0:04 There are complex building sites. And
0:06 then there are these. [Music]
0:08 [Music]
0:10 For decades, scientists and engineers
0:12 have been trying to construct giant
0:14 machines that recreate what happens
0:18 inside the sun. Say it with me. Nuclear
0:21 fusion. It's where instead of splitting
0:23 atoms to generate power like with
0:25 nuclear fision, they're forced together
0:28 at extreme temperatures. If successful,
0:30 these systems could bring about a
0:32 virtually limitless source of energy.
0:34 But unsurprisingly, it's proving to be
0:37 immensely difficult with even huge
0:39 multinational collaborations struggling
0:42 to make it work. But now, a new player
0:44 has entered the race. It's a small
0:46 privately funded US startup that's
0:49 making rapid progress. And not only is
0:51 it catching up to its much bigger
0:54 competitors, it looks like it might just
0:56 win a race to master a technology that
1:06 So, if you're not a regular viewer of
1:07 the B1M, then right about now you're
1:10 probably thinking, "What on earth is
1:12 nuclear fusion?" If you want a full
1:13 rundown, it's worth going to check out
1:16 the video we did back in 2024 when I
1:17 traveled inside the world's largest
1:20 nuclear fusion reactor that's currently
1:21 under construction down in the south of
1:24 France. If you're off to do that, great.
1:25 But keep this tab open. Come back and
1:26 finish this video. We'd really
1:28 appreciate it. If you don't want to do
1:29 that, if you think it's all a bit
1:31 technical, then don't worry because
1:34 we've put together a simple summary of
1:37 nuclear fusion. Basically, nuclear
1:39 fusion is where you take a whole bunch
1:42 of hydrogen atoms, heat them up a lot.
1:45 We're talking over 100 million° C, and
1:46 bring them to the point where they form
1:49 a plasma. This causes them to fuse
1:51 together, and create helium and
1:53 neutrons, generating huge amounts of
1:56 energy. It all happens in a special
1:58 donut-shaped vacuum chamber known as a
2:01 tokamac. Inside a series of magnetic
2:04 fields confine the plasma and suspend it
2:06 within a space known as the Taurus. That
2:09 way it can be kept apart from anything solid.
2:10 solid.
2:13 >> The fuel we have um inside the tokamac
2:15 is a mix of dutium and tridium which are
2:17 both types of hydrogen. You need very
2:19 very small amounts of fusion fuel. So
2:22 like over the course of a year a 400
2:24 megawatt net electric arc power plant
2:28 will use roughly 100 kg of fuel. Now the
2:30 superconducting magnets that make all
2:32 this possible have to be incredibly
2:34 strong and able to withstand those crazy
2:36 temperatures and usually they have to be
2:38 absolutely massive and made from
2:40 complicated sounding materials like
2:43 nobamin which are very hard to come by
2:45 but that's not necessarily the case
2:49 anymore as we'll discover in a bit. If
2:51 you're still with us then well done.
2:52 When I visited IETA in the south of
2:54 France, that's the international
2:56 thermonuclear experimental reactor. It
2:59 was an amazing experience. The place is
3:02 absolutely epic both in its scale and
3:04 its ambition. But as I discovered when I
3:06 was there, there's been a few setbacks
3:08 and delays because building a nuclear
3:13 fusion machine is extremely difficult.
3:15 Another key thing to remember about
3:17 Eater is that it's basically a huge
3:19 experiment and won't provide electricity
3:22 for people to actually use. Whereas this
3:24 firm over in America is planning to
3:27 construct a fully operational TOKAC and
3:28 is on the way to building a power plant
3:31 that can bring nuclear fusion power to
3:33 the grid, something which has never been
3:35 done. Commonwealth Fusion Systems is the
3:37 name, and it's considerably smaller and
3:40 younger than that huge organization over
3:42 in Europe, which was formed way back in
3:46 the 1980s. CFS was only founded in 2018
3:48 by a team from the Plasma Science and
3:50 Fusion Center, which is part of the
3:52 famous Massachusetts Institute of
3:55 Technology or MIT. We are basically
3:58 trying to build fusion power plants um
4:00 around the world um and use that to make
4:03 you know firm, clean uh abundant energy.
4:06 We're about 7 years old as a company. Um
4:08 we're about roughly a thousand people
4:10 now. Um so we we've grown a bit in those
4:11 in those years.
