General Fusion in the news

Point out news stories, on the net or in mainstream media, related to polywell fusion.

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mvanwink5
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Re: General Fusion in the news

Post by mvanwink5 »

GF's investors are timid. They will front only the money needed to demonstrate what they need and no more. Their next machine will be the commercial machine.

Reminds me of the quote in 'Lord of the Rings' when Saruman asks Gandoff, 'What time do you think we have?' Implying that the time is much shorter than imagined. We will see if they have the time to go the safe route that they have taken.
Counting the days to commercial fusion. It is not that long now.

crowberry
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Re: General Fusion in the news

Post by crowberry »

mvanwink5 wrote:
Wed Sep 15, 2021 11:04 am
GF's investors are timid. They will front only the money needed to demonstrate what they need and no more. Their next machine will be the commercial machine.
I don't know about the timidity of the General Fusion investors, but there are physics and technological risks involved and those are the reasons why the demonstration prototype is being built. The scale has been chosen to diminish the economical costs and to also be able to show that the remaining problems can be solved.

The goal of reaching 10 % of the Lawson criterion sounds like a funding milestone that has been set once the scale of the machine was determined by the funding. The goal is probably rather conservative and chosen so that it is rather likely that they will meet it. If things go well then the machine might exceed that goal, but it could also be that they will have to struggle to reach that goal. GF has made a lot of simulation work to study how their concept works and tried to verify the simulations experimentally whenever possible. But still there could be problems seen with the prototype device that have not been described by the simulations. It will be really interesting to see the performance of the first device where GF puts together and integrates into a single machine all the tricks that they have developed over the past almost 20 years.

Giorgio
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Re: General Fusion in the news

Post by Giorgio »

mvanwink5 wrote:
Wed Sep 15, 2021 11:04 am
GF's investors are timid. They will front only the money needed to demonstrate what they need and no more. Their next machine will be the commercial machine.
I am also very puzzled by their target goal....
Reaching a 10% of Lawson criteria is something that reactors like Alcator-A/C and JT-60 did in the 80's.
Additionally we all know that the real struggle is not to get from 10% to 70 or 80%, but to get that last 20% to reach Break Even.
A society of dogmas is a dead society.

mvanwink5
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Re: General Fusion in the news

Post by mvanwink5 »

I suspect their reasoning is that the only requirement to go to commercial is proving the near full scale compression chamber, that the surface instabilities can be avoided. They have made a small scale device, have compared that to their computer models, and upon those results based their decision to go to their full integrated demonstration device.
Counting the days to commercial fusion. It is not that long now.

Giorgio
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Re: General Fusion in the news

Post by Giorgio »

I agree indeed that having a proof of principle of the compression chamber is essential, but i doubt that the data they will collect from reaching the 10% of Lawson criteria will be enough to build a mathematical model to validate the path to commercial fusion.
Maybe it will validate their actual math model, but in the last 20 years I cannot remember a single math model that was able to keep its validity when attempting to pass from 30%-40% to 60-70%, let alone to pass from 10% to commercial power generation.

I was really hoping that they had build a much more robust technical/theoretical base during these years of experiments to attempt break even in a pulsed state reactor as a proof of concept for a commercial fusion rector, but if they are still talking about 10%, well........
A society of dogmas is a dead society.

crowberry
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Re: General Fusion in the news

Post by crowberry »

General Fusion is moving their HQ to Vancouver International Airport on Sea Island. They plan to quadruple their staff in the next few years from the current number of 140 persons.
The new facility on Sea Island will host the corporate offices, many of its engineering labs and serve as the primary site for development of its fusion technology.
https://biv.com/article/2021/10/general ... -workforce

In addition to that they are establising U.S. headquarters in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Establishing presence in three different countries is something that the other fusion companies have not done so far.
https://generalfusion.com/2021/11/gener ... tennessee/

Skipjack
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Re: General Fusion in the news

Post by Skipjack »

That is indeed true. I think other companies should look into establishing footholds in other countries as well.

mvanwink5
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Re: General Fusion in the news

Post by mvanwink5 »

$130 M new financing round closed for GF.
It would seem that investors with deep pockets are catching on that Fusion is happening now and is the future for electric power.

As a reminder, Helion just got a huge boost to accelerate their Polaris program and push their objectives to net electric by 2024, so maybe COP26 presentations woke some people up.
Counting the days to commercial fusion. It is not that long now.

