mvanwink5 wrote: ↑Wed Jun 23, 2021 10:35 am
Sorry, but the race is to contract. Did I miss the announcement for the Helion demonstration plant site? Is there any utility talking to Helion about a plant? We are long past science experimentation.
General Fusion was pound foolish, who from the US utilities will be traveling to the UK to look at a demo plant? Maybe Helion will be smarter when they finally announce their site location. They do plan to announce a demonstration plant this year?
I understood this thread was (by OP) about who would be first to have a Q (by any measure) that is above 1 and beat ITER to the punch.
Demo plants are one or more steps beyond that and mind you ITER is also NOT a Demo plant. That would literally be DEMO, LOL.
So either we stick with the OP's premise of the thread or we move the goal posts, in which case I would recommend starting a new thread. That is something I am perfectly comfortable with, but it has to be clear in the OP of the thread what exactly the goal for that race is.
In that case, we will also have to define the word "Demonstration Plant".
Personally, I define "demonstration plant" as a first of a kind (FOAK) plant that
puts power on the grid. E.g. like the SMR- demo- plants that are currently being proposed by Nuscale, Terrapower and GE.
Applying those metrics, GF's so called demonstration plant in Culham, is no such thing. It does not even use tritium yet and will not demonstrate tritium breeding ratios, which are important for a D+T reactor. It will not produce a power output comparable to a tritium fueled plant, if it even manages to achieve a Q>1 (which will be hard for them with just D+D operation).
Equally, from the information provided by David Kirtley in the January NRC presentation, Helion's next prototype will likely (unless their plans have changed since then) not be a demonstration plant yet either, since it will not be able to operate 24/7 yet (at 1Hz, vs 1/600Hz for Trenta) and it will still be only an experimental reactor and not deliver power to the grid.
So what do you want to do? Make a new thread with a new goal post for "winner of the race"?