4:13 >> So how are they going to harness that
4:15 power and get it to the grid? Well,
4:17 there will be something surrounding all
4:19 that plasma in the Tokamac. It's called
4:22 a blanket made from a type of molten
4:24 salt that's going to heat up and
4:25 generate steam with the rest of the
4:28 system set up in a similar way to a
4:30 nuclear fision plant. All the steam gets
4:32 passed through a turbine which then
4:34 turns and generates electricity. As for
4:35 where the plant's going to be
4:37 constructed, it'll be happening right
4:39 here on this plot of land in Virginia
4:42 just outside Richmond. But before we get
4:44 into that, I know this video has a lot
4:46 of jargon. When I first started this
4:48 channel, I didn't expect to be
4:49 explaining nuclear fision to you guys,
4:51 but here we are. What keeps me on the
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5:44 Now it's time to focus on that nuclear
5:47 fusion plant called Ark. It'll provide
5:50 400 megawatt of fusion generated
5:51 electricity straight to the state's
5:55 power reserves. That's enough for around
5:57 150,000 homes and the plan is to have it
6:01 running by the early 2030s. Now, if
6:02 you're a Marvel fan, that name might
6:05 sound familiar. The glowing thing that
6:07 powers Iron Man suits is called the Ark
6:09 Reactor, and it was based on the idea of
6:10 nuclear fusion.
6:13 >> The Ark Reactor was a stepping stone to
6:13 something greater,
6:16 >> something so big that it was going to
6:18 make the nuclear reactor look like a AAA battery.
6:19 battery.
6:21 >> Now, we don't know whether CFS's plant
6:23 is a nod to this or just a coincidence,
6:25 but either way, nuclear fusion machines
6:27 now something you're not going to see
6:28 just in the movies. This is happening
6:31 for real. And just like Tony Stark, the
6:33 company's teamed up with some powerful
6:36 allies to complete its worthy mission.
6:38 Dominium Energy, the largest utility
6:40 company in the state of Virginia, has
6:42 signed up to provide expertise and
6:44 leasing rights for the site. They've
6:46 been getting plenty of financial
6:48 backing, too. So far, the firm has
6:50 received more than $2 billion in private
6:53 funding with Bill Gates as one of its
6:55 investors, and it's taken in millions of
6:58 dollars in grants. Another sign that CFS
6:59 should be taken seriously came in the
7:02 form of a new strategic partnership with
7:05 Google signed in June 2025. It's a deal
7:06 that saw the tech giant agree to
7:10 purchase 200 megawatt, yes, half of all
7:12 the power generated from this first
7:14 plant. Google has the option to buy
7:16 power from future plants as well, and
7:19 it's also upped its stake in CFS,
7:21 although details of that haven't been
7:23 released just yet. So, they're not short
7:26 of money or bigname partners, but surely
7:27 you can't just go and piece together a
7:29 nuclear fusion power plant, something
7:32 that's eluded scientists for decades,
7:34 without building some kind of prototype
7:36 first. Well, yes, which is why they've
7:38 been doing exactly that. Before they
7:41 build the ark, they need to finish this.
7:44 The Spark under construction in Devons,
7:46 Massachusetts, which is about 50 mi
7:49 northwest of Boston. It's a demo project
7:52 that CFS is going to use to prove that
7:54 commercial fusion is actually possible.
7:56 >> We have to build the tokamac itself. Um
7:58 but we also have to build a facility
8:01 around it to support um and operate the
8:03 machine and also to take the fusion heat
8:05 out. We have a tok hall that has four
8:07 like wings around it. And I like to
8:09 think that each of those buildings has
8:10 something that either goes into the
8:12 tokamac or comes out of the tokamac.
8:14 Firstly, there's the operations
8:16 building, which is full of diagnostic
8:18 equipment used to run the machine and
8:20 monitor what's happening in sight. Then
8:22 you've got the radio frequency heating
8:24 building, which houses all the
8:26 electronics needed to cook the hydrogen
8:28 fuel up to the right temperature. I say
8:30 cook because it works in a similar way
8:32 to a microwave oven, except it uses
8:35 radio waves instead. Now, I don't need
8:36 to say this because you've made it this
8:39 far into a nuclear fusion video. you're
8:41 already a reasonably intelligent human
8:43 being. But remember, this is for cooking
8:46 plasma, not pizza. Don't try and cook a
8:48 pizza in a Taco Mac because you're going
8:50 to end up with it very well done and
8:52 you'll have personally sabotaged
8:54 mankind's shot at clean energy.
