Helion Energy to demonstrate net electricity production by 2024

[Skipjack]

Except for the Augustine commission Obama's advisors weren't all that great, I am afraid (not that that was different under any other president).

[Skipjack]

There is a new blog post on Helion's website.
https://www.helionenergy.com/articles/e ... ce-d-he-3/

It does not provide any new information for those of us who have been paying attention and is a pretty light read.

BUT, the X- thread to it has a some nice discussions, I think:

https://x.com/dekirtley/status/1806370806298972645

I think you can get to energy (and maybe electricity) break even in D-D at high Beta. But, it will make far less sense for commercial electricity (ie more expensive) than adding back in the He-3.

Why we look at pure D-D is for a Helium-3 fuel facility. Even just barely (or slightly negative) electricity is still super valuable.

[Carl White]

The start of a Polaris vacuum vessel being removed from its spinning mold.

These large tubes are made from fused silica (quartz) and will soon be machined into final vacuum vessels. Each end of Polaris will have a large tube, and our team is making several to select the best performers.

It'd be interesting to see a Helion timeline for construction.

[TallDave]

It'd be interesting to see a Helion timeline for construction.

from media reports it sounds like they will fire it up sometime around the end of the year

there's a lot of "why aren't there peer-reviewed papers etc" skepticism from the lab coat community, but the patent filings make me wonder just how far they got with Trenta

if you had a device that made cheap electricity would you tell everyone all the details of exactly how it worked to prove it was real, or just sell as many as you can before someone else copies it?

Polaris should almost immediately outperform not just every other fusion reactor ever built, but pretty much every one currently still on paper as well

any other effort would be 100% focused on that machine

instead Helion acts more like a company getting ready to mass-produce power plants as fast as possible

like they already know it works

[Skipjack]

I agree (so do the guys at Helion). Look at this!

The Chinese are essentially copying CFS, Helion (and Tokamak Energy) and they have a really good chance at overtaking the US industry leaders within the next few years. Scary!

https://archive.is/2024.07.08-030220/ht ... e-4452d3be

[crowberry]

Helion Energy is on schedule according to their statements in the following two articles. The article Nuclear Fusion Pushes to Reach Commercial Power Plant Stage published on June 27, 2024 states:

“If successful, Polaris will be the first fusion machine to demonstrate electricity production,” Helion says. It is on schedule to operate fully by year end, according to the firm.

The article Inslee energized from visit to Everett fusion firms published on July 10, 2024 states:

“We’re on schedule and working as fast as we can,” Helion CEO David Kirtley told visitors. “We’ve figured out how to do more as fast as possible.”

https://www.enr.com/articles/58879-nucl ... lant-stage

https://www.heraldnet.com/news/inslee-e ... ion-firms/

[charliem]

I'm quite optimistic about next year D-T campaign with Polaris, but also a bit worried.

If my BOE calcs are even remotely accurate, they'll need to be very cautions not to blow the machine.

Unless some new, unexpected instabilities pop up, Dr. Kirtleys own formulas suggest that a 50-50 D-He3 mix, under a Bvac of 15 T, might generate about 5 GW/m³ (instantaneous).

We don't know compressed plasma volume, nor pulse time, but we can always play with the numbers, if even just for fun:

0.1 m³ and 0.001 sec would result in 0.5 MJ generated per pulse.

Not much compared with the 50 MJ stored in the capacitor bank, but not that far either. If they are really capable of recovering 95% of the magnetic energy, plus a good chunk from the fusion energy, producing net electricity doesn't seem to be that far.

What worries me a bit is that at 20 keV D-T is more than 100 times more reactive than D-He. When I substitute D-T for D-3He, the same formula say that instantaneous power production jumps to over half a TERAwatt.

I hope they are very, very cautious.

Of course I'm sure they know this, and will take the necessary precautions. Just decreasing the amount of Tritium is enough. According to the same formulas, a 99%-1% D-T mix should generate about 22 GW/m³ (instantaneous). Still high but more manageable. And the proportions can be tweaked further.

By the way, if Polaris works as intended, and no new instabilities are revealed, there is the potential to not just get Qsci barely over one, like NIF did, but to blow it up to the roof.

