Helion Energy to demonstrate net electricity production by 2024

[Carl White]

Video just released:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpzYjJqZivI

"Helion hits new fusion milestone: D-T fusion and 150M°C plasma temperatures"

"We accomplished all of our goals on the FIRST day of testing"

"Scaling, that we observed in Trenta, that we observed in prior machines, continues to hold at these new settings"

He3 is the next big step.

[mvanwink5]

I’d say this latest performance announcement is confirmation that Helion Polaris upgrade from Trenta has proven their stepwise learning on machine design. Next stop is going from 150M C to 200M C for He3 - Deut. 2028 commercial is fast approaching. David Kirtley has a great team.

[Skipjack]

Anyone doubting that Helion is doing well in keeping their secrets. China is catching up and then it will be about the industrial base. This is why a lot of people in the US fusion industry are pushing so hard for building exactly that!
I actually think (as much as it will annoy me and all of us) that Helion should go back into stealth mode. Though, it might already be too late because the cat is already out of the bag and China knows where this is going. The US (forget about Europe, they are still sleeping and will sleep until it is too late) is moving too slowly. This is the next big thing and it is coming... fast!
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2026-02-09/W ... kKY/p.html

[mvanwink5]

SJ:

I actually think (as much as it will annoy me and all of us) that Helion should go back into stealth mode.

Electric power growth need is insane. Space solar, Commercial Fusion push are hard to digest. Solar is old tech but space launch cost about to plunge makes it a breakthrough, yet there is predictability to it. OTH, a tech breakthrough from a single fusion company such as Avalanche or Energy Zap could surprise shock the market due to rapid scalability. Further, Helion with its low cost plasma to electric conversion approach has a 2028 target for 1st Commercial; not too much time for stealth to matter.

The point is that dizzy heads are spinning with the pending electric power revolution & Tech is throwing the kitchen sink at power needs, (with EU a ’Snoozing Beauty’). It’s a crazy time.

[Skipjack]

This is going to be a major geopolitical disruption as well. And that is where I am worried. If China-- even as a fast follower-- managed to take the global market here, it would give them geopolitical leverage. That is something the US cannot afford to let happen.

[Maui]

I mean, even without fusion major geopolitical disruption is kinda the topic du jour, no? I don't buy into all the hype, but think AI is the quicker and bigger hit.... but maybe if you don't have fusion, it dampens the impact?

(major geopolitical disruption = weaponized version of this: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/PE3Moz_KBYk. And also, if this is a deep fake, still a major geopolitical disruption)

[sdg]

Though, it might already be too late because the cat is already out of the bag and China knows where this is going. The US (forget about Europe, they are still sleeping and will sleep until it is too late) is moving too slowly. This is the next big thing and it is coming... fast!
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2026-02-09/W ... kKY/p.html

I so strongly agree with this assessment. Last month, I was like, "an world changing (Helion fusion) technical tsunami is likely to be obvious and happen in the next few years" Helion's video posted this past Friday changed all that (more on that in a following comment). Now it's like, anyone with a pair of binoculars can see the tsunami of Helion topology direct electric producing commercially viable fusion, in the not very distant future 2028/2029. per estimates.

It's coming and it's unstoppable. Meanwhile, Europe is clueless, and paralyzed, unable to react in any meaningful way. All humanity will benefit, but Europe will be led, not lead, in reaction to this wave. China, on the other hand, is not clueless, and they are the only country that is working to replicate, and able to catch up. Given their infrastructure, they are formidable, and bent on exploiting it to their advantage. At this point, it's not a question of if China will be producing direct to electric fusion using the "appropriated" Helion topology, it's simply a matter of when.

But wait, there's more: Another tsunami is also visible and approaching not as far away, no binoculars needed. It's the high performance next gen AI compute tsunami.

The primary bottleneck to that tsunami is semiconductor fabrication capacity and cheap DC electric power.

These two tsunamis will converge, in a reinforcing way, electricy for AI and AI for fusion electricity generation optimization, resulting in advances that are huge and fast, so large and fast that it's hard to imagine.

The weak link in the double tsunami, ironically, is Taiwanese fabrication. Building out US semiconductor capacity can't happen fast enough, and the importance of the defense of Taiwan by US in the near term, at least, can't be overstated, in my opinion.

[sdg]

[Last Friday's D-T success video posted by Helion] changed all that (more on that in a following comment).

The reason this is such HUGE news is that it confirms what Helion was stating they would do back in 2023, based on their scaling predictions and data from Trenta. They made a lot of this public, but we should all thank Skipjack for providing a bit more of an "insiders" verification that things have been proceeding according to plan. Thank you Skipjack!

I have been watching Kirtley's interviews over the past few months, and have been super excited by "the dog that didn't bark" confirmation that things are going well. Kirtley has had at his disposal for the past few years (more or less) one BILLION US dollars. Also, over the past year he has access to fusion modeling analysis capabilities unimaginable to what he had only a few years back.

And? He's calm as a clam in his interviews. In fact, he's just sanguine, talking with whoever is interested about Helion and what they will be accomplishing over the next few years (small net energy in Polaris soon, and commercial 50MW reactor in Orion by 2028/2029). Meanwhile, he casually mentions that Helion is aggressively working on gigafactory design.

If scaling WERE a problem, if Orion's delivery timeframe WERE a problem, there would be impossible to hide, visible signs of scrambling to recalibrate. Kirtley IS the dog that has not been barking.

But wait, it has been a long time now - all D-D, where's the D-T? I mean it's 2026 already. Why have we not heard anything? No barking dog, but no other news available.

