Helion Energy to demonstrate net electricity production by 2024

[usesbiggerwords]

Unless they've been operating right at the margin with no engineering factor built in, any healthy margin should absorb a 1% perturbation of the system easily enough. I mean, that is the whole point of this, to capture the energy of those charged particles and return it back to the system via magnetic recapture. I don't think they would have made it this far if the FRCs were that sensitive to disturbance.

[Skipjack]

1) Stability of the FRC during the fusion stage: Starting with a 10^22 - 10^23 m(-3) ion density, 20-30 keV ion temp, D-3He FRC. If 1% undergo fusion, that will create 10^20 - 10^21 high speed charged particles, directionally isotropic at birth (I think). Will that perturbe the FRC structure? I imagine that Helion has already simulated (or at least tried to) this stage. It would be nice to know what they have to say about it.

Considering that Trenta was at least close to being suitable for D-T electricity production already, I would say no. To the best of my understanding, the energy of the particles is transferred to the FRC and that drives the expansion of the FRC (which they want). With D-He3 they are actually getting some more out of it, according to their recent paper and they have not even factored that into their models yet.

2) Plasma energy capture: As I understand it, Helion tested some time ago direct conversion/recovery of FRC magnetic momentum into electricity, but this was done with small, low temp FRCs, where the movement of most particles is "in agreement" (purely toroidal). What happens when a significant portion of the particles move in random directions (once heated by fusion), and will that impact efficiency?

There are two factors to the energy recovery.
1. The input energy recovery, which recovers the energy still contained in the FRC. That FRC is still alive and well during energy recovery. That is extremely efficient, since the FRC is essentially a perfect magnet (Beta=1) in a vacuum with no friction. It should be near lossless. The 5% loss is in the magnets and to a lesser extent in the particles lost from confinement during the time of the pulse.

2. The recovery from the charged fusion products. They transfer their energy to the FRC and that in turn causes the FRC to expand with more energy than it had originally. They are still contained to some extent, at least.
That this sort of thing works is evident from other research as well. I mean Alpha- heating in Tokamaks is a thing too (and is self sustaining when "ignition" is achieved). That would be impossible if the fusion products just flew out of confinement without transferring their energy to the plasma.
To my understanding, they will also likely take a trajectory towards the mirror section and then towards the divertors at the ends. Since they are charged, some of that energy can also be recovered through the magnets on the way there and then I believe there is also a charge exchange happening at the divertor itself.

3. They can also recover some energy from gas, but it is a lot less efficient, maybe 50% (I might be off here). That is still better than a steam turbine and does not require any moving parts. That is essentially what Oliphant did in the 70ies and he got 62% with 1970ies transformer technology and switching, etc.

Even if the recovery from fusion products was just as efficient as a steam turbine (35 to 40%), it would still be better because it lowers capital cost, engineering for cooling cycles, etc, etc. And you still have the 95% efficient input energy recovery on top of that.
All that lowers cost and maintenance and other headaches. Steam turbines in caloric power plants need relatively frequent maintenance. In fission plants they are among the more maintenance intensive and costly things.

[charliem]

1) Stability of the FRC during the fusion stage: Starting with a 10^22 - 10^23 m(-3) ion density, 20-30 keV ion temp, D-3He FRC. If 1% undergo fusion, that will create 10^20 - 10^21 high speed charged particles, directionally isotropic at birth (I think). Will that perturbe the FRC structure?

Unless they've been operating right at the margin with no engineering factor built in, any healthy margin should absorb a 1% perturbation of the system easily enough.

The number of new particles is not the problem, but their energies. That 1% will carry as much, if not more, [thermal] energy that the remaining 99% (0.82 to 14.7 MeV per new ion).

I don't think they would have made it this far if the FRCs were that sensitive to disturbance.

That's the thing, as far as we know Helion has not yet made any test anywhere near this regime.

Using the size of the capacitor bank as guide, Venti's FRCs contained near 1 MJ of energy once compressed, and produced a fraction of 1 J from fusions. Trenta's FRCs should be a few MJs, and if my extrapolation is right, generated tens of joules per shot (with D-D).

It they had tried burning D-T (which at the 8 keV ion temp they reached is ~750 times more reactive than D-D), they would have a clue, but they didn't, or at least Helion's web says they didn't (which confuses me because Dr. Kirtley is shown in one of the videos from last year with a small tank of pre-mixed D-T in his hands, about 30 STP liters, I think he said).

1) Stability of the FRC during the fusion stage: Starting with a 10^22 - 10^23 m(-3) ion density, 20-30 keV ion temp, D-3He FRC. If 1% undergo fusion, that will create 10^20 - 10^21 high speed charged particles, directionally isotropic at birth (I think). Will that perturbe the FRC structure?

