Mumgaard: Fusion power price depends on learning rates, not architecture
Bob Mumgaard · All-In Summit: Nuclear fusion and the potential for energy abundance · Sep 22, 2023 · at 26:10
Bob Mumgaard is the CEO of Commonwealth Fusion Systems. On an All-In Summit panel with competing CEO David Kirtley, he discusses how execution speed and manufacturing iterations drive long-term cost reduction in nuclear fusion.
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“Because that price of power, it's not so much architecture dependent, it's learning rate dependent, right? At the end of the day, the amount of stuff in these things is all about the same. And so, the faster you get there, the better your cycles are, the lower you're gonna drive that cost.”
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Mumgaard: CFS expects net energy fusion gain by early 2026
“And we'll start to assemble that machine later this year. And turn it on in this sort of, twenty-twenty-five time frame and get to Q greater than one, more power out than N for the first time probably early twenty-twenty-six.”
Mumgaard: Fusion capital requirements are an order of magnitude less than renewables
“Because you're just building capital, and there's no operating cost, there's no fuel, and the capital you're building is an order of magnitude less stuff than, say, renewable.”
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“The energy transition needs somewhere, various estimates put it, about nine trillion dollars a year globally, and we are at a 10th of that.”
Mumgaard: Regulating fusion as particle accelerators cuts overhead from $1B to $10M
“That goes from a billion dollar regulatory overhead to a ten million dollar regulatory overhead.”