8:56 Next up is the power building, and
8:58 that's where all the electricity that
9:00 goes into those magnets comes from.
9:02 Finally, there's the utility building,
9:04 which, no, is not full of washing
9:06 machines and cleaning supplies. The
9:08 utility room is much cooler, quite
9:10 literally. As well as being the place
9:12 where the fusion heat is removed, it's
9:14 home to all the cryogenic equipment for
9:16 keeping the magnets cold. Like
9:18 seriously, seriously cold. We're talking
9:21 lower than -400°
9:24 F. Going back to the Tokamac, one thing
9:26 that makes the Spark one different to
9:28 others that have been built before is
9:30 the approach being taken with those
9:32 magnets. Although they might look
9:34 similar to the ones used at Eater with
9:35 the same D-shape, they're actually made
9:38 from something else. Developed by CFS,
9:41 they use a new type of material called
9:43 Rebco, which stands for rare earth
9:45 barerium copper oxide. This was
9:48 discovered in the 1980s, but for a long
9:49 time, you could only make like tiny tiny
9:51 tiny quantities in a lab somewhere. But
9:53 in the last like maybe 10 years or so,
9:55 um like you know a number of companies
9:56 around the world have ramped up
9:57 production of that considerably. So you
9:59 can you can make industrially relevant
10:01 quantities of it now. And our innovation
10:04 was take that material and uh engineer a
10:05 magnet out of it.
10:07 >> According to the company, these magnets
10:09 are so strong they can be smaller than
10:11 ones found on other TOKAS, which means
10:14 the whole system can be scaled down as
10:16 well. That's pretty obvious when you
10:17 look at where they're building their
10:20 prototype reactor. This place is big,
10:22 but it's still dwarfed by the enormous
10:26 Eater Enclave. The idea is to have Spark
10:29 producing its first plasma as soon as 2026.
10:31 2026.
10:32 Once that happens, the focus is then
10:34 going to switch to reaching net positive
10:36 state. That's where more energy is
10:38 coming out of the nuclear fusion
10:41 reaction than goes in to power it. And
10:43 only once they've got to that point are
10:45 they then going to go and build the main
10:48 plant. There's also another reason why
10:51 CFS appears to be in a bit of a hurry.
10:54 This is not a one-horse race. It has
10:56 competition from other groups who also
10:58 believe they have what it takes to build
11:00 the first commercial facility.
11:02 Washington-based Helion Energy is
11:04 probably its main American rival and
11:06 reckons it could have a plant operating
11:09 even sooner by 2028. They've already
11:12 built six prototypes of their reactor
11:14 and have signed their own power purchase
11:16 agreement with Microsoft. Then you've
11:18 got China. Although it seems to be a bit
11:20 behind the US on the path to commercial
11:22 power, the country is running some of
11:25 the world's largest and most advanced
11:27 experimental fusion projects. They're
11:29 planning to raise the bar even further
11:32 by constructing the first ever fusion
11:35 fision plant in the next 5 years. That's
11:37 where neutrons made from fusion can
11:39 cause fision to occur in surrounding materials.
11:41 materials.
11:42 Now, don't worry. We're not going to go
11:44 into any more detail on that because we
11:46 think you've had enough science for one
11:48 day. We also don't actually know
11:49 anything more about it. But the point is
11:52 Commonwealth Fusion Systems might be the
11:54 one to bet on right now, but it's also
11:56 got quite a bit of competition. And as
11:58 we've seen before, getting this process
12:01 right can be extremely difficult.
12:04 >> CFS has been set up with the sole
12:06 purpose of like go build fusion power
12:09 plants. So I think like we are
12:11 structured to be fast, to be efficient,
12:13 to be like have this like very clear
12:15 mission known physics, this new magnet
12:17 technology and then like a purpose-built
12:20 organization allow us to move quickly.
12:22 >> Whoever emerges victorious, it's a
12:23 breakthrough that can't come soon
12:26 enough. Our planet is set to see
12:28 unprecedented growth in demand for
12:30 electricity over the coming years.
12:32 Rising populations will lead to more
12:35 housing, businesses, and infrastructure.
12:37 Then you've got the electrification of
12:39 transport and the rise of power- hungry
12:42 tech like AI. Wherever it comes from,
12:44 having a new source of clean, abundant
12:47 energy can only be seen as a positive. A
12:49 technology that's promised so much for
12:53 so long could finally be unleashed.
12:54 Don't forget that you can level up your
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