The Future of Nuclear Fusion
Hosted by the Harvard Undergraduate Clean Energy Group, Brandon Sorbum, MIT Tech Review 35 Innovators Under 35, will give a talk.
One puzzle has stumped scientists for decades: how to maintain the 100 million-degree temperatures needed for fusion and do it cheaply enough to profitably produce energy. Powerful magnets can do the job by insulating the fuel at a reactor’s core. But until recently, not even the world’s best electromagnets were good enough.
Brandon Sorbum and his team designed a better magnet using a new superconductor material. First as a student at MIT, and now as the chief scientist at startup Commonwealth Fusion Systems, Sorbom used this magnet as part of a fusion reactor design almost 100 times smaller than was previously thought possible. The reactor is so small, in fact, that Commonwealth Fusion is on track to build its first functional concept within the next decade.
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