Helion Energy to demonstrate net electricity production by 2024

[RERT]

Thanks SJ: i really appreciate your patience.

I wasn’t aware or the topics you highlight were in the patent, I will read it.

I was aware the 14MeV TD neutrons are much more activating than the DD neutrons. I struggle with any intuition about what that means - flux dependent! - for costs.

The point about selling the Tritium is a good one.

I still stick with one point: a Helion machine burning in-situ produced T from DHe3 fuel would have substantially lower neutronicity than the same machine burning a DT mix.

I might come back later with some numbers after I’ve read the Helion patent.

[Skipjack]

The point about selling the Tritium is a good one.

Yeah, this is the crazy part. At the projected cost of 1 cent/kWh a 50 MWe Helion mixed mode power plant would make about 4 million/year in revenue.

At the current price of 30,000 USD/gram, selling the Tritium from the same power plant would make Helion some 200 million USD/year.
So even if they could double the power output with more He3 from Tritium decay to 100MWe and 8 million/year in revenue, Tritium prices would have to drop significantly below 1000 USD/gram in order for burning it to be more economic than selling it. Directly burning the Tritium would probably not be any better either.
It only becomes interesting once Helion has a lot of Tritium in long term storage and if that causes problems (e.g. cost of storage, or regulatory issues, or environmental groups doing their usual BS).

[RERT]

Ok, that’ll do.

The patent makes clear that choosing whether to extract tritium or not was close to front and centre of their thinking at some point. They probably made a sane choice, and I’m not inclined to argue.

The fact that selling the Tritium will make them a small fortune probably wraps it up…

[RERT]

Mind you there is this:

http://www.caiso.com/TodaysOutlook/Pages/prices.html

I agree with you, tritium at $30,000 per gram is roughly $0.30 per kWh.

I just googled to get the link above, but it seems to me to be saying the marginal price of power is over $0.50 per kWh (its about 6 am in California).

Who knows…

[Skipjack]

It should be more like 50 cent/kWh.
They would make ~7 kg of Tritium/year.

Also, do not compare end consumer prices to the price the producer gets. E.g. nuclear fission plants produce electricity at between 4 cents to 8 cents/kWh.
Solar and wind can be lower than that, but then they have hidden costs with transmission, intermittency, etc.
And then there are the transmission costs on top of all that. So Helion aiming for 1 cent/kWh is competitive in the market, especially for dispatchable energy.

[RERT]

This from the UK:

https://www.theguardian.com/business/20 ... rgy-crisis

Producers getting up to £6 ~$7 per kWh at some times.

[Skipjack]

This from the UK:

https://www.theguardian.com/business/20 ... rgy-crisis

Producers getting up to £6 ~$7 per kWh at some times.

Yeah, that is for gas peaker plants. They are notoriously expensive. One reason is that they are on so rarely. So in order to recoup their capital investment, they have to charge more.
Interestingly, this could be a good market for Helion as well. Their capital cost would be low enough to be competitive with gas peakers and they could ramp up and down fast enough to take on the job. They would actually be more economic with lower operating hours since that would require less maintenance for the same amount of money (or more). Heck, at those prices they would not even have to worry about breeding the He3 at current He3 prices! They could just buy it on the open market. And they could just operate in self sustaining mode for the rest of the time and breed He3 and Tritium. He3 for their other plants and Tritium to sell (again until the market is saturated) and make even more money. Crazy!

[RERT]

If Helion's reactor could run in 'dirty' mode, still evacuating at 10Hz, but with two pulses between evacuations, it would generate circa twice the power.

If peaking power is worth 10X baseload, which sounds very conservative given the above data, it could run like this 5% of the time as a peaker and generate 50% of the baseload revenue as extra peaking revenue.

Yes, it would burn DT on the second pulse, but perhaps a third of a DT reactor of the same power. And since it is operating like that 5% of the time, the neutron damage in 40 years of plant life would be comparable to the neutron damage in a 50MW DT machine in 1-2 years, plausibly OK.

