US-based Commonwealth Fusion Systems hopes to have first Arc nuclear plant online in early 2030s
Google has agreed to purchase power from a planned nuclear fusion plant in the 2030s as it seeks to lock in the massive electricity supplies needed for the boom in data centres and artificial intelligence.
The technology group has committed to buying 200 MW of electricity from Commonwealth Fusion Systems’ (CFS) planned power station in Virginia under a multiyear power purchase agreement, the companies said in a statement.
Google has been an investor in CFS since 2021 and also is increasing its investment stake in the Massachusetts-based company, the statement said.
CFS did not provide the exact dollar figure for the Google deal, but said that it was in the multibillions.
The deal for 200 MW of energy – about enough to power 75,000 homes – from CFS’s first commercial Arc plant in Chesterfield County, Virginia, marks the first direct deal between a customer and a fusion energy company, and the largest deal of this scale in terms of energy provided.
The deal accounts for roughly half of the expected energy production from the plant, with an option to purchase more energy from future plants.
In 2023, Microsoft signed a deal with Helion Energy for 50 MW of fusion energy, to be provided through Constellation Energy as the power marketer. That deal included a commitment to start producing by 2028.
CFS, which raised a record $1.8bn (€1.5bn) from investors including Google in 2021, hopes the proposed 400 MW Arc facility will be the first fusion power station to be connected to the grid.
CFS, which is backed by Bill Gates’s technology fund Breakthrough Energy Ventures, is currently building a demonstration plant in Massachusetts which it aims to operate in 2027. It hopes the plant that would supply Google will be ready by the early 2030s.
The deal comes as technology companies including Google, owned by Alphabet, compete to lock in access to electricity to supply the rollout of data centres required to power AI systems.
In 2023 Microsoft signed a power purchase agreement with OpenAI founder Sam Altman’s fusion company Helion, agreeing to offtake electricity from a proposed 50 MW facility that the companies said would be online by 2028.
Fusion is the process of generating energy by melding atoms. Current nuclear power plants create energy through nuclear fission, or splitting atoms. Fusion has the potential to create nearly limitless energy using common elements such as hydrogen, and has the added benefit of generating little to no long-lived nuclear waste.
So far, no company has created commercial fusion energy, though a number of startups are trying to commercialise what could be a holy grail of clean-energy production.
CFS, which was spun out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s (MIT) Plasma Science and Fusion Center, aims to produce energy through a tokamak fusion process using high-temperature superconducting magnets developed in collaboration with MIT.
Background: Sparc Demonstration Reactor Paves Way For ‘Arc’
The company is working to build the Sparc prototype fusion machine at its headquarters in Devens, Massachusetts. Sparc is a compact, high-field, net fusion energy device that would be the size of existing mid-sized fusion devices, but with a much stronger magnetic field. It is predicted to produce 50-100 MW of fusion power.
Sparc is expected to produce its first plasma in 2026 and net fusion energy shortly after, demonstrating for the first time a commercially relevant design that will produce more power than consumed.
Sparc will pave the way for a first commercially viable Arc fusion power plant, which will generate about 400 MW – enough to power large industrial sites or about 150,000 homes.
“It’s a pretty big signal to the market that fusion’s coming,” CFS co-founder and chief executive Bob Mumgaard said about the Google deal. “It’s desirable, and that people are gonna work together to make it happen,”.
Mumgaard added that this could help mobilise the industry more generally, attracting more buyers for the future technology. “This puts fusion into this category of ‘this is not like someday future stuff.’ This is concrete,” he said.
Michael Terrell, head of advanced energy at Google, said: “By entering into this agreement with CFS, we hope to help prove out and scale a promising pathway toward commercial fusion power.
“We’re excited to make this longer-term bet on a technology with transformative potential to meet the world’s future energy demand, and support CFS in their efforts to reach the scientific and engineering milestones needed to get there.”
US president Donald Trump is looking to push nuclear energy. In May he signed four executive orders that aim to quadruple nuclear-power generation in the next 25 years, though this will mostly rely on fission power.
The planned Arc fusion power plant will generate about 400 MW – enough to power large industrial sites or about 150,000 homes. Courtesy CFS.
