the edge of a Somerville strip mall that makes machines for dental labs and the gaming and entertainment industries.

Elisabeth Reynolds, a former special assistant to the president for manufacturing and economic development, says additive will be one of the “foundational technologies” of 21st-century manufacturing, alongside robotics and artificial intelligence.

By year’s end, if all goes according to plan, the company will be operating the most productive metal additive manufacturing plant in the world.

VulcanForms already supplements its additive manufacturing with precision machining and assembly at a facility in Newburyport. And eventually, the cofounders say, they could imagine an expansion of this additive-plus model in Greater Boston and beyond.

... “The goal is not to build a $2 billion company,” Feldmann says, sitting at a conference table just off the factory floor on a recent afternoon. “We want to build a $100 billion company.”

 

[Equilibria]

CNBC extensive profile on Commonwealth Fusion, timeframes to first fusion reactor coming on-line in 2025, and subsequent scale-up. Business plan is to be partly like Boeing, build and sell reactors to companies that generate and distribute electricity.

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/06/08/commonwealth-fusion-systems-tour-and-ceo-interview.html

Recent Globe profile of Vulcan

The most interesting startup in America is in Massachusetts. Youâve probably never heard of it. - The Boston Globe

VulcanForms eyes a radical transformation of manufacturing.

www.bostonglobe.com

Things no one should ever say: "our goal for our business is to be like Boeing..."

 

[ctsketch]

Things no one should ever say: "our goal for our business is to be like Boeing..."

Early Boeing I guess

 

[stellarfun]

Update (April 23, 2024) with very positive news. Unfortunately, the article does not indicate whether there will be more testing of the magnet, or whether Commonwealth Fusion now proceeds to building the full device.

Now detailed reports by researchers at MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center (PSFC) and the MIT spinout company Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS), published in a collection of six peer-reviewed papers in a special edition of IEEE Transactions on Applied Superconductivity in March, confirm that a new type of magnet the team tested in 2021 could make an economically viable fusion device far more likely. MIT engineering professor Dennis Whyte—who recently stepped down as director of the PSFC—calls the successful test “the most important thing, in my opinion, in the last 30 years of fusion research.”

The new magnet, made from high-temperature superconducting material, achieved a field strength of 20 tesla, a world record for a large-scale magnet. That’s the intensity needed to build a fusion plant producing more energy than it consumes, potentially ushering in an era of virtually limitless power production. Overall, the papers find, months of analysis, computer modeling, and testing verified that the magnet’s unique design elements could serve as the foundation for a such a plant. The experimental device it makes possible, called SPARC, is a collaboration with CFS and will be built in Devens, Massachusetts.

To take advantage of this new material, the team rethought superconducting magnet construction. An especially dramatic innovation, drawing skepticism from many others in the field, was that the magnet’s thin, flat ribbons of superconducting tape had no insulation to prevent short-circuits; the engineers relied on REBCO’s much greater conductivity to keep the current flowing.

After initial tests proved their setup worked, the researchers pushed the device to the limit by deliberately creating unstable conditions, including a worst-case scenario: a complete shutoff of incoming power that can lead to catastrophic overheating. Only one small area melted, and revisions in the design are expected to prevent such damage, even under the most extreme conditions.

When the tests showed the practicality of such a strong magnet at a greatly reduced size, “overnight, it basically changed the cost per watt of a fusion reactor by a factor of almost 40,” Whyte says.

“Now fusion has a chance.”

https://www.technologyreview.com/20...superconducting-magnets-are-ready-for-fusion/

With respect to the reference to tesla, the term antedates Elon's taking his first breath.

The tesla (symbol: T) is the unit of magnetic flux density (also called magnetic B-field strength) in the International System of Units (SI).

One tesla is equal to one weber per square metre. The unit was announced during the General Conference on Weights and Measures in 1960 and is named[1] in honour of Serbian-American electrical and mechanical engineer Nikola Tesla, upon the proposal of the Slovenian electrical engineer France Avčin.

Source: Wiki

 

[HenryAlan]

Very cool.

 

[stellarfun]

Commonwealth Fusion [Devens MA] announced location of the world's first commercial fusion reactor facility,: near Richmond Virginia. This will be a 400 megawatt plant. Scheduled to become operational in the early 2030s. After the fusion reactor is tested at Devens in 2026-2027, and works as conceived, then I expect hundreds of reactors will soon follow. Note that a key factor in siting is connective proximity to the electrical grid.

