Enough tape to Stretch a Quarter of the Way Around Earth

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Commonwealth Fusion Systems has ordered more than 10,000 kilometres of high-temperature superconducting tape from Japan’s Fujikura, enough to stretch about a quarter of the way around Earth and the largest single order of HTS tape on record.

Commonwealth Fusion Systems just ordered enough superconducting tape to stretch a quarter of the way around Earth.

The Bill Gates-backed startup is buying more than 10,000 kilometres of it from Japan’s Fujikura, the largest single order of this tape on record.

So why does fusion need tape?

CFS wants to hold plasma at 100 million degrees Celsius inside a magnetic cage.

The tape is a thin metal ribbon coated in a rare-earth superconductor. Chill it and current flows with zero resistance.

Wind it into coils and you get incredibly strong magnets. In 2021, CFS and MIT pushed one to 20 tesla.

That lets a compact machine match one 40 times larger in volume with older magnets, MIT says.

For scale, CFS’s demo machine, SPARC, needed about 10,000 kilometres in total, bought over years from several suppliers, including Fujikura.

SPARC is nearly built and should switch on in 2027.

The new tape is for ARC, CFS’s first power plant, meant to put about 400 megawatts on Virginia’s grid in the early 2030s.

CFS plans to build ARC once SPARC gets more energy out of its plasma than it puts in.

So it’s buying the tape before the proof. That’s a big bet.

18 days ago

Energy

Enough tape to Stretch a Quarter of the Way Around Earth

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