Talk-Polywell.org

FRC & external coils act like a transformer, power flows in a controllable direction, controlled by the electronics.

Good interview with Anthony Pancotti, one of the co- founders of Helion. Not much new in there for those of us who have been watching closely, but worth listening into! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-waSahWSNc&t=2s Key takeaway for me, ‘Helion plant production goal is 1GW plant per day.’ Awesome...

SJ: I actually think (as much as it will annoy me and all of us) that Helion should go back into stealth mode. Electric power growth need is insane. Space solar, Commercial Fusion push are hard to digest. Solar is old tech but space launch cost about to plunge makes it a breakthrough, yet there is p...

I’d say this latest performance announcement is confirmation that Helion Polaris upgrade from Trenta has proven their stepwise learning on machine design. Next stop is going from 150M C to 200M C for He3 - Deut. 2028 commercial is fast approaching. David Kirtley has a great team.

Avalanche Energy’s relatively small funding needs dovetails with their iterative speed ($29M!), but why the need for superconductors?

Key points in Avalanche Energy’s goal of small size are put into perspective by comparison to categorized Fusion industry approaches: *Helion deals with stability by keeping fusion shorter than instability dynamics, but size is pushed due to huge acceleration, plasma compression solely by magnetics....

https://x.com/ChiefFusioneer

super vid, Andrew Côté did an interview with Robin Langtry of Avalanche Fusion on January 7. Avalanche is up to 40kv after iteratively solving many problems, huge breakthroughs. exciting progress. I put them up there with Zap Energy. Changed my view.

I suspect Helion’s #1 milestone is not net electric, but determining operating parameters so they know what to build for the commercial machine. Commercial machine timeline is what matters.
Why? Funding is not dependent on crossing net electric, everything Fusion is all about funding.

At this point Helion Energy clearly differentiates its approach in the conversion to electric power which especially effects heat rejection & conversion capital cost plus siting, with economic, regulatory, & location restriction being flow on significant factors. Of course length of time required fo...

crowberry, thank you for that link. Among all those records, density and pressure stand out. To get there, we commissioned a new three-electrode fusion device called FuZE-3 There are many parallel parts of Zap Energy’s fusion plant that require meeting new engineering challenges (like the liquid met...

Nuclear fission plant components (reactor vessels, turbines, generators, heaters, condensers, cooling towers, etc) are extremely long lead items with no shortcuts, in sharp contrast to the components of Helion’s fusion generator. The point is time to make, deliver, install Helion’s fusion generators...

Also, for Helion a lot of the money went into building the machines that build the machines. They have entire manufacturing lines already (and are expanding). Exactly, plus the commercial facility under construction in Washington for the Microsoft power project. As to the missed 2025 net electric g...

Skipjack wrote: ↑

Wed Dec 24, 2025 8:53 pm

I seriously doubt that Helion's power plants, once mass produced, will cost that much. Otherwise, they would never reach a reasonable ROI at 1 cent/kWh.

Agree! Cost extrapolated from prototypes vs cost of mass manufactured machines are bound to be significantly different in cost.

I thought I would use Grok to do a comparison. I thought it was interesting: TAE fusion approach now uses only NBI for plasma formation, what use of external magnetic fields does it use if any? TAE Technologies' current fusion approach, demonstrated in their "Norm" configuration, relies solely on ne...

their (TAE) power plants will be significantly larger (in terms of area) than Helion's. Yes, that is because of TAE's back end is steam turbine + generator + condenser heat to electric conversion, but for a retrofit fossil plant that is a sunk cost. OTH, Helion avoids the retrofit restriction with ...