Interesting times for fusion, indeed.

[Skipjack]

Helion expects about 1MW/m2 of wall loading on average.

[charliem]

1 MW/m² for Polaris, or for the prototype? I wonder how high of a peek it will be able to bear.

I remember Kirtley in a video presenting Trenta's results, saying that one of their design goals was to keep power loading on the first wall (X-rays plus neutrons) under 10 MW/m², although he didn't clarify what machine would that be.

Given Polaris' apparent dimensions, its reaction chamber inner wall can't be more a few m². That means that, while fusing D-He3, instantaneous power is going to exceed that, and with D-T they'll have to be very cautious not to exceed it on average.

If Kirtley's equations hold, figures for Polaris are going to be quite impressive. A triple product just one order of magnitud under ITER's planned number. Ion densities in the 10^22 to 10^23 m⁻³ range, plasma pressures up to 900 bar (that's the pressure 9.000 meters under the sea !!!), etc.

I'd put a visit to see this machine on the same category as watching a Starship launch.

One can always dream

[Maui]

Altman’s $3.7 Billion Fusion Startup Leaves Scientists Puzzle

Aside from the doubts purported to be shared by company insiders and industry doubters, the article does cite a Oct 14 goal for Polaris completion.

How long after that would we have indication on whether Polaris will meet the net electricity goal? Assuming they do, will they publish a paper on that, or will we need to assume they are telling truth?

[Stefank]

this is the lamest agenda driven article you can imagine
the author has an absolute ax to grind, their points are pathetic while the animosity of the "journalism" is striking
It's like reading something written by Delores Umbridge, but in real life!

[mvanwink5]

Long article, paid by the word vs content? Yes, lots of clickbait acid comments, dirty laundry rumors, (maybe not given a tour after a request). Did this article come out after ITER reported delays & excessive expensive made it predictably DOA? Backlash?

[TallDave]

1 MW/m² for Polaris, or for the prototype? I wonder how high of a peek it will be able to bear.

there was a convo about wall loads upthread, they appear to be expecting the load to be concentrated at the divertors due to the shape of the plasma

but now that you mention it I'm not sure how D-T looks at Te/Ti = .1, it is absent from the graph

but I think we can safely assume they hope to run D-He3 by the end of the year, since you can't convert D-T products to electricity via the virtual dynamo

[charliem]

... but I think we can safely assume they hope to run D-He3 by the end of the year, since you can't convert D-T products to electricity via the virtual dynamo

How sure are we about that.

With a 1:1 D-He3 mix at 20 keV, more or less 8% of the energy goes to the neutrons, leaving ~92% for the ions. In contrast, with a D-T mix the proportions are 80% and 20%. Quite less for ions, but not zero.

On the other hand, at 20 keV D-T is 100+ times more reactive than D-He3.

Let's say that a certain machine can generate 1 MW burning D-He3 (at 20 keV); from that, 0.92 MW would be in ions. Switching to D-T it'd generate over 100 MW, and the fraction in ions would grow to 20+ MW.

So, if Helion's electromagnetic energy capture works, with D-T they'll have 20 times more to draw from than burning D-He3.

Is there a problem I'm not seeing?

[Skipjack]

First of all, let me comment on the article. I hear that it misquoted (purposely?) quite a few people.
Secondly, all the articles "presents" is literally hearsay.
There is literally nothing solid in it. "Some people say" sounds like Tucker Carlson (and most of FOX Noise) to me, LOL.

From what I hear, Helion will start out with D-D, then D-He3 and finally will do D-T. The reason is that D-T is the most damaging to the machine. So they will likely do it right before the first major revision or even after that.

Thinking about it, the article is actually good for Helion in a way. Bloomberg clearly put a lot of effort into finding dirt on Helion and the only thing they could come up with was some alleged HR issues claimed by disgruntled former employees. No one saying "This can never work" or something like this. The worst employees have said is that the schedule for Polaris is tight (I agree with that, but that is not really a major issue as delays on complex projects like this are quite normal, SpaceX is always late, e.g.).