Don’t Say ‘Nuclear’: Commonwealth Fusion CEO Seeks to Rebrand

A worker at the Commonwealth Fusion Systems campus in Devens, Massachusetts. Photo by Cassandra Klos /Photographer: Cassandra Klos/Blo

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(Bloomberg) — Commonwealth Fusion Systems faces a litany of challenges, from complex physics and difficult engineering to building a supply chain. But it’s also trying to solve one of the fusion industry’s biggest issues: getting people to drop using the word “nuclear” and its toxic associations.

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There are two main ways to harness the power of atoms. Nuclear fission captures energy from splitting relatively large atoms. Fusion is the opposite, tapping the power created when smaller atoms are fused together. 

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“The word ‘nuclear’ is shorthand for fission,” said Bob Mumgaard, the company’s chief executive officer. “And this isn’t fission.” 

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Commonwealth is one of the leaders in the effort to replicate the same process that powers stars, and create a clean source of abundant carbon-free electricity. The company raised $863 million in August, bringing its total about $3 billion. 

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Mumgaard expects it to reach a key milestone in late 2027, with a system that can generate more energy than needed to trigger a fusion reaction. He said the plant is around 70% complete. Commonwealth is also starting work on a Virginia facility that may be the first commercial fusion power plant, which Mumgaard said was between 5% and 10% finished. 

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Just don’t call the company’s machines “reactors,” Mumgaard stressed, because those are for fission power plants. 

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Fusion has yet to work outside of the lab, but investments in it have taken off in recent years. Commercial-scale fusion offers the promise of providing large amounts of carbon-free power, which is why the sector has garnered large amounts of funding from, among others, companies building data centers.

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If successful, fusion will also avoid another problem associated with traditional nuclear fission plants. Those facilities create toxic waste that will remain deadly for centuries, and pose the risk of meltdowns and radiation leaks. Mumgaard stresses that fusion systems do none of that. 

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“It really is a separate thing,” he said. 

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This isn’t the first time a new technology has attempted to distance itself from nuclear. Mumgaard compared fusion to MRI machines, which used to be known as “nuclear magnetic resonance imaging” devices. The word “nuclear” was dropped in an effort to avoid negative associations.

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“Nuclear in that context, because of the connotations that the word ‘nuclear’ carries from fission and weapons, has nothing to do with an MRI machine,” Mumgaard said. “And we think that’s the same with fusion.”

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