[2][7] The name and design were inspired by the fictional arc reactor built by Tony Stark, who attended MIT in the comic books.
The result was a machine about half the linear dimension of ITER, running at 9 tesla and producing more than 500 megawatt (MW) of fusion power.
"[8] The ARC design incorporates major departures from traditional tokamaks, while retaining conventional D–T (deuterium - tritium) fuel.
To achieve a near tenfold increase in fusion power density, the design makes use of REBCO superconducting tape for its toroidal field coils.
[2] The official SPARC brochure displays a YBCO cable section that is commercially available and that should allow fields up to 30 T.[9] ARC is planned to be a 270 MWe tokamak reactor with a major radius of 3.3 m, a minor radius of 1.1 m, and an on-axis magnetic field of 9.2 T.[2] The design point has a fusion energy gain factor Qp ≈ 13.6 (the plasma produces 13 times more fusion energy than is required to heat it), yet is fully non-inductive, with a bootstrap fraction of ~63%.
[1] Most of the solid blanket materials that surround the fusion chamber in conventional designs are replaced by a fluorine lithium beryllium (FLiBe) molten salt that can easily be circulated/replaced, reducing maintenance costs.
The large temperature range over which FLiBe is liquid permits blanket operation at 900 K with single-phase fluid cooling and a Brayton cycle.