Commonwealth Fusion Systems picks Virginia site for its first power plant

Identifying a site is “the longest lead time part of building a power plant,” said CFS chief executive officer Bob Mumgaard, in a blog post. Now, CFS has found a site owned by Dominion Energy and located near a retiring coal plant.

“We’ll plug 400 megawatts of steady fusion power into the state’s electrical grid starting in the early 2030s,” Mumgaard said. “We expect ARC will create hundreds of jobs to build and operate the power plant. We’re pleased by the reception we’ve had so far.”

First SPARC: CFS was spun out of Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2018. Since then, the company has raised over $2 billion in capital and is using some of that money to build SPARC, a demonstration-scale tokamak, at its headquarters in Devens, Mass. CFS expects SPARC to “produce its first plasma in 2026 and net fusion energy shortly after.”

CFS has received support from the Department of Energy’s Office of Fusion Energy Sciences on many aspects of its research and development program, including being named in 2023 as one of eight companies in the DOE’s Milestone-Based Fusion Development Program.

“Our next act is financing, building, owning, and operating the ARC power plant,” Mumgaard said.

A site, and a utility: Selecting a site for a power plant early in the game is important, Mumgaard said. “Permits need to be filed, the grid needs to be made ready, the ground needs to be leveled—all before anything remotely related to fusion happens. We learned this in SPARC, where we selected the site back in early 2021. A power plant takes even longer. Thus, to keep our schedule of the fastest path to fusion energy on the grid, we’ve been looking for a site for ARC for the last two years. Before selecting the site in Chesterfield County, Va., for the first ARC, we evaluated more than 100 locations around the world, performed due-diligence scrutiny, and talked with hundreds of key stakeholders.”

Advantages of the chosen site include a receptive community and workforce with growing demand for electricity as well as its proximity to transportation, to population centers, and to a grid connection.

“We’ve agreed to lease the ARC site from Dominion Energy Virginia. Dominion will provide us with development and technical expertise while we’ll provide them with knowledge about how to build and operate fusion power plants,” Mumgaard said.

According to a press release from CFS also released December 17, “Dominion Energy Virginia will provide nonfinancial collaboration, including development and technical expertise as well as leasing rights for the proposed site.”