“overnight, it basically changed the cost per watt of a fusion reactor by a factor of almost 40 in one day”
MIT and Commonwealth Fusion Systems hit 20 tesla with a 20,000-pound magnet in September 2021. The detailed papers came out only now, “now that patent protection is in place.” The bold move was stripping the insulation off the superconducting tape, which skeptics in the field expected to fail. A magnet that works is not a power plant that works, and no fusion plant has ever produced more energy than it consumed.