Virtual Tour of Commonwealth Fusion Systems’ SPARC facility (June 2024)

Join Alex Creely, Commonwealth Fusion Systems' Director of Tokamak Operations, for a complete tour through our SPARC facility. This is where we're building our SPARC fusion energy device, a key step on the fastest path to fusion energy on the grid. Alex shows our recent progress constructing SPARC and guides us through key sections of the facility:
Each building has essential components for building, testing, and running SPARC. This behind-the-scenes tour is a great look at our hard work to reshape the future of energy.
✔️ Operations Building: Generates data critical to optimize our SPARC tokamak and plan its successor, the ARC fusion power plant that'll generate fusion energy for the electrical grid.
✔️ RF Building: Houses equipment that will use radio frequency waves to heat the plasma inside SPARC. This building also houses the Assembly Hall, where all the SPARC components will arrive.
✔️Tokamak Hall: The home of our SPARC fusion energy device. A life-size illustration of the tokamak is on the wall.
✔️Utility Building: An industrial space to handle fusion heat from SPARC. It also contains the cryogenic system to keep SPARC's magnets cold.
Each building has essential components for building, testing, and running SPARC. This behind-the-scenes tour is a great look at our hard work to reshape the future of energy.

[@rosom5516]

You've come a long way! Can't wait for the completion!

[@stefanurbat4006]

The most promising fusion enterprise, keep up the good work.

[@ChristianBlueChimp]

Great work so far. Looking forward to seeing energy out of sparc.

[@JigilJigil]

Kudos to all the VCs and investors who are making this possible. Another great tour, keep up the great work.

[@dangerousham3519]

Kudos to pharaoh Khufu for building the great pyramid! Oh wait. 🤔

[@JigilJigil]

@@dangerousham3519 So you are comparing the investors who are risking their money on a very ambitious game changing project like fusion with pharaoh Khufu?!

[@roccovolpe5384]

Amazing, spectacular!!! ❤🇺🇸❤️

[@kindaovermyhead]

Super exciting, nice work guys!

[@Telencephelon]

Wow. Those dimensions!

[@diraziz396]

Fascinating work. Thank you

[@danielwilkinson6508]

Epic Engineering!!

[@carlschumacher5510]

Quite impressive!

[@lanep2023]

How about some numbers? Various types and quantities of energies into systems, current co$ts, availability, etc.

[@robertoaraujo9834]

En cuánto tiempo calculan ustedes que el reactor podría llegar a estar en funcionamiento?

[@vernonbrechin4207]

Thank you for this tour. It is clear that numerous details were left out which I find is very common with most nuclear fusion energy experimental facilities. It would have been advantageous to have also heard someone give a critical assessment. I'm sure that most of the viewers only are interested in hearing one side of the story. You used the word fusion in referring to the future operation of SPARC. You should have provided more information on supplying it with the fuel component, radioactive tritium. Currently, it's commercial purchase value is around $30,000/gram. You also made no mention of including a lithium blanket, or creating your own source of tritium. The past presentations, regarding SPARC, stated that the high-temperature superconducting magnets would be key to it achieving useful levels of fusion energy. Many of the viewers assumed that meant the magnets didn't need to be cooled down to cryogenic temperatures to operate. Are we to assume that your design will solve all the plasma instability issues that so many other MCF facility continue to struggle with? How Does SPARC plan to deal with the chamber materials that become contaminated with the radioactive tritium, or components that become radioactive due to irradiation from fusion energy neutrons? When operating at full fusion power levels are the superconducting magnets shielded from being irradiated by the fusion energy neutrons? SPARC is designed to run in a pulsed mode as are all other tokamak type projects when operating at full DT fusion energy mode. SPARC's on time is expected to be 10 seconds then. The stated operational parameters are for the on-time, not for the lengthy rest periods after each pulsed on-time. The press, public and investors deserve to hear the average of the operational parameters over an at least 24 hour period. I'm posing these questions and examples since most fans wouldn't dream of presenting such questions for a project that they have come to love.

[@Tuboshi0815]

They run their superconductors at 20 Kelvin. ITER will run theirs at 4 Kelvin. The magnets aren't the tricky part for them.

[@vernonbrechin4207]

@@Tuboshi0815 - Thank you for pointing out that the High Temperature Superconductor (HTS) that they employ requires operation at 20 Kelvin, a cryogenic temperature. It has become common practice to not mention the numerous other difficulties that they have to overcome, in most promotional nuclear fusion energy presentations aimed at the press, the public and the investors. The extremely complex nature of the technology serves them well in their omissions of key difficulties.

