Fusion energy costs are indeed key to its eventual success. Those costs are deeply connected to a fusion company’s choice of architecture, where it’s critical not only that the eventual power plants can be economical, but most fundamentally, that a commercially relevant machine can actually work. That’s what we’re tackling with our SPARC machine outside Boston. Our project got a head start thanks to many years of collective operational experience that people have gained by running tokamaks around the world (to date over 1800 tokamak-years of operation across over 150 machines over the last 50+ years!). On top of that we add all our experience designing, manufacturing, constructing, commissioning, and operating SPARC. That work confirms our understanding of the physics, engineering, supply chain, performance, reliability, and cost. This collection of factors is the kind of knowledge that gets a company onto the cost curve so it can then scale up and drive down that cost curve. None of this is a slam dunk. But bear these points in mind when looking at the levelized cost of energy (LCOE) and fusion competitiveness: • Every other form of energy on the grid also went through this shift toward being economical. What might look routine today, like burning coal or fissioning uranium, was once at the cutting edge of what was technologically possible. • The widely cited LCOE analysis by the energy experts at @Lazard only recently began to address the added cost some energy sources face to ensure they're firm (predictably available). And even then their extra firming costs only include 4 hours of power from a battery or firm power from a nearby gas plant, neither of which is really clean, firm 24x7 power. • LCOE has been increasing for all forms of energy in recent years, and demand for energy also is soaring. • While the cost for power is represented well by LCOE, the value of that power can be quite different. This is especially true for power that’s both clean and firm, but fusion has other advantages, too. It’s also highly energy dense and therefore land efficient. It’s safe and siteable nearly anywhere, including close to demand, and therefore requires less transmission. It has essentially negligible costs from fuel that’s abundant, available nearly everywhere, and essentially limitless. It’s highly secure, providing energy not through some collected or purchased resource, which leads to fuel volatility costs and geopolitical capture, but rather from a technology that can be built, owned, and fully fueled from day one. #FusionEnergy #Energy