The location was chosen for its growing economy, skilled workforce, clean energy focus and the ability it offered to connect into the grid after the retirement of a coal plant, CFS said.
....
Virginia is also the world’s largest data center market, a sector that requires huge and growing amounts of energy. Data center electricity consumption in the US is expected to triple by 2030, equivalent to the amount needed to power around 40 million US homes, according to a Boston Consulting Group analysis.

https://www.cnn.com/2024/12/18/clim...r-fusion-power-plant-commmonwealth/index.html

 

[stefal]

I'm excited, but I have to wonder what that says about Massachusetts if they decided Virginia will be their first plant location, after being founded here and years of research and development.

I'm not sure how much of a choice they had in the location, but I'm sure there was a discussion in this state. I have to suspect the amount of interest or lack thereof, bureaucratic tape/government's openness, etc. contributed to MA not being potentially the first state with fusion power.

 

[stellarfun]

I'm excited, but I have to wonder what that says about Massachusetts if they decided Virginia will be their first plant location, after being founded here and years of research and development.

I'm not sure how much of a choice they had in the location, but I'm sure there was a discussion in this state. I have to suspect the amount of interest or lack thereof, bureaucratic tape/government's openness, etc. contributed to MA not being potentially the first state with fusion power.

The link to a Virginia newspaper article below gives more background on the site choice. It appears that the huge data centers in Virginia played a role.

https://virginiamercury.com/2024/12/18/virginia-to-host-worlds-first-fusion-power-plant/

This is not a big generating plant, in the traditional sense. It probably would fit within the site of a proposed soccer stadium in Everett.

The fusion power plant will be located near this site, owned by Dominion Energy. There is reference made to boack-up power for the fusion facility.

https://www.dominionenergy.com/proj...lities/chesterfield-energy-reliability-center

 

[Stlin]

I've posted this elsewhere here, but these maps/charts from 2023 while already very out of date still provide a great idea of why VA power plants are such hot items right now - the PJM ISO is expected to represent ~50% of all US Data Center power consumption, and in VA something like 26% of all electricity consumption in that state is by data centers. For reference, the next highest are ND, IA and NE - states with much lower native consumption.

 

[Plen-T-Pak]

25 years ago I'd be optimistic about this moving forward but now I'm pessimistically wondering what humans will do with a better energy source. The primary use for these data centers isn't discovering formulations for novel cancer treatments, etc. A lot of it is for unproductive activities like mining crypto and frivolous AI applications.

 

[stefal]

The link to a Virginia newspaper article below gives more background on the site choice. It appears that the huge data centers in Virginia played a role.

https://virginiamercury.com/2024/12/18/virginia-to-host-worlds-first-fusion-power-plant/

This is not a big generating plant, in the traditional sense. It probably would fit within the site of a proposed soccer stadium in Everett.

The fusion power plant will be located near this site, owned by Dominion Energy. There is reference made to boack-up power for the fusion facility.

https://www.dominionenergy.com/proj...lities/chesterfield-energy-reliability-center

I've posted this elsewhere here, but these maps/charts from 2023 while already very out of date still provide a great idea of why VA power plants are such hot items right now - the PJM ISO is expected to represent ~50% of all US Data Center power consumption, and in VA something like 26% of all electricity consumption in that state is by data centers. For reference, the next highest are ND, IA and NE - states with much lower native consumption.

View attachment 58910View attachment 58911

Well these are much more level-headed than my perhaps grouchy comment before going to bed. Definitely makes sense, and is certainly a good business decision for CFS.

25 years ago I'd be optimistic about this moving forward but now I'm pessimistically wondering what humans will do with a better energy source. The primary use for these data centers isn't discovering formulations for novel cancer treatments, etc. A lot of it is for unproductive activities like mining crypto and frivolous AI applications.

The simple answer is Venture Capital has to change. How? I'm not so sure. Maybe just get rid of it.

 

[Equilibria]

25 years ago I'd be optimistic about this moving forward but now I'm pessimistically wondering what humans will do with a better energy source. The primary use for these data centers isn't discovering formulations for novel cancer treatments, etc. A lot of it is for unproductive activities like mining crypto and frivolous AI applications.

I kind of feel like 99% of electricity use has always been frivolous, though...

