Can this Mass. startup solve the riddle of fusion power? – A look at “Tokamak Hall,” a vast space at Commonwealth Fusion Systems where a prototype fusion reactor is being built.

From the article

CFS, a British startup called Tokamak Energy, and a multi-national scientific project in France, called ITER, are all hoping they will be the first to show that this kind of reactor can produce a net energy gain. (In 2022, an experiment at the Lawrence Livermore National Ignition Facility in California, using a different kind of reactor design, [showed net energy production](https://www.energy.gov/articles/doe-national-laboratory-makes-history-achieving-fusion-ignition) for the first time, generating about 1.5 times the power put into it.)

Byboth said the company is aiming to hit that milestone of net energy gain in 2027. This year and next are “all about assembly of the tokamak, and commissioning our systems that support it. … We’re very much in execution mode now as a company, heads-down, trying to drive everything across the finish line.”

Interestingly, CFS doesn’t use the terms “reactor” or “nuclear” in talking about the device it is building — even though a nuclear reaction is happening inside it. They prefer to call it a fusion “machine” or “device.”

Byboth said that CFS won’t be regulated by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which oversees fission-based reactors, but by state agencies such as the Massachusetts Division of Radiation Control, which oversees things like mammography machines, lasers used for tattoo removal and rifle sights that contain tritium — one of the fuels that CFS will use.

Commonwealth Fusion is a nice name, but I prefer “Mass Fusion”.