Helion Energy to demonstrate net electricity production by 2024

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: Helion Energy to demonstrate net electricity production by 2024

Post by Skipjack »

mvanwink5 wrote:
Thu Nov 11, 2021 11:44 am
If my understanding of Helion's Fusion Plant is not too off, it would seem that Plant length has more to do with the fuel type than power, and diameter of the machine is tied to power. Then there is the diffuser material, not sure if that is an engineering issue for scaling power. It might be better to just stack the machines rather than scale size to increase power?
Confinement times scales with Radius(separatrix)^2.6.
Fusion power scales with confinement * volume. Volume is of course length * π * rs^2.
Neutron wall loads are a limiting factor. IIRC, they can make the D-He3 machine more powerful than the D-T machine for that reason (among others).

Skipjack
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Re: Helion Energy to demonstrate net electricity production by 2024

Post by Skipjack »

More progress on the construction of the Polaris building:
https://twitter.com/Helion_Energy/statu ... 9969880070
HelionTweet.JPG
HelionTweet.JPG (80.06 KiB) Viewed 3452 times

Carl White
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Re: Helion Energy to demonstrate net electricity production by 2024

Post by Carl White »

Hopefully this is watching history in the making!

mvanwink5
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Re: Helion Energy to demonstrate net electricity production by 2024

Post by mvanwink5 »

Inspiring. The accelerated time to net electric moved to 2024 is super news. Funny this was not mentioned at the COP meeting. Makes me wonder what is the real agenda (cynicism is well earned).
Counting the days to commercial fusion. It is not that long now.

Skipjack
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Re: Helion Energy to demonstrate net electricity production by 2024

Post by Skipjack »

I think people are still in doubt and or denial about this. It is an extraordinary claim.

RERT
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Re: Helion Energy to demonstrate net electricity production by 2024

Post by RERT »

Have I gathered correctly that they will be putting 50MW on the grid, or did that come to me in a dream?

Skipjack
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Re: Helion Energy to demonstrate net electricity production by 2024

Post by Skipjack »

Polaris won't quite do that yet. Polaris will run on D-D (at least most of the time), so will be lower power. It will demonstrate the generation of a small amount of excess electricity (but wont be connected to the grid). The next one after that will be D-He3 and a full 50 MW power plant.
That said, even showing a small amount of excess electricity is more than anyone else can hope to do by 2024...

RERT
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Re: Helion Energy to demonstrate net electricity production by 2024

Post by RERT »

Thanks, that’s helpful and also explains my confusion a little.

Have they indicated power in and power out, as well as net power?

Carl White
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Re: Helion Energy to demonstrate net electricity production by 2024

Post by Carl White »

mvanwink5 wrote:
Sun Nov 07, 2021 12:26 pm
From what I read, Helion should have direct contact with Musk through a prominent investor. Solar would be perfect to supply startup power for Helion's Mars infrastructure machine, which could afford to be assembled. Still if a working machine could be fitted in a Starship Mars transport then a design for fusion powered rocket could be imagined.
Here is what Elon Musk had to say about nuclear fusion in in his online talk + Q&A today:
I get asked a lot about fusion and in my opinion, like, if you just make a very large thing of magnetically confined fusion, you can absolutely make it work. I don't think any really major breakthrough is needed to make fusion work. But I think it's unnecessary to make fusion work because you've got a giant fusion reactor in the sky that just shows up every day and doesn't require any maintenance. So it's a low maintenance fusion reactor, shows up every day. So if we just catch the energy, it just keeps lobbing all of this energy, catch it with photovoltaics and store it in the
batteries, that will solve for everything, basically.
https://youtu.be/wo8Kms-B41E?t=4473

Skipjack
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Re: Helion Energy to demonstrate net electricity production by 2024

Post by Skipjack »

RERT wrote:
Wed Nov 17, 2021 10:54 pm
Thanks, that’s helpful and also explains my confusion a little.

Have they indicated power in and power out, as well as net power?
It is net electricity. So not just net power. Though for their machine the two are really closely related.

mvanwink5
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Re: Helion Energy to demonstrate net electricity production by 2024

Post by mvanwink5 »

Carl White wrote:
Thu Nov 18, 2021 3:06 am
mvanwink5 wrote:
Sun Nov 07, 2021 12:26 pm
From what I read, Helion should have direct contact with Musk through a prominent investor. Solar would be perfect to supply startup power for Helion's Mars infrastructure machine, which could afford to be assembled. Still if a working machine could be fitted in a Starship Mars transport then a design for fusion powered rocket could be imagined.
Here is what Elon Musk had to say about nuclear fusion in in his online talk + Q&A today:
I get asked a lot about fusion and in my opinion, like, if you just make a very large thing of magnetically confined fusion, you can absolutely make it work. I don't think any really major breakthrough is needed to make fusion work. But I think it's unnecessary to make fusion work because you've got a giant fusion reactor in the sky that just shows up every day and doesn't require any maintenance. So it's a low maintenance fusion reactor, shows up every day. So if we just catch the energy, it just keeps lobbing all of this energy, catch it with photovoltaics and store it in the
batteries, that will solve for everything, basically.
https://youtu.be/wo8Kms-B41E?t=4473
Kelsall says they could also serve industries that are particularly energy-intensive, such as metal smelting — a sector that can’t be supplied by renewables.
https://www.nature.com/immersive/d41586 ... index.html