Considering that Trenta was at least close to being suitable for D-T electricity production already, I would say no. To the best of my understanding, the energy of the particles is transferred to the FRC and that drives the expansion of the FRC (which they want).

I've not yet read any clear explanation of how this direct energy recovery is supposed to work, so this is my [probably wrong] take:

The electromagnets around Helion's reactor, plus the FRC plasma inside, act like a kind of transformer. To increase the amount of recoverable energy, this plasma current has to grow, but if the heating caused by fusions induce chaotic movement, this would not make the bulk current higher.

Now, if that's not the mechanism, what is?

[Skipjack]

It they had tried burning D-T (which at the 8 keV ion temp they reached is ~750 times more reactive than D-D), they would have a clue, but they didn't, or at least Helion's web says they didn't (which confuses me because Dr. Kirtley is shown in one of the videos from last year with a small tank of pre-mixed D-T in his hands, about 30 STP liters, I think he said).

Trenta did indeed have a D-T campaign but Helion has not published the results yet. I am not sure whether they ever will (for competitive reasons). From what I understand they were at least very close, if not better than they would need to produce small amounts of net electricity. That is why Polaris will have a "high Q" D-T campaign as well and potentially before the D-He3 campaign, even. To the best of my understanding the energy from the Alpha particles alone would be enough for net electricity (though not a power plant). So no need to use the neutrons fro a demo. Though people at Helion do not like it for electricity producing power plants. They still want to do it first to proof they can and because it is actually easier than D-He3 for a test campaign.

The electromagnets around Helion's reactor, plus the FRC plasma inside, act like a kind of transformer. To increase the amount of recoverable energy, this plasma current has to grow, but if the heating caused by fusions induce chaotic movement, this would not make the bulk current higher.

I tried to give my take on this earlier.
You seem to assume that the fusion products can not be confined at all, that their movement is chaotic despite a magnetic field still working on them and that they do not transfer their energy to the FRC but just move through it and hit the walls. I am not sure whether those are good assumptions.

Oliphant's paper is an OK reference to read for something done in the 70ies. He got 62% from Alphas with 70ies transformer and switching technology and a different plasma configuration. Just the fact that Helion are using FRCs should already bring a pretty big improvement. Add modern transformers and switching technology and you can improve on this even further.

Also note that to the best of my understanding, the energy extraction from the charged fusion products is not going to be as efficient as the input energy recovery, but it will be very efficient. Helion will know the exact numbers after Polaris last campaign. As I said before, even if it was just as efficient as a steam power plant, it would still give Helion an economic advantage. But again, I expect them to be at least 50% better than that based on Oliphant and more likely closer to double that, maybe more. Now for a potential D-T power plant (or D-D-T if it was also a He3- breeder) a steam plant (in addition to the direct recovery) would make sense.

[charliem]

Trenta did indeed have a D-T campaign but Helion has not published the results yet. I am not sure whether they ever will (for competitive reasons).

Thank you Skipjack, very interesting. I just rechecked their website to confirm that my memory was accurate, and yes, that data point is still not there.

Helion is in their absolute right to tell as much or as little as they want, but I fear all this secrecy may harm them. Being a private enterprise, with only private investors, they may be able to get away with it. Then, they may not. Anyway, the contrast with most other fusion startups is marked.

The electromagnets around Helion's reactor, plus the FRC plasma inside, act like a kind of transformer. To increase the amount of recoverable energy, this plasma current has to grow, but if the heating caused by fusions induce chaotic movement, this would not make the bulk current higher.

You seem to assume that the fusion products can not be confined at all, that their movement is chaotic despite a magnetic field still working on them and that they do not transfer their energy to the FRC but just move through it and hit the walls. I am not sure whether those are good assumptions.

No, that's not it. I'll try to explain myself a bit better.

Any charged particle, even one with energy in the MeV range, won't move in anything resembling a straight line when subjected to a strong magnetic field. In Polaris (B=15 T), outside the FRC separatrix even a 14 MeV T ion has a gyroradius of less than 2 cm, so they won't get to the chamber walls easily. No, they will criss-cross the reaction chamber many times, in and out of the FRC, transferring some of their energy to electrons and other ions, in random directions.

Now, as I understand it, a FRC can be described as two populations of charged particles moving in opposite [generally toroidal] directions, one followed by the electrons, the other by the ions. This non-random movement means this FRC carries a well defined plasma current.

Now, intuitively, I'd say that when the high energy T mentioned above (or any other ion born from fusions) accelerate electrons and ions in random directions, the global current carried by the plasma is not affected, because by average the same number of particles will be accelerated in one toroidal direction than in the oposite.

Of course my intuition may well be wrong, but until disproved it makes me wonder about the effects of this on FRC structure and energy recovery.

I'll re-read Oliphant's paper. Maybe this time I'll understand the recovery mechanism a bit better.

