Middle Tech

A decommissioned coal plant in Clinton, Tennessee is on track to become the site of America's first commercial stellarator fusion reactor.In this episode, Tony Williams — Executive Sponsor of the Infinity Project at the Tennessee Valley Authority — joins us to share how TVA is partnering with Type One Energy to build a proof-of-concept fusion machine inside the retired Bull Run fossil plant, with a full-scale 400-500 megawatt power plant to follow.We toured the facility and discussed what's actually changed to make fusion viable now — from Oak Ridge's exascale supercomputer cutting year-long calculations down to a single day, to advances in manufacturing and material science. Tony breaks down the economics of fusion vs. conventional generation, why TVA chose the stellarator over the tokamak, and how the project is being de-risked through a coalition of partners including Type One Energy, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the DOE, and the University of Tennessee. We also explore what it means to repur