Since DT machines expect to breed more Tritium than they consume, they might not even lose tritium sales.

The last thought is that they would bid to sell peaking power only at a price which made it worthwhile.

[Skipjack]

If Helion's reactor could run in 'dirty' mode, still evacuating at 10Hz, but with two pulses between evacuations, it would generate circa twice the power.

The machine would still be limited by the wall loads. You don't want your first wall to melt or crack. What I think would be easier is to have two machines share the same location. They can share some of the power equipment like the capacitor bank. One machine would provide base load, the other machine would just be idle or could run in self sustaining mode, producing additional He3 (and Tritium). Then when the demand peaks, they would switch the second machine to electricity production mode. Heck, they could even take turns between machines. Lots of options there.

I really do not understand the obsession with Tritium burning. I would only do that if they find that they have too much of that stuff sitting around and need to get rid of it. And it would most likely require a slightly altered design if they want to operate it for more than just a few experimental shots (like Polaris will do).

[RERT]

The obsession is not with tritium burning, it’s with evacuation being a limiting factor for power production. Evacuating less means putting up with burning waste tritium.

[usesbiggerwords]

My understanding was that the goal for the tritium was to store it, allow it to decay to He3, then burn that in the generator. Of course, this was before I knew the market price for tritium was so high.

[mvanwink5]

My understanding was that the goal for the tritium was to store it, allow it to decay to He3, then burn that in the generator. Of course, this was before I knew the market price for tritium was so high.

I was not paying attention to the tritium price either. There are at least two likely viable commercial fusion approaches that would benefit from tritium production, namely General Fusion and Zap Energy which both use a breeding liquid shield wall (dunno if they will breed sufficient fusible fuel). Still, transport and storage will require permits.

In the end, this will shake out over time. Flexibility, adaptability will be important.

[Skipjack]

The obsession is not with tritium burning, it’s with evacuation being a limiting factor for power production. Evacuating less means putting up with burning waste tritium.

They are still limited by wall loads more than anything. There are a few other things too that I am not sure I am at liberty to say.

[Carl White]

Has any estimate been put forward by Helion as to what it will cost to manufacture a 50 MWe power plant?

[Skipjack]

Has any estimate been put forward by Helion as to what it will cost to manufacture a 50 MWe power plant?

I think that it depends on how far into the mass production they are. The first plants likely won't be as cheap as the later ones when mass production is in full swing and they have built their supply network. Then there is also the cost of the site (and everything involved with that) which can vary greatly.
There are some other things that can lower cost such as co- locating multiple cores. They can share the capacitors and the building. So that reduces cost a lot.
Looking at the 1 cent/kWh that they are aiming for, then they would need to aim for a total overnight cost <1,000 USD/kW to have a ~10 year ROI.
That seems quite low to me, but then combined cycle gas plants can be as low 450 USD/kW for plants over 200 MW. It is about 1000 USD for smaller NGCC plants. In return they have a fuel cost of 2 to 3 cents/kWh in the US and much more in Europe, which prevents them from ever selling below that threshold. So Helion would be cheaper to operate but probably more expensive to built and install.

So that levels the playing field quite a bit. IMHO, a really good target for Helion are gas peaker plants, especially abroad. In the UK, they just raked in a record 8.8 USD/kWh (yes, 7,000 pounds/MWh) on December 12th 2022.
Granted that was an exception and exceptional circumstances, but still. On average, gas peakers in the UK are at 35 cent/kWh. That is still 35 times what Helion plans to operate at. In the US, it is a bit lower at about 17 cent/kWh.

What I would do, if I was Helion is to co- locate two cores in a single plant. Have one run in base load mode and one in self- sustain mode (as in it does not consume any net electricity). The one sustaining would only be called upon when there is demand for peaking. Otherwise, it would spend its time producing additional He3 for the other plant and Tritium for storage and selling. With the peaking and selling of Tritium, even assuming a very low price for Tritium in the 3000 USD/gram ( 10% of the current price) range, that plant could be paid off within less than a year. In the UK, it could be a matter of months, LOL.