Fusion energy could power the entire world, but progress in creating a commercial system is time-consuming, costly and incredibly difficult.

However, researchers have now designed a new fusion reactor that would be cheaper and smaller than ongoing constructions, and they say it could be built in a decade.

The new concept design, created by scientists at MIT, is said to “greatly simplify tokomak reactor design,” which could lead to fusion power becoming a reality in the near future.

Creating fusion energy involves heating up matter to high temperatures to allow the particles to interact with each other and produce extra energy. Magnetic fields are used within a tokamak to confine the plasma used in the fusion process.

The MIT researchers say new superconductors, which can be used to create coils with a stronger magnetic field than is currently available, can contain the plasma in a smaller device that is currently envisioned. This would make fusion plants cheaper to run and faster to build.

“Fusion energy is certain to be the most important source of electricity on Earth in the 22nd century, but we need it much sooner than that to avoid catastrophic global warming,” said David Kingham who works in fusion but is independent to the research.

“This paper shows a good way to make quicker progress.” He said the new design “shows that going to higher magnetic fields, an MIT speciality, can lead to much smaller (and hence cheaper and quicker-to-build) devices.”

The researchers say their design could provide energy to around 100,000 people and MIT researcher Brandon Sorbom said the new technological advancements would allow this to happen.

“The much higher magnetic field allows you to achieve much higher performance,” Sorbom said.

At present, ITER, a European project to build the most powerful fusion reactor, is being conducted in France. However, the researchers say their new design would be half the size of ITER, be quicker to build and produce the same power.

The current world record for energy produced from fusion power is held by the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy, in the UK, which has two reactors.

Last year the director of the centre – in the video below – told Factor that he believes fusion power will provide 50-50% of our energy in the future, but it will be some time before the technology is commercialised.

The researchers’ paper says that the ARC reactor would involve “innovative plasma physics solutions” and high temperature superconductors would allow “high magnetic fields and jointed magnets”.

“The affordable, robust, compact (ARC) reactor is the product of a conceptual design study aimed at reducing the size, cost, and complexity of a combined fusion nuclear science facility (FNSF) and demonstration fusion Pilot power plant,” the abstract to the paper says.

Kingham said: “the next step … would be to refine the design and work out more of the engineering details, but already the work should be catching the attention of policymakers, philanthropists and private investors.”

The work of the scientists was presented in the paper: ARC: A compact, high-field, fusion nuclear science facility and demonstration power plant with demountable magnets – available in Fusion Engineering and Design.