Shows
Climate Forward PodcastCan Fusion Deliver the Dream of Limitless Energy?Fusion energy has long been hailed as the ultimate climate solution: clean, limitless and just out of reach. At the Climate Forward live event, Bob Mumgaard, chief executive of Commonwealth Fusion Systems, which aims to build the world’s first commercial fusion power plant, discussed how close his company is to bringing fusion energy to reality.Sign up for the Climate Forward newsletter https://www.nytimes.com/newsletters/climate-change
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2025-10-0221 min
Choses à Savoir TECH VERTEGoogle à fond sur la fusion nucléaire ?Et si le futur des data centers passait par… le soleil ? Pas celui qui brille au-dessus de nos têtes, mais celui qui brûle au cœur des réacteurs de demain. Google vient en tout cas de faire un pari audacieux : celui de la fusion nucléaire. Lundi 30 juin, la firme de Mountain View a annoncé un partenariat stratégique avec Commonwealth Fusion Systems, une start-up issue du prestigieux MIT, pour alimenter ses infrastructures numériques avec une énergie propre, sûre… et encore largement expérimentale.L’objectif ? Répondre à l’explosion de la consommation énerg...
2025-07-0802 min
NatSec TechEpisode 71: Bob Mumgaard and Steven Cowley on the Critical Moment in FusionDr. Bob Mumgaard and Dr. Steven Cowley join Jeanne Meserve to discuss the latest advancements in fusion research and its potential to revolutionize the energy landscape. Make sure to check out our most recent episodes of NatSec Tech, where members of the Commission sit down with Jeanne Meserve to break down the report and explore the fascinating potential of fusion energy.For more information on the Commission on the Scaling of Fusion Energy and their preliminary report “Fusion Power: Enabling 21st Century American Dominance,” visit: https://fusion.scsp.ai/. This is a publ...
2025-03-0425 min
Everybody in the PoolE63: The game-changer: fusion energy is closer than you thinkThis week on the show, Molly talks with Bob Mumgaard, CEO of Commonwealth Fusion Systems, at an event that was held during New York Climate Week. Fusion energy is one of the most promising and biggest swings we can take toward solving the climate crisis and potentially reversing some of the damage we’ve already done. Fusion energy is the same type of energy that powers the sun; if we can generate that kind of energy economically on Earth, we could have a nearly limitless source of energy that emits no carbon emissions and with minimal long-lasting radioactive waste. It...
2024-10-0332 min
Zero: The Climate RaceInside the race to open the world’s first nuclear fusion power plantScientists have been trying to understand — and mimic — the way the sun produces energy for centuries. But recreating the energy-generating process of nuclear fusion here on Earth presents an array of technical challenges. Bob Mumgaard, CEO of Commonwealth Fusion Systems, began working on some of those challenges as a doctoral student at MIT. Now backed by more than $2 billion, CFS is well on its way to making the long-held dream of nuclear fusion a reality. On this week’s Zero, Mumgaard breaks down the science behind CFS’s bagel-shaped tokamak reactor, and explains why he believes the nuclear fusion industry...
2024-09-2636 min
Deep FuturePrimer on Fusion Reactors — Bob Mumgaard & Steve Renter
This is a conversation with Bob Mumgaard and Steve Renter, founders of Commonwealth Fusion Systems in Cambridge, Massachusetts. So these guys spun out of MIT. An incredible, ambitious, company to figure out how to commercialize fusion, and it’s really the first fusion company in the world that has been able to show publicly that they have no new science needed in order to make it work, which is a major milestone.
They also published a series of seven papers a couple of years ago now, showing exactly how they can build a fusion reactor. This is th...
2024-02-011h 20
Watt It TakesCommonwealth Fusion Systems Co-Founder and CEO Bob MumgaardAccording to researchers around the world, fusion could be a nearly waste-free, carbon-free, and all-geography answer to creating enough dispatchable power to get us through the energy transition. To achieve this, all components of a fusion power plant need to be built so that when fusion energy becomes a reality, we have the industry, infrastructure, and processes in place to distribute the power, and it has to be cost competitive. This is exactly what Bob Mumgaard, Co-Founder and CEO of Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS), is building. Today, CFS has more than 600 employees, has raised $2B, and is e...
2023-10-311h 01
Unseen Upside: Investments Beyond Their ReturnsWill Fusion Power (or "Stars in a Jar") Replace Fossil Fuels?Harnessing fusion power has been an elusive goal of physicists and researchers for decades. However, recent scientific advances are helping to make that goal a reality. Described as a star in a bottle, fusion is what powers our sun and stars, offering us the prospect of limitless clean energy. But here on earth, it has presented unresolved engineering challenges—until now. Commonwealth Fusion Systems is on the brink of delivering commercial fusion energy thanks to their revolutionary magnet. But how does a safe, limitless, carbon-free, fusion power plant operate? What does it look like? How and when will this te...
