General Fusion in the news

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

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Skipjack
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Re: General Fusion in the news

Post by Skipjack »

mvanwink5 wrote:
Mon Dec 20, 2021 12:21 pm
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.
I know that they are ramping up their public relations efforts. AFAIK, they are planning to release quite a bit more information and more videos, etc in the near future.
I believe that their investors, who are also sitting on the board, are instrumental in getting the commercialization going, through their other ventures and industry contacts.

kurt9
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Re: General Fusion in the news

Post by kurt9 »

Yes, that physicist was shamefully ignorant of the subject she trashed on youtube. Her credibility died in my eyes with that video.
The physics community is largely driven by government grants and is heavily invested into the ITER program, which has devolved into little more than a jobs program for PhD's. Now we have privately funded start-ups that look like they will succeed in commercial fusion by the end of this decade. That makes the entire physics community look bad. They get all of this lavish government funding and they really have nothing to show for the past 50 years of it. Not just in fusion, but in everything they have done, or not done as the case may be.

mvanwink5
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Re: General Fusion in the news

Post by mvanwink5 »

I know that they are ramping up their public relations efforts. AFAIK, they are planning to release quite a bit more information and more videos, etc in the near future.
I believe that their investors, who are also sitting on the board, are instrumental in getting the commercialization going, through their other ventures and industry contacts.
Helion will shock Utilities & Industry / foundries with their timeline, project targets, cost/kwh. Media has lived up to their dystopian performance with a consistent, disreputable job reporting of the real state of commercial fusion. Further, Utilities & Industry has up to now failed to look past the media narrative (best I can tell).

The revival of aluminum, steel foundries in America will look like the second industrial revolution (assuming favorably low level of red tape :roll: ).
Counting the days to commercial fusion. It is not that long now.

mvanwink5
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Re: General Fusion in the news

Post by mvanwink5 »

The physics community is largely driven by government grants and is heavily invested into the ITER program, which has devolved into little more than a jobs program for PhD's.
When the PR arm of these $Giga Gruberment projects talk to media, they push the narrative that there are no other 'real' fusion efforts and the media is complicit in projecting this Meta-verse.

On the other hand, there has been progress made with the huge money thrown at these Gruberment projects. It is just their multi-decade time line that poisonously crushes the interest and therefore inquiries from Utilities and industry.
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 »

Trying to not to take this thread too far off topic. I think that private fusion outfits in general will shock a lot of people this decade. That will hopefully include General Fusion as well. I for one hope that every single one of them will be successful. The more, the merrier. The market is big enough for all of them and there is more than one market anyway. All have their potential advantages thanks to being fairly different from one another.
It will be so much fun to watch how this all plays out.

mvanwink5
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Re: General Fusion in the news

Post by mvanwink5 »

The more, the merrier.
True, moreover, the more, the greater the serious interest will be from Utilities & Industry.
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 »

The text fragment from the November press release by General Fusion that I bolded seems quite interesting to me:
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.
I would not be surprised if General Fusion manages to acquire a sum of a similar size as Helion Energy and CFS has been able to do in the past few weeks.

https://generalfusion.com/2021/11/gener ... ing-round/

Skipjack
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Re: General Fusion in the news

Post by Skipjack »

crowberry wrote:
Mon Dec 20, 2021 10:52 pm
The text fragment from the November press release by General Fusion that I bolded seems quite interesting to me:
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.
I would not be surprised if General Fusion manages to acquire a sum of a similar size as Helion Energy and CFS has been able to do in the past few weeks.

https://generalfusion.com/2021/11/gener ... ing-round/
I would wish it to them. In any case, the next few years will be extremely exciting!

mvanwink5
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Re: General Fusion in the news

Post by mvanwink5 »

Order placement does not involve full upfront money. Investor names and their promises secures the commitments for delivery. GF has built, tested against their models small scale compression machinery. The big money that is now flowing has been earned by actual hardware with accompanied models, and that goes for all the fusion demo projects. All these companies are rising to the need of the occasion.

Frankly, I wonder about the naysayers.
Counting the days to commercial fusion. It is not that long now.

mvanwink5
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Re: General Fusion in the news

Post by mvanwink5 »

https://news.crunchbase.com/news/nuclea ... te-change/

Helion is mentioned along with a huge 1.7 billion investment dependent on reaching a future milestone.

This may be just another fusion article, however, this time there is no contrary doubter quoted, imagine that! The realization that Solar and Wind are not going to be able to replace fossil power has dawned on the Green crowd. Further, the progress of fusion towards commercial has also been realized and now the resulting funding avalanche is seen and heard.

No contrarian in the article is a huge change.
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 »

Very cool article! As you say, for one no contrarian viewpoint.

mvanwink5
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Re: General Fusion in the news

Post by mvanwink5 »

New announcement from General Fusion
https://mailchi.mp/generalfusion/achiev ... c2986861e1
Commissioned in early 2021, the prototype machine drives a forceful, but precisely shaped, symmetric collapse of a large liquid vortex cavity in tens of milliseconds. The forces involved in the full-scale FDP compression system will be immense, pushing the limits of material science, fluid dynamics, and mechanical design. Achieving this milestone with the prototype significantly reduces engineering and technical risks for General Fusion’s FDP. It will use a collapsing liquid metal cavity to heat and compress plasma fuel to fusion conditions at 100 million degrees Celsius.
We have seen pictures of the subscale compression machine they used to test the computer model. Quite an innovative design for a challenging problem which is how to compress spinning liquid metal so that it is perfectly smooth, with no surface froth.

But I thought the success of their prototype has been known for some time and was the basis behind the go ahead and funding for their full scale prototype. So, I wonder at the announcement. Maybe to generate another news cycle to alert the world that commercial fusion is real, not some 30 years in the future promise.
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 »

I saw that too. They posted a picture of the new compression device on Twitter. From the looks of that, they built a sub-scale version of the cylindrical piston system that will be in their FDP (rather than the spherical compression system they had before).
I think they should have included that picture with the actual press release.
https://twitter.com/GeneralFusion/statu ... 1368363009
GeneralFusionPistonSystem_sm.jpg
GeneralFusionPistonSystem_sm.jpg (131.2 KiB) Viewed 4006 times

mvanwink5
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Re: General Fusion in the news

Post by mvanwink5 »

I think they should have included that picture with the actual press release.
Agreed. It really was a genius solution and until they came up with it they were in trouble.
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 »

This is very interesting news. General Fusion is looking into where to build a fusion power plant:
ONTARIO, Canada (February 2, 2022): Bruce Power, General Fusion, and the Nuclear Innovation Institute (NII) have entered into a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to collaborate on accelerating the delivery of clean fusion power in Canada.

Together, the organizations will evaluate potential deployment of a fusion power plant in Ontario, including in the tri-county Clean Energy Frontier region of Bruce, Grey and Huron.
https://generalfusion.com/2022/02/bruce ... ro-future/

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