We are working with Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS) to bring the reality of clean, safe and unlimited fusion energy closer to the world.
Fusion, the process that powers the sun, provides clean, abundant energy without long-lived radioactive waste. To make it work here on Earth, it means maintaining the stability of the ionized gas, called plasma, at temperatures exceeding 100 million degrees Celsius – all within the limits of a fusion energy machine. This is a very complex physics problem that we are working on using artificial intelligence (AI).
Today we announce the establishment of research cooperation with the company Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS), a world leader in fusion energy. CFS is pioneering a faster path to clean, safe and effectively unlimited fusion energy with its compact, powerful tokamak machine called SPARC.
SPARC uses powerful, high-temperature superconducting magnets and aims to be the first-ever magnetic fusion machine to generate net fusion energy – more energy from nuclear fusion than is needed to sustain it. This breakthrough is known as break-even and is a key milestone on the path to profitable fusion energy.
This partnership builds on our groundbreaking work using artificial intelligence to effectively control plasma. With academic partners in Swiss Plasma Center at EPFL (École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne)we have shown that deep reinforcement learning can control tokamak magnets to stabilize complex plasma shapes. To cover a broader scope of physics, we have developed CHESTa fast and differentiable plasma simulator written in JAX.
We are now turning this work over to CFS to accelerate the timeline for delivering fusion power to the grid. So far, we have cooperated in three key areas:
- Create fast, accurate and differentiable fusion plasma simulations.
- Finding the most efficient and reliable path to maximizing fusion energy.
- Using reinforcement learning to discover novel control strategies in real time.
The combination of our artificial intelligence expertise with CFS's cutting-edge equipment makes this an ideal partnership to advance fundamental discoveries in fusion energy for the benefit of the global research community and, ultimately, the world.
Fusion plasma simulation
To optimize the operation of the tokamak, we must simulate the flow of heat, electricity and matter through the plasma core and the interaction with the systems surrounding it. Last year we released TORAX, an open-source plasma simulator built for optimization and control, expanding the range of physics issues we could address beyond magnetic simulation. TORAX is built in JAX so it can easily run on both CPUs and GPUs and can seamlessly integrate AI-powered models, including oursto achieve even better performance.
TORAX will help CFS teams test and refine operational plans by running millions of virtual experiments before SPARC is even enabled. It also gives them the flexibility to quickly adjust their plans once they receive the first data.
This software has become the backbone of CFS's daily work, helping it understand how plasma will behave under different conditions, saving valuable time and resources.
