The ARC fusion reactor (affordable, robust, compact) is a design for a compact fusion reactor developed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Plasma Science and Fusion Center (PSFC). ARC aims to achieve an engineering breakeven of three (to produce three times the electricity required to operate the machine). The key technical innovation is to use high-temperature superconducting magnets in place of ITER's low-temperature superconducting magnets. The proposed device would be about half the diameter of the ITER reactor and cheaper to build.
The ARC has a conventional advanced tokamak layout. ARC uses rare-earth barium copper oxide (REBCO) high-temperature superconductor magnets in place of copper wiring or conventional low-temperature superconductors. These magnets can be run at much higher field strengths, 23 T, roughly doubling the magnetic field on the plasma axis. The confinement time for a particle in plasma varies with the square of the linear size, and power density varies with the fourth power of the magnetic field, so doubling the magnetic field offers the performance of a machine 4 times larger. The smaller size reduces construction costs, although this is offset to some degree by the expense of the REBCO magnets.
The use of REBCO may allow the magnet windings to be flexible when the machine is not operational. This would allow them to be "folded open" to allow access to the interior of the machine. This would greatly lower maintenance costs, eliminating the need to perform maintenance through small access ports using remote manipulators. If realized, this could improve the reactor's capacity factor, an important metric in power generation costs.
The first machine planned to come from the project is a scaled-down demonstrator named SPARC (as Soon as Possible ARC). It is to be built by Commonwealth Fusion Systems, with backing led by Eni, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Khosla Ventures, Temasek, and Equinor.