Talk-Polywell.org

There are parallels between the "Texatron" and Helion's machines (D-He3 reaction, pulsed operation, direct energy recovery), but in a toroidal geometry. Fair enough. The Texatron white paper cites the presentation "The Texatron Concept for creation and confinement of hot toroidal plasmas" that Dr. B...

I read somewhere that Helion has a goal of $.01/kWh. Is that (still) right?
Have they provided an estimate of the capital cost that we can compare to fission ($5-10/W, from what I read), gas ($2-3/W), solar (~$1.60/W for utility scale) or onshore wind ($1-1.7/W)?

Good question. I have never really understood how the fuel cycle would work, if for every D-He3 fusion you need two D-D fusions (because half of the time you get tritium instead of He3), and D-D fusion has such a small cross section. I am guessing they were happy to hear about the recent announcemen...

Dimitar Popov of the Society of Aerospace and Nuclear Engineers has published a 50 page report "Advanced Computing in Fusion" at https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Dimitar-Popov-3/publication/400385870_ADVANCED_COMPUTING_IN_FUSION/links/6981adf464ca8a382088cdda/ADVANCED-COMPUTING-IN-FUSION.pdf . I...

6 m/day isn't much. Different drag might account for it. Do we know for certain that the satellite and its twin maintain the same attitude?

I have not read the paper, but I will throw caution to the winds and speculate... When two identical, coherent light beams travel in opposite directions (counter-propagating), they interfere to create a standing wave pattern. There will be nodes at helf-wavelength intervals, If the beams are vertica...

The D-D reactions will yield both T and He3. Can the device be operated so they get both D-T and D-He3 reactions at the same rate, so they need not separate the two gases? Though I suppose they plan to separate the gasses so they can sell the T to someone else, and minimize the amount of D-T fusion ...

I see the fusion cross sections for D-T and D-3He peak at about 60 and 250 keV. Have they said what temperatures their demo and power production reactors will reach?

$60/MWh would be $.06/kWh, which sounds good. However, that estimate was in 2014. Have they revised it since then?

Helion has private funding, and little incentive to share their data with the competition, so Grok doesn't have much to work with. I think they'll succeed, though I am not willing to bet on the timescale. My worries: - It will take a lot of tuning. And each successive device will take a lot of tunin...

Or: The concept in "Nuclear propulsion through direct conversion of fusion energy: The fusion driven rocket" by Slough, Pancotti, Kirtley, Pihl, and Pfaff https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20160010608/downloads/20160010608.pdf uses a pulsed fusion machine more similar to Helion's machine but with ...

For fusion propulsion, you might look at the report "Fusion-Enabled Pluto Orbiter and Lander" https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/niac_2016_phasei_thomas_fusiontopluto_tagged.pdf by Stephanie Thomas. She estimated "2.5 to 5 N of thrust for each megawatt of fusion power, reaching a specif...

Much of the show was background information. My notes from latter part of the interview: 1:41 With FRC, one can recover the input energy at 90 or 95%, and the fusion energy at 80% 1:43 D-T fusion requires about 100 million degrees. D-3He requires a higher temperature (200 or 300 million degrees), wh...

I can't imagine a flywheel being practical, at the very least because it would require a very high power motor/generator. The twin assembly sounds more interesting. I would require slowing down the "expansion" phase of one machine so it could supply power for the FRC formation, acceleration, and com...

They're emphasising their efficiency, which as a physicist agree is important, but I can't help thinking that it's much more important to eliminate the cost and delay of obtaining and installing all those heat exchangers, turbines, and generators. Speaking of supply chains, has anyone at Helion spec...