Talk-Polywell.org

yeah, that makes sense I guesstimate D-He3 breakeven around 12T given Kirtley's stated B^3.77 scaling I did ask if they could drop a power emoji when it happens (I don't need details and will take them entirely at their word) but again, if it was my billions on the line I'd delay that announcement a...

But I think that the market will be big enough to support not just one, but several fusion companies, all with their own strengths. I think that the next 3 years will see fusion booming in a way that few people (maybe the most optimistic ones here) would have predicted. The dot com boom will be a m...

Just as a conversation starter, what does 50 MWe buy you in space? Science-fiction style high thrust ion/Hall thrusters? Mars in weeks instead of months? believe it depends on how much reaction mass you're willing to add in exchange for ISP iirc at max ISP, a stream of 50MWe directed MeV fusion out...

2:25 Spacecraft near Earth use solar power, but in deep space that gets impractical. Nuclear power uses fuel with high energy density. However, nuclear generators using a steam cycle are hard to cool. Siting is one of the biggest issues for all electric generation plants, not just space. Of the man...

jrvz wrote: ↑

Fri Dec 05, 2025 3:03 pm

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%

that's funny, 80% was actually my BOE/WAG a year or so ago... don't think they've given out a number before

New blog post by Helion: Measuring electricity production from fusion: Electrical diagnostics https://www.helionenergy.com/articles/measuring-electricity-production-from-fusion-electrical-diagnostics/ Thanks for alerting us to that new post, SJ. Not very informative, since they don't provide any ac...

it may be an act of unmitigated chutzpah, even hubris, but all indications are it's an honest (albeit audacious) business venture I don't know if you've been keeping up with the news, but it's to keep the OpenAI bubble from popping. that's a bit silly, Helion is worth $5B, OpenAI is more like $750B...

everything they are doing is exactly what you would do if you were already sure the physics works ! Or if you wanted people to think that you were already sure the physics works. in this scenario, who are they trying to convince by building a factory? the public? who cares what they think? it's not...

I asked the google AI whether the 95 % energy recirculation number was a proven fact. The answer I got was: lol of course it's not proven, it was a comment he made last week about a proprietary technology I have clients with trade secret manufacturing processes dating back to the 1950s, none of whi...

yes, Helion looks strange because they aren't building a fusion reactor, like everyone else is doing they're building a fusion reactor factory their goal is to pump out 50MWe units like aircraft that seems absurdly optimistic because almost no one has been able to a plasma ignited for more than a fe...

Well, this is for experiments right now. Polaris is meant to demonstrate both: Direct electricity from fusion and the production of He3 and Tritium in a way that it can be used for fuel (e.g. He3 separated from He4). But, I presume the numbers are relatively small for all of that. Commercial plants...

Guys! He3 is not that big of a problem. You can buy it on the free market at less cost than the Tritium. IIRC, Helion already has the He3 they need for their campaign. That said, Polaris is still meant to demonstrate He3 production (and all that goes with it) at scale. sure, but as pointed out abov...

Just to wrap my head around the cost of D-He3 reactions in initial testing, i tried some reverse-engineered back of the envelope calculations for Orion (or maybe more likely Polaris), assuming 100MJ of harvestable ⁴He (alpha particle) energy, but 50% harvest efficiency factor due to all loses (e.g....

I can’t understand why Elon Musk talks about Tokamak first wall heat problem as representative of Fusion (latest pod cast, at the end, around 1hr25min), when Helion Energy converts plasma power via magnetic dynamics. As Kirtley pointed out just the other day, Elon is correct! In fact, Helion's reac...

Yes! Size of plant & heat rejection criteria on siting & permitting cannot be overstated, this is a huge factor. Even for space stations, heat rejection is a major issue (after SpaceX's success we need to expand our use geography to space). Somewhat counterintuitively, heat rejection is actually ha...