GoKawiilCommonwealth Fusion Systems said on Thursday it would sell high-temperature superconducting magnets to Realta Fusion, the second in a string of deals that suggests the company will lean heavily on its magnet technology in the coming years to bring in much-needed revenue.
“It’s the largest deal of this kind to date for CFS,” Rick Needham, the company’s COO, told reporters on a call.
Commonwealth Fusion Systems, or CFS, previously sold magnets to the WHAM experiment at the University of Wisconsin, which fusion startup Realta collaborates closely with. The physics behind WHAM underpins Realta’s approach to fusion power, which is known as a magnetic mirror reactor.
In a magnetic mirror, plasma is confined into a shape that resembles two 2-liter soda bottles connected at the base. On each end, powerful magnets punch the plasma and force it back toward the center. Weaker magnets encircle the middle of the bottle shape.
To make a more powerful reactor, Khosla-backed Realta would only need to expand the middle section, and because those magnets are less powerful, they’re cheaper. Per kilowatt-hour costs should fall as Realta’s reactors increase in size.
CFS is pursuing another form of magnetic confinement fusion called a tokamak. In a tokamak, D-shaped magnets cast powerful fields to keep plasma circulating in a doughnut-like shape inside. Over the years, the company has refined its magnets in pursuit of putting electrons on the grid from Arc, its future commercial-scale reactor that’s slated to be built in Virginia.
Both CFS’s and Realta’s existence stems from the magnets themselves. CFS was founded in 2018 after scientists at MIT realized that a new class of commercially available high-temperature superconductors could underpin a viable tokamak design. Realta was founded a few years later when physicists at the University of Wisconsin “saw that there was a new technology, a game changer that would enable us to go back to the [magnetic] mirror and avail of those engineering advantages that the concept has,” co-founder and CEO Kieran Furlong said.
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