We are partnering with Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS) to bring clean, safe, limitless fusion energy closer to reality.
Nuclear fusion is the process that powers the sun and promises clean, abundant energy without long-lived radioactive waste. Making it work on Earth means keeping the ionized gas, known as plasma, stable at temperatures above 100 million degrees Celsius, all within the limits of fusion energy machines. This is a very complex physics problem that we are working to solve using artificial intelligence (AI).
Today, we are announcing a research partnership with Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS), a world leader in fusion energy. CFS is pioneering a faster path to clean, safe, and virtually limitless fusion energy using a compact and powerful tokamak device called SPARC.
SPARC aims to leverage powerful high-temperature superconducting magnets to become the first magnetic fusion machine ever to generate net fusion energy, or more fusion energy than is needed to sustain energy. This breakthrough is known as exceeding the “break-even point” and is an important milestone on the path to viable fusion energy.
This partnership builds on our groundbreaking work using AI to successfully control plasma. In collaboration with our academic partners at the EPFL Swiss Plasma Center (Polytechnic Institute of Lausanne), we have shown that deep reinforcement learning can control tokamak magnets to stabilize complex plasma shapes. To cover a wider range of physics, we developed TORAX, a fast differentiable plasma simulator written in JAX.
Now we are bringing that work to CFS to accelerate the timeline for delivering fusion energy to the grid. We have collaborated in three main areas so far:
Produce fast, accurate, differentiable simulations of fusion plasmas. Find the most efficient and robust path to maximize fusion energy. Discover new real-time control strategies using reinforcement learning.
The combination of our AI expertise and CFS’ cutting-edge hardware makes this an ideal partnership to advance fundamental discoveries in fusion energy for the benefit of the global research community and, ultimately, the entire world.
Fusion plasma simulation
Optimizing tokamak performance requires simulating how heat, current, and matter flow through the plasma core and interact with surrounding systems. Last year, we released TORAX, an open-source plasma simulator built for optimization and control, expanding the range of physics problems we can address beyond magnetic simulation. Because TORAX is built into JAX, it can easily run on both CPUs and GPUs, and you can seamlessly integrate AI-powered models, including your own, for even better performance.
TORAX helps CFS teams test and refine operational plans by running millions of virtual experiments before SPARC is turned on. It also gives you the flexibility to adapt your plan as soon as the first data arrives.
This software is a cornerstone of CFS’s daily workflow, helping you understand how your plasma behaves under different conditions, saving you valuable time and resources.