2023-03-2832 min
The LIUniverse with Dr. Charles LiuNuclear Fusion with Christina MiglioreNOTE: This episode was recorded in early 2022, before the invasion of Ukraine by Russia and their attack on the Chernobyl nuclear facility, which we discuss.
What’s up with nuclear fusion? Dr. Charles Liu dives into the heated subject with the help of MIT Nuclear Physicist Christina Migliore and co-host Allen Liu.
We start with today’s joyfully cool cosmic thing: the JET, or Joint European Torus. JET is a “giant metal donut” in the UK engaged in plasma physics and nuclear fusion. You’ll learn about magnetic containment devices known as “tokamaks...
2023-02-1830 minThe LIUniverse with Dr. Charles LiuNuclear Fusion with Christina MiglioreNOTE: This episode was recorded in early 2022, before the invasion of Ukraine by Russia and their attack on the Chernobyl nuclear facility, which we discuss.
What’s up with nuclear fusion? Dr. Charles Liu dives into the heated subject with the help of MIT Nuclear Physicist Christina Migliore and co-host Allen Liu.
We start with today’s joyfully cool cosmic thing: the JET, or Joint European Torus. JET is a “giant metal donut” in the UK engaged in plasma physics and nuclear fusion. You’ll learn about magnetic containment devices known as “tokamaks...
2023-02-1830 min
The Next FiveThe Future of EnergyFuture energy technologies like fusion and hydrogen promise to be ‘game changers’ that could power our world and fuel our future. Both solutions have been talked about for decades yet remain just out of our grasp - but for how long? Current renewables like wind and solar can’t get us all the way to net zero while decarbonising carbon heavy sectors. Therefore, inventing, innovating and investing in future low carbon energy solutions such as fusion and hydrogen is key to success. But getting new technologies to commercial scale in time will require rapid collaboration on a global scale. So, wh...
2022-02-1428 min
Climate Tech CocktailsCommonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS): Bob Mumgaard“We’re building a machine we call Spark, where you show up and you push a button. This thing turns on and it makes hundreds of megawatts of thermal energy from effectively nothing.” -Bob Mumgaard, Co-founder and CEO, Commonwealth Fusion Systems.Bob Mumgaard is Co-founder and CEO of Commonwealth Fusion Systems (@CFS_energy), where Bob leads the strategic vision for the company. He received his PhD in plasma physics at MIT, focusing his work on developing techniques to measure the magnetic field inside tokamak plasmas. During this time, Bob contributed to the design of several small tokamaks using hig...
2021-07-1254 min
Commonwealth Fusion Systems’ Bob Mumgaard on trying to solve climate change via nuclear fusion technology | E1171
2021-02-061h 06
The POWER Podcast67. Fusion Power May Be Closer Than You ThinkFusion Power May Be Closer Than You Think
Fusion research and development have been ongoing for decades, and many people probably believe a fusion power system will remain out of reach for decades longer. But the truth is that more than 100 tokamaks have been constructed and the science behind fusion is well-understood. What has been elusive is generating net energy from a fusion reaction, that is, getting more energy out than goes in to heat the plasma.
One company that believes it is on the cusp of a breakthrough is Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS). Bob Mumgaard, the company’s...
2020-10-2933 min
InevitableEp 6: Bob Mumgaard, Co-Founder & CEO of Commonwealth Fusion SystemsIn this episode, I interview Bob Mumgaard, the Co-Founder & CEO of Commonwealth Fusion Systems.
I was looking forward to this interview for many reasons. I had many questions about fusion, how close it is to primetime, what the benefit to the world would be if it gets there, and what barriers stand in its way. And also about CFS, how it came to be, how it is positioned in the fusion landscape, and where it is in its evolution.
Bob is a great guy, as knowledgeable as they come, and also pretty funny! While the...
2019-05-3045 min
Titans Of Nuclear | Interviewing World Experts on Nuclear EnergyBob Mumgaard, Commonwealth FusionIn this episode we discuss... Bob’s background in fusion and personal journey in the nuclear industry Bob’s day-to-day as Chief Executive Officer at Commonwealth Fusion Systems Bob’s graduate work at MIT researching new technologies to solve fundamental challenges with fusion Superconductors, their applications, and how Bob has significantly contributed to their productization The mechanisms that enable superconductors to operate at very high temperatures Why only 3 of over 100,000 superconductors have been commercialized How collaboration between academics and industrialists is helping to drive fusion technology into the marketplace Bob’s mission to expedite superconductivity commercialization so that it can b...
2018-11-2146 min