Google and Commonwealth Fusion Systems (CFS) have revealed a partnership aimed at harnessing AI technology to facilitate the realization of clean, safe, and virtually limitless nuclear fusion energy. Nuclear fusion demands the stable containment of plasma within a fusion apparatus at temperatures soaring above 100 million degrees Celsius. Earlier, DeepMind successfully employed deep reinforcement learning to manage the magnets of a tokamak device and created the open-source plasma simulator, TORAX. Presently, CFS is in the process of building the SPARC compact tokamak device on the outskirts of Boston, USA, with anticipated completion by late 2026 and the goal of achieving 'net energy gain'. The collaboration between the two entities has already kicked off in three pivotal areas: Firstly, leveraging TORAX to carry out virtual experiments for SPARC to refine operational strategies; Secondly, utilizing AI techniques to delve into possible operational scenarios and pinpoint efficient and resilient routes for net energy production; And thirdly, crafting an 'AI pilot' to oversee SPARC operations in real-time, guaranteeing the safety of the device.