[Skipjack]

Thank you Skipjack, very interesting. I just rechecked their website to confirm that my memory was accurate, and yes, that data point is still not there.

I know it is not on the website. I assume that Helion have their reasons for that.

Helion is in their absolute right to tell as much or as little as they want, but I fear all this secrecy may harm them. Being a private enterprise, with only private investors, they may be able to get away with it. Then, they may not. Anyway, the contrast with most other fusion startups is marked.

Their investors know everything of course. I assume their first customers do too. But that there are NDAs in place that prevent them from talking. Sam Altman has been known to occasionally leak something (at least once, he deleted his post in a public forum later).

in random directions.

That is the part I dispute.

[Skipjack]

New Helion Energy Newsletter:

https://mailchi.mp/helionenergy/coils-c ... -customers

We are working to get Polaris built as quickly as possible, with an aim of having the full machine together early next year. Over the past three months, the work our team has been doing to prepare for Polaris over the last year has really started coming together. We’re seeing full machine sections come together and production-quality coils assembled while needed components are arriving daily. A recap of some of our most important recent progress:

Formation sections
Both Polaris formation sections have been assembled and pulse tested. Once outfitted with their quartz tube vacuum vessel, they will be ready for installation on Polaris.

Compression coils
We have successfully machined, assembled, and pulse tested our first Polaris compression coil. This was a massive feat for our team, requiring hours of machining, precision alignment, and careful testing. We’re now in full production mode for our remaining Polaris compression coils (with peak field greater than 15T!).

Capacitor kitchen
Output in our capacitor kitchen has remained strong over the last few months. Our capacitor team is now manufacturing capacitors for Polaris’ divertor section, while continuing to build up long-term manufacturing capabilities for machines beyond Polaris. You can see finished capacitor windings in the image above.

Nucor agreement
We announced last month a new collaboration with Nucor, which is the first partnership of its kind. Together, we are working to deploy a 500 MW fusion power plant at a Nucor steelmaking facility. As part of this agreement, Nucor invested $35 million in Helion, and we are working together to finalize details of our collaboration with the appropriate governments and regulators.

Journal of Fusion Energy
Dr. Milroy and I published a paper in July on the scaling of compression of FRC fusion plasmas in the Journal of Fusion Energy (JOFE). Through this paper, we outline why deuterium-helium-3 FRC fusion plasmas are ideal for commercial fusion electricity generation. If you’re interested in checking out more of our technical resources, you can find them on our website’s updated Technology page.

Altogether, our team continues to push our ability to do something the world has never done before. We are fully focused on getting electricity to the grid as soon as we can, and the work we’re now doing on Polaris is crucial for that mission. If you’re interested in joining our mission, please apply now.


David
Co-Founder & CEO

[Skipjack]

Helion got the cables for Polaris delivered recently. 1000 km worth of cabling! That is a lot of cables.

Received a massive shipment of cable - over a megameter in total! Our team has meticulously hipot tested every 500-meter spool, ensuring they're all set for installation on Polaris.

HelionCabling.jpg (91.49 KiB) Viewed 1073 times

https://x.com/Helion_Energy/status/1715 ... 02055?s=20

[mvanwink5]

And high voltage tested them already.

We desperately need to take every bit out of the schedule possible. Helion seems to not miss anything after their experience with building so many prototypes. News from Helion and Zap will shake the world energy tree.

[Carl White]

From Twitter:

Testing continues!

Yeah! Working through shakedown tests always leads to a few fun challenges. Early we had some issues with control system data readback, but now we are back up and running, getting to full magnetic field strength with plasma!

[Skipjack]

To be clear, this is the formation test and not the actual Polaris machine, which is still under construction. The formation test does help them test things, learn and reduce the amount of bugs they will encounter with Polaris early on though.

[mvanwink5]

Received a massive shipment of cable - over a megameter in total! Our team has meticulously hipot tested every 500-meter spool, ensuring they're all set for installation on Polaris.

They just got their magnet wire so lots of work. I was surprised that they make their own magnet coils.

[usesbiggerwords]

They just got their magnet wire so lots of work. I was surprised that they make their own magnet coils.

I'm not. With this kind of experimental engineering, you want to leave as little to chance as possible. Plus if something goes wrong, the turnaround time is much faster.

[mvanwink5]

There are many motor repair shops that specialize in making coils including vacuum epoxy impregnation of the coils. Any big city can be expected to have one or more such shops. Capacitor manufacturing is more specialized, so making their own is understandable.

[ladajo]

Rewind shops are certainly an option. The limitation would likely be in the available winding jigs. They may well need to create a custom jig. However, once made, it is from that point on available for use. More importantly, they have the bake ovens and other infrastructure required for durable large coils. Often overlooked in the hobby/hobby experimentalist space is the need to fix coil wires into rigid structures to prevent flexing and movement during use, which in turn creates increasing risks for insulation degradation and coil failures.