Brandon Sorbom, Co-Founder and CSO, Commonwealth Fusion Systems

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“The Big Guy in Fusion”: Commonwealth Fusion Systems’ Brandon Sorbom

Brandon Sorbom, Chief Science Officer of Commonwealth Fusion Systems, is our tour guide for the world’s most prominent attempt at fusion. CFS has attracted about one-third of the capital and one-third of the workforce dedicated to private fusion efforts. It got a fast start by essentially privatizing a substantial effort already underway at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.  

It’s magnetic confinement approach relies on sustaining a plasma with magnetic fields for durations that are long enough to promote fusion without the stupendous “crushing” action that’s required in “inertial” approaches.  

Brandon shares his journey from being far short of the right background as an undergraduate to receiving his PhD from MIT.” He joined other pioneers in the field to co-found CFS in 2018.  

With an early-2030’s target for putting electricity on the grid at commercial scale and rates, Brandon explains how the tried-and-true foundational technologies in “Tokomak’s” enable a formula for clean, relatively inexpensive, and abundant energy.