No one has aluminum smelters powered by solar, they are all powered by coal for key business and practical reasons, cost and ability to deliver 24/7 reliable power. Even Tsla's brand new Austin and Berlin Giga factories fail to have enough roof space to power their manufacturing plants and one is in Texas with maximum sun, and Berlin, Germany is in a high northern region and has far less winter sun.

Therefore in all counts, industry and manufacturing, Elon IMO is being disingenuous for commercial reasons, he is supporting his solar and battery business, while hypocritically relying on a critical production input that is solely sourced from Chinese coal (American coal power that powered the big Aluminum smelters here were shut down, then production shifted to China coal powered smelters - crooks and pirates, that use green idiots).

So, even if Elon is ignorant of Helion, slim chance IMO, he knows where his aluminum comes from and what it takes to make it.

He is a commercially biased voice.
Counting the days to commercial fusion. It is not that long now.

Skipjack
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Re: Helion Energy to demonstrate net electricity production by 2024

Post by Skipjack »

Yeah, I am somewhat thinking that too, or he really just does not know where things are right now.
He should also know that battery production capacity is nowhere near up to the task.
He might change his mind in the coming 3 years IF everything goes well. Heck, maybe as soon as 17 months when ZAP is aiming for break even.

RERT
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Re: Helion Energy to demonstrate net electricity production by 2024

Post by RERT »

Skipjack wrote:
Thu Nov 18, 2021 3:15 am
It is net electricity. So not just net power. Though for their machine the two are really closely related.
Ok, that correction makes the question clearer. In a second (for the 50MW device) they put in X joules of electrical energy and get out 50M + X. My question is, what is X?

Skipjack
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Re: Helion Energy to demonstrate net electricity production by 2024

Post by Skipjack »

RERT wrote:
Fri Nov 19, 2021 7:41 am
Skipjack wrote:
Thu Nov 18, 2021 3:15 am
It is net electricity. So not just net power. Though for their machine the two are really closely related.
Ok, that correction makes the question clearer. In a second (for the 50MW device) they put in X joules of electrical energy and get out 50M + X. My question is, what is X?
Well, the 50 MW is the goal and that is for net electricity put to the grid.
That said, they might fall a little short of that, or might exceed it a little. It is not 100% perfectly set in stone yet at this stage.
To the best of my information, they are aiming for an engineering gain of ~3 with their fusion generator in the power plant version.

Now the following is purely speculative on my side (and please point out if you see any mistake in my calculation):
So the calculation for engineering gain is:

PE(grid)/ PE(in) = Q(eng)

So (50MWe) / X = 3

That means that the recirculating power should be about 16.666 MW, if I calculated that right.
With their 95% efficient energy recovery. The remaining "loss" should be 833 kW.
Now lets factor in some other inefficiencies, losses and whatnot, I would say that they would have to produce a total of fusion power production and recirculating power of about 68 MWe to have a net grid power to the grid of 50 MWe.
Not all that bad. Now please know that much of this is speculative and not official information. Also my math (or formulae) might be off somewhere. So take all this with a huge grain of salt.

If anyone is interested, I also calculated a Q(Fuel) of about 3.4 for them to get a Q(eng) of about 3.0.

So what Q(sci) would they need to get any net electricity at all?
So we have ~18 MW total out with ~17 MW recirculating with a ~900 kW loss per circulation. So we have to make up for that loss and call that our grid out power.
That means if zero electricity is produced and nothing is lost, we have a Q(eng) ~0.05.

Qeng = ηth * ηE * (Qsci +1)−1

0.95 * Q(sci) + 0.95 -1 = 0.05
Q(sci) = 0.105

So if I did not make any mistakes anywhere, then Helion does not even need a D-D Q(sci) of 0.11 to produce small amounts of net electricity with Polaris.
Does that sound right?

And how does that translate to a feasible triple product, anyone know from the top of their heads?

mvanwink5
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Re: Helion Energy to demonstrate net electricity production by 2024

Post by mvanwink5 »

SpaceX was building their factory to make the Starship as they were developing the prototype, 'prototypes are easy,' and their goal is to make 1000.

If Helion were to do that that would be revolutionary. Extreme innovation.
Counting the days to commercial fusion. It is not that long now.

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