Venture Capital is essentially required for all companies to start. It's the leveraged buyout that should be banned, and we should have banned the Ponzi Economy as soon as Biden took office.

 

[Stlin]

While I think 99% is an exaggeration, your post highlights a really important point. Media attention is always focused on swapping out sources of energy. And energy source is, of course, a key piece of this. But it is so easy to identify frivolous energy use throughout society. As one example, most personal vehicles are hauling around a purely excessive amount of lifestyle/stylistic mass most of the time, which directly translates to more energy used to accomplish the same task: how many trips could a Sequoia driver have accomplished using a Rav4 instead for the same trip with no change in utility? We do the equivalent of "hauling excess mass" throughout society...we waste so much energy it's almost comical.

I also agree that what's broken about the present VC system is more about the downstream processes than the initial funding -- yet, can you really separate them? How many VCs would exist to begin with if it were harder to get rich of off essentially nothing? Some are indeed in it for the long haul (see the segment specific specialists, for instance).

50+ years ago, a ton of startup funding came from DoD contracts and grants. Whether its DoD or other gov agencies, I wish we shifted back to a model of lots of gov "micro contracts," rather than a comparative few behemoth contracts to existing multibillion dollar firms (who eff up the contracts anyway). If I understand history correctly, the post-WWII industrial boom was, at least in non-trivial portion, gov contract fueled. There's a place for both VC and gov contract, but we've swung so far in the direction of incredibly low societal value-add VC approaches.

Part of that is going to be sheer complexity - with the right skill set you could build a P51 Mustang in a well equipped garage, or at least any decent machine shop. That's not true of a F35, or really anything with solid state electronics, and the low-hanging fruit that doesn't involve huge capital investment is basically tapped out. That's the value to that VCs provide - the $$$ invested in risky capital intensive activities. When they succeed the wins are outsized, but that's offset by the amount of start up companies that never get off the ground. Especially in Boston - our lab boom and relative prosperity in the life sciences is fueled by VC investment in human capital.

That said, the DoD like all other government contracting organizations does spin out significant parts to SMBs as do the DoD Primes - part of the explosion in costs for all things is the fact that someone like Lockheed Martin does a comparatively small portion of work in house. They have something like 13000 suppliers in every state, mostly so they can claim that the F35 creates jobs in (almost) every congressional district, but as a result account for nearly 30% of aggregate defense spending and 73% of the companies doing business with DoD.

https://media.defense.gov/2023/jan/26/2003150429/-1/-1/0/small-business-strategy.pdf

 

[bigpicture7]

Part of that is going to be sheer complexity - with the right skill set you could build a P51 Mustang in a well equipped garage, or at least any decent machine shop. That's not true of a F35, or really anything with solid state electronics, and the low-hanging fruit that doesn't involve huge capital investment is basically tapped out. That's the value to that VCs provide - the $$$ invested in risky capital intensive activities. When they succeed the wins are outsized, but that's offset by the amount of start up companies that never get off the ground. Especially in Boston - our lab boom and relative prosperity in the life sciences is fueled by VC investment in human capital.

That said, the DoD like all other government contracting organizations does spin out significant parts to SMBs as do the DoD Primes - part of the explosion in costs for all things is the fact that someone like Lockheed Martin does a comparatively small portion of work in house. They have something like 13000 suppliers in every state, mostly so they can claim that the F35 creates jobs in (almost) every congressional district, but as a result account for nearly 30% of aggregate defense spending and 73% of the companies doing business with DoD.

https://media.defense.gov/2023/jan/26/2003150429/-1/-1/0/small-business-strategy.pdf

For posterity I'll re-post my post that I'd initially decided to delete because I wasn't sure how I felt about it / thought it might be going down a political rabbit hole and didn't think anyone was engaging with it ; ). I appreciate your expanding upon it -- I agree with most of your points, and didn't mean to imply there weren't reasonable factors underlying the change in trends we've observed (may of which you point out):

To Equilibria:​

While I think 99% is an exaggeration, your post highlights a really important point. Media attention is always focused on swapping out sources of energy. And energy source is, of course, a key piece of this. But it is so easy to identify frivolous energy use throughout society. As one example, most personal vehicles are hauling around a purely excessive amount of lifestyle/stylistic mass most of the time, which directly translates to more energy used to accomplish the same task: how many trips could a Sequoia driver have accomplished using a Rav4 instead for the same trip with no change in utility? We do the equivalent of "hauling excess mass" throughout society...we waste so much energy it's almost comical.​