[@henryeze7074]

It might seem you are getting too technical about your questions but sadly, without wanting to be seen as pessimist, these points you raised are the reason this particular setup might never achieve baseload production. When the process becomes too complicated, keeping it going becomes extremely difficult and prohibitive in terms of cost. I wish CFS success though. For me, I am almost convinced we can get fusion without these complexities and I am determined to do so.

[@vernonbrechin4207]

@@henryeze7074 - A great many people have placed their hopes on this technology becoming our savior. We are immersed in a society that encourages us all to express optimism and to avoid pessimistic assessments. In order for a technology to thrive in the marketplace all the downsides should be evaluated. Many of the people who work in the nuclear fusion energy field are intensely focused on their own specialty. Very few have an ability to understand the extreme complexity of the entire enterprise so that they can perform a global assessment of the chances that their approach is superior to all the other approaches. I personally believe that such projects should be very transparent with all the engineering parameters and not hide behind the arcane language employed by those who have major stakes in wooing the public and investors to keep the funds flowing into the project. This is the reason I pose such technical questions.

[@thunderdemonlover]

How long does it take ?

[@martylynchian8628]

What type of radio do you have? Like Bose or Kenwood?

[@OmniMC]

thumbnail looks like a tom scott video

[@bxlawless100]

Listen, I love you guys and I think you’re gonna change the world but you can’t throw out words without the defining them them. The regular person looking at this won’t understand this.

[@SequoiaAlexander]

DO NOT bite in to the burrito right after it comes out of THIS microwave!!

[@jpm000001]

He's really young for an intern. Must be smart.

[@vernonbrechin4207]

Most of today's fusion workers and fans are on the young side of things. Most are clueless that the research began in the late 1950s and that all the early proponents are either dead, or retired, after seeing that their life's work and dream made little progress.

[@kellymoses8566]

Fusion will never be a cost effective form of power. It is just too complicated. We should be working on molten salt fission reactors

[@harbifm766766]

Godbye old VC money.. we want more VC money video..please

[@jpm000001]

What does that mean...

[@kellymoses8566]

This is incredibly expensive

[@vernonbrechin4207]

My assumption is that most of the venture capitalist, who are footing the enormous bills for this project, have been snowed about what to expect. Few have any deep technical knowledge in the field of nuclear fusion energy research and many likely have hired contractors to do critical analysis who are simply fans of the technology.

[@henrytjernlund]

Don't take it slow. Were running out of time. ITER is never going to complete. Don't be like them.

[@martylynchian8628]

You took all that investor money and put a sicker on the wall?

[@vernonbrechin4207]

This video, as are all the huge numbers of videos produced by Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS), was promotional in nature. It provided no evidence that their efforts will lead to a self-sustaining nuclear fusion reaction that will produce a sustained energy output compared to the energy needed to operate their SPARC tokamak testing facility. Such traditional promotional efforts primarily focus on the assumed success of their operation. Typically their fans have no interest in seeking out critical analysis of such endeavors based upon the very lengthy history, beginning in the late 1950s, of such experimental endeavors.

[@Tuboshi0815]

Did you expect them to publish their research papers on KZbin?

[@vernonbrechin4207]

@@Tuboshi0815 - The extremely arcane nature of this field conveniently allows numerous key details to be excluded from such presentations. That includes the total averaged energy fed into the facility during its operations. The parameter of that value can easily be over 100 times greater than the energy fed into the plasma to heat it. The heating value is used to formulate Q-plasma. Q-total is typically left out of presentations. Another issue, that very few people are aware of, is that both SPARC and ARC are expected to operate in brief pulses when operating at near full DT fusion power levels. The published parameters only apply to the brief on periods, not an average, that includes the lengthy recovery time. I have read a technical paper that is published in an International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) journal. That is how I've learned what is typically omitted.

[@camshaftcasting1451]

Looks very late ...

[@martylynchian8628]

I think you mean fission. Fusion is just a myth.

[@henryeze7074]

The sun isn't a myth though. There's only a few stuff we're not doing right. Fusion is actually coming.... Sooner than later.

[@martylynchian8628]

@@henryeze7074 It's always 5 years away for the last 100 years. Always 5 years away. The amount of energy we have produced with fusion is the amount to warm a cup off coffee when you subtract the amount of energy that went into making it.