Carl White
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Re: General Fusion in the news

Post by Carl White »

Adding to what mvanwink5 posted:
General Fusion announced today it is closing an oversubscribed $130 million (USD) Series E funding round filled by a new syndicate of global investors. This financing, led by Temasek, significantly expands the company’s portfolio of institutional, sovereign, family office, and high net worth investors, providing the prelude to a large financing round being prepared for 2022.
https://financialpost.com/globe-newswir ... cing-round

Skipjack
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Re: General Fusion in the news

Post by Skipjack »

OK, so there is something I am wondering about that could change things significantly for General Fusion:
If you look into the Helion thread here, you might have noticed the Q(eng) to Q(sci) ratio calculations that I made there.
Now I am not as familiar with GF as I am with Helion, but those considerations could have an impact on what they are doing as well.
For one they do not have to convert the output energy to electricity and then back to mechanical energy to reset their pistons. Instead they directly use the mechanical energy to reset their pistons. So their losses for the recirculating power (though probably not as good as Helion's) could be a lot lower than say for Tokamaks. Helion is an extreme case, but for GF, it could also be a major consideration for overall plant efficiency.

Today I realized something else that could potentially play in their favor. The high ion to electron temperature ratio, which significantly reduces Bremsstrahlung losses. To may understanding, the ratio of Ti to Te is severely skewed in most pulsed approaches. I am not as familiar with GF as I am with Helion, so those of you who know and understand them better might want to chime in on this. IF they indeed have a high(er) Ti:Te, then their triple product requirement for Q(sci) > 1 could potentially be reduced further increasing the overall plant efficiency.

So their demonstration plant could potentially be a lot more significant than I originally assumed, even if their triple product is not quite as high as what their competitors are aiming for around the same time frame. That actually makes me quite a bit more excited about it!

mvanwink5
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Re: General Fusion in the news

Post by mvanwink5 »

Zap and GF have to go through a steam turbine so their big market is utility fossil retrofit. What makes Helion exciting to me is the short cut to powering aluminum foundries directly. Gas turbine peaker replacements are also a fast to market path for Helion.

The big question is red tape for all these fusion alternatives. IMO, regulatory burden could be a bigger issue than making a working machine. :roll:
Counting the days to commercial fusion. It is not that long now.

Skipjack
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Re: General Fusion in the news

Post by Skipjack »

mvanwink5 wrote:
Sun Dec 05, 2021 12:03 pm
Zap and GF have to go through a steam turbine so their big market is utility fossil retrofit. What makes Helion exciting to me is the short cut to powering aluminum foundries directly. Gas turbine peaker replacements are also a fast to market path for Helion.

The big question is red tape for all these fusion alternatives. IMO, regulatory burden could be a bigger issue than making a working machine. :roll:
I agree. The trend for regulation, at least in the UK, is positive. That is at least judging by the recent Green paper by the UK government. We will see how things go in the US. Here the NRC is could become a real problem for fusion deployment, especially if they are regulated like fission reactors. The new proposed regulation for "advanced reactors" is worse than the old one, with more requirements. With the NRC taking 20 years to certify something as conservative as the Westinghouse AP 1000, this could break the fusion industry. So let's hope for the best. Maybe also try to push back against this.

mvanwink5
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Re: General Fusion in the news

Post by mvanwink5 »

https://generalfusion.com/2021/12/deep- ... -industry/
Steam driven propulsion would make sense for GF. Helion no doubt would also have an interest in this industry. The speed of ocean transport would change as would ship design.
Counting the days to commercial fusion. It is not that long now.

Skipjack
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Re: General Fusion in the news

Post by Skipjack »

More General Fusion in the news. Of course they had to bring up Hossenfelder, because well they always have to bring up some critic or another...
Yawn!
Otherwise good interview, even though there is not a lot of actual new info in it (if any).
https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/commodities ... gy~2344324

mvanwink5
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Re: General Fusion in the news

Post by mvanwink5 »

Yes, that physicist was shamefully ignorant of the subject she trashed on youtube. Her credibility died in my eyes with that video.

However, there was one truly huge comment made by Chris Mowry in this interview at 7:43 of an advisory council of Electric Utilities & Industrial customers getting together in 1-2 months to talk about commercial fusion.

So it seems that Utilities are now realizing commercial fusion is coming THIS DECADE. IMO this is as big as regulatory because there is now the recognition that solar and wind even with battery storage just cannot meet the reliability and 24/7 electric power requirements for a modern industrial world.

This is the commercial breakthrough to match the current real world successes and demonstration plants in commercial fusion.

I hope Helion has thought about getting a similar group to present their Technology to.
Counting the days to commercial fusion. It is not that long now.

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