​

I also agree that what's broken about the present VC system is more about the downstream processes than the initial funding -- yet, can you really separate them? How many VCs would exist to begin with if it were harder to get rich of off essentially nothing? Some are indeed in it for the long haul (see the segment specific specialists, for instance).​

​

50+ years ago, a ton of startup funding came from DoD contracts and grants. Whether its DoD or other gov agencies, I wish we shifted back to a model of lots of gov "micro contracts," rather than a comparative few behemoth contracts to existing multibillion dollar firms (who eff up the contracts anyway). If I understand history correctly, the post-WWII industrial boom was, at least in non-trivial portion, gov contract fueled. There's a place for both VC and gov contract, but we've swung so far in the direction of incredibly low societal value-add VC approaches.​

 

[bigpicture7]

@Stlin ,

I'll add a couple more comments/follow-ups though. I agree with your statement, "Especially in Boston - our lab boom and relative prosperity in the life sciences is fueled by VC investment in human capital," and this is specifically what I meant by "segment specific specialists" among VCs in my post, which I agree there's good place for. These are far from the "spray and pray" VCs looking for the next cloud-based, subscription or ad revenue model, ultra-rapidly-deployable garbage they can flip and bail.

Re: the DoD/gov stuff, though, I'm 100% with you on the trends related to increased complexity and the sludge of large project coordination. But I will point out that if you set aside new platform development, I believe a lot of companies used to get their start from "basic" research funded as gov-sponsored R&D. Didn't Bose get their start that way, among many others? There's a reason lots of other government branches want to replicate DARPA (e.g., ARPA-E, ARPA-H with roots very recently planted now in Cambridge, etc), and there's promise to somewhat of a return to this model. Regarding the sludge of mega projects via the LMs of the world: that is a legit problem, but I think the blame lay in many places, including a tendency to fund giant leap new platforms instead of continuous/integral updates to in-service platforms. More of a trend toward nurturing a large sector of mid-sized system integrators would be helpful, I think.

Bringing this full circle: it turns out Commonwealth Fusion has been the recipient of at least some funding from ARPA-E:

https://arpa-e.energy.gov/technologies/projects/pulsed-high-temperature-superconducting-central-solenoid-revolutionizing

https://arpa-e.energy.gov/technologies/projects/co-optimization-integral-layered-materials-solution-compact-tokamak-vessels

 

[Stlin]

Re: the DoD/gov stuff, though, I'm 100% with you on the trends related to increased complexity and the sludge of large project coordination. But I will point out that if you set aside new platform development, I believe a lot of companies used to get their start from "basic" research funded as gov-sponsored R&D. Didn't Bose get their start that way, among many others? There's a reason lots of other government branches want to replicate DARPA (e.g., ARPA-E, ARPA-H with roots very recently planted now in Cambridge, etc), and there's promise to somewhat of a return to this model. Regarding the sludge of mega projects via the LMs of the world: that is a legit problem, but I think the blame lay in many places, including a tendency to fund giant leap new platforms instead of continuous/integral updates to in-service platforms. More of a trend toward nurturing a large sector of mid-sized system integrators would be helpful, I think.

I generally agree, and you might want to look into something know as SBIR/STTR - that is basically "basic" research contracts being dedicated to SMBs within and without the xARPA system. It's only roughly ~4% of the federal government's research budget, not including grants/contracts won by SMBs from general r&d funding sources - but it represents all 11 federal agencies that do significant research. While of course DOD is the biggest, it covers almost everything and is super influential. While there are some restrictions on VC owned firms from being eligible, those that do earn funding tend to see more interest from VCs seeing federal awards as a vote of confidence, multiplying their impact. I believe Moderna is probably the most prominent of our local DARPA success stories, but I believe in the program history it's generally had something like a 8:1 ROI on sales to grants. That said, there's also the entire "funding academic research" angle too - frankly CFS would likely not exist without a history of significant DoD funding for the MIT fusion & plasma program.

Also, I also agree that the consolidation of primes isnt good for DoD (or frankly any governmental agency) but it's encouraging to note that ~20% of DoD prime contracts go to SMBs. I think the rules on qualifying bidders needs to change, but SpaceX (no matter how you feel about Musk) is a excellent example of startup to key strategic defense contractor.