science

Not Mr. Fusion, but a modest industrial facility that could fit in an industrial park rather than the very large ITER which has its own complex. The ARC reactor design from commonwealth fusion is expected to have a major radius of 3.3m whereas ITER has a major radius of 6.2m. That might not sound like a big difference, but material costs and supporting systems cost roughly scale with volume which is a factor of 8 difference.

https://youtu.be/fKREB8IvCbs?t=25m33s

Here's an old, but good talk on the motivation for this proof of concept. I linked the most relevant time, but the entire presentation is worth watching if you find it interesting.

Personally, I find this success to be way more exciting than the NIF breakeven shots. Those were neat milestones, but don't get us closer to a feasible commercial design. This REBCO magnet demonstration makes commercial fusion a possibility in a timescale that could matter.

Looks like we've been making this stuff since 2006 and at decent enough volumes since then.

About 10 km of REBCO was delivered by SuperPower that year in the world’s first manufacturing demonstration to construct a 30 m long power transmission cable that was installed in the power grid

source

20 Kelvin, which still requires substantial cryogenic cooling systems but is much easier to maintain than 4 Kelvin liquid helium.

20 kelvins. It’s “high temperature” but only compared to the usual 4 kelvins needed in previous designs. (This isn’t another sketchy “room temperature” superconductor claim where the media is going to go ape shit and then we’re all going to be disappointed in a few weeks.)