CFS accelerates commercial fusion with Siemens, NVIDIA

The digital twin will leverage data from the Siemens Xcelerator portfolio of industrial software, including its Designcenter NX for advanced product engineering and Teamcenter product lifecycle management tools, which Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS) uses to create, catalogue, and process machine designs and assemblies. These designs and assemblies can then be used in Commonwealth Fusion Systems' modelling and simulation workflows, including the layering of AI-enabled tools.

Commonwealth Fusion Systems will use NVIDIA Omniverse libraries and OpenUSD to integrate data with classical and AI-powered physics models to create the digital twin of SPARC. This virtual replica of SPARC will provide Commonwealth Fusion Systems with a user-friendly way to run simulations, test hypotheses, and quickly compare the experimental results from the machine to the simulations. This ability to rapidly analyse data and iterate will speed Commonwealth Fusion Systems' efforts to make fusion energy a commercial reality.

"CFS will be able to compress years of manual experimentation into weeks of virtual optimisation using the digital infrastructure developed by NVIDIA and Siemens,” said Bob Mumgaard, Co-Founder and CEO of Commonwealth Fusion Systems. "Through this collaboration, we're demonstrating how AI and integrated digital engineering can accelerate progress from design to grid power. This will allow us to transform how we build and operate fusion machines in the race to commercial fusion."

"Delivering commercial fusion demands that we simulate and solve incredibly complex physics problems," said Rev Lebaredian, Vice President, Omniverse and Simulation Technology, NVIDIA. "By using Siemens NX software and NVIDIA Omniverse libraries to create a high-fidelity digital twin of SPARC, CFS will be able to accelerate its engineering and shorten the timeline to clean power."

"By connecting Siemens Xcelerator with NVIDIA AI visualisation libraries, we're demonstrating that end-to-end digital workflows aren't just efficient, they're transformative," said Del Costy, president and managing director, Americas, Siemens Digital Industries Software. "Fusion is complex, but data doesn't lie. When you aggregate real manufacturing intelligence, apply AI, and run thousands of scenarios, you remove guesswork and accelerate innovation. This is the future of industrial engineering."

Commonwealth Fusion Systems is currently working to build the SPARC prototype fusion machine at its headquarters in Devens, Massachusetts. It is described as a compact, high-field, net fusion energy device that would be the size of existing mid-sized fusion devices, but with a much stronger magnetic field. The doughnut-shaped device will use powerful electromagnets to produce the right conditions for fusion energy, including an interior temperature surpassing 100 million degrees Celsius. It aims to produce 50-100 MW of fusion power, achieving fusion gain greater than 10.

The plan is for SPARC to pave the way for a first commercially viable fusion power plant called ARC, which is intended to generate about 400 MWe - enough to power large industrial sites, or about 150,000 homes. ARC is scheduled to deliver power to the grid in the early 2030s.

In July last year, Google signed an investment and offtake agreement with Commonwealth Fusion Systems for 200 MW of power from its first ARC commercial fusion plant, which is to be built in Virginia.