Until this February Friday the Thirteenth. This Friday the 13th was Fusion Power Horror Story day ... for Tokomak/Spheromak/ITER and all other non-pulsed, non direct-to-electric fusion technology efforts. It also just marked the beginning of the end for wind. And even for Solar except for niche applications. (Kirtley won't admit that - outward comments from him are: there's room at the table for many renewable technologies). I'd say they're doomed, based on physics.

Other ironies: BIG WIN for Tesla, even though Musk doesn't seem to believe Helion can work. (He will). Potentially even big win for SpaceX, as the ability to deliver a Helion reactor to the Moon is within reach. But only in reach for Starship.

I'm thinking Musk will see the light, "later if not sooner". But he and those two companies will benefit, whether he "likes it or not".

Such interesting and exciting times!

[Skipjack]

Personally, I think that fusion will be much bigger than AI. If you think about the fundamental physics of everything humanity does, then energy is ultimate limiting factor. Even if we automated everything and all raw materials were free, the remaining cost of anything will be determined by the cost (and availability) of energy. Energy will also affect the cost of raw materials, of course. E.g. the cost of aluminum could be lowered by (by my estimate) up to 50% if energy was free. A lot of raw materials would be dropping in price because currently uneconomic recycling methods suddenly become viable. It just changes everything.

And (and keep in mind that I am originally European myself), I think that this is a race between the US and China with the UK at least trying to be a 3rd player. Not a single EU country has even started working on a regulatory framework for fusion!
The US has already lost their lead in fission (and renewables) to China. Europe also had a great high tech base in fission and just squandered it, slept on it, like they have been on literally everything.

As Helion in particular has been emphasizing over and over again to anyone who would listen, this is not about the race to break even, to net electricity or even a FOAK power plant. This is about being able to produce it cheaper and at a large enough scale to supply the entire world with it. Even if Helion captured the entire US market, it is geopolitically less relevant than the soft power and influence gained from bringing it to the rest of the world. The US must not leave that soft power to China! If we let that happen, we lose the world.

Edit: And let me add that while I am a huge fan of Helion, I am not advocating for throwing all of the eggs into one basket here. Helion still has some risks that could ultimately have them lose the lead to one of the other startups. And that is fine. One of the strengths of the US and its startup culture has always been the diversity of ideas. China is --interestingly enough-- catching up on that too. Meanwhile in Europe anything that is not toroidal or (to a lesser extent) laser based is considered too high risk to pursue. Even I dare not predict whether it will be Helion, or Zap, or Realta or LPPF or someone else who comes out on top. The government has to support, provide supply chains and help with funding where needed. I advocate for a shotgun approach here, rather than a sniper rifle. You fire enough bullets, something is going to hit
And then it is also about providing the framework (regulation and prioritizing supply chains) and building the industrial base. We need capacitors, power electronics, magnets, heck for Helion even the frigging quartz tubes were a challenge!

[Skipjack]

Good interview with Anthony Pancotti, one of the co- founders of Helion. Not much new in there for those of us who have been watching closely, but worth listening into!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-waSahWSNc&t=2s

[Munchausen]

This is all very exciting and nice reading as an evening pastime but perhabs you shouldn't get your cylinder head gasket blown over this recent announcement. Where is the Helion Company in the triple product chart compared to others?

It is still a high risk endevour that might, or most probably will fail for any yet unknown reason. As all fusion has to this date. Even if it succeeds there are still question marks regarding operational characteristics and fuel cycle issues. It has been hinted in this thread that the fuel suppy to some extent might become reliant on the natural gas industry. Which may not be an issue from an american perspective but it certainly is from a european.

Should it succeed, there are also intellectual property issues. Which, for the time being, has to be respected.

When I speak to academics in fusion here in Sweden they say that the FRC has been abandoned for a reason och the other approaches pursued also for a reason. Which seems to be the professional judgement of pretty much any knowledgeable plasma physicist anywhere in the world.

It is not true that there is no ongoing regulatory work on fusion in Europe. It is clearly pointed out as a key issue in the guidance documents from the european commission. Fusion research have more government support in the EU than in the USA. There is a lot of work going on, also on alternative routes.

By the way, Novatron has got the results they need from their first test rig N1 and is proceeding with their next one. This is a report comparing the legislation in the Scandinavian countries in anticipation of the coming N3-prototype:

https://static1.squarespace.com/static/ ... report.pdf

I haven't heard anything about the N2 yet. Somewhat worrying really. They have the money they need and construction was to commence early this year.

Hopefully, it haven't got stuck in the bureaucracy....

[mvanwink5]

Good interview with Anthony Pancotti, one of the co- founders of Helion. Not much new in there for those of us who have been watching closely, but worth listening into!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-waSahWSNc&t=2s

Key takeaway for me, ‘Helion plant production goal is 1GW plant per day.’
Awesome! Translates to $1.4 billion revenue per day. Assuming $1.40/W install.

[TallDave]

This is all very exciting and nice reading as an evening pastime but perhabs you shouldn't get your cylinder head gasket blown over this recent announcement. Where is the Helion Company in the triple product chart compared to others?

Lawson triple product is (mostly) irrelevant to their design.

This is a common point of confusion, but Helion's reactors do not ignite. They harvest power before ignition is even possible (shorter than the electron thermalization timeframe). One reason for this is that ignition is in fact fairly inefficient at heating the plasma.

https://www.helionenergy.com/articles/h ... -ignition/

When I speak to academics in fusion here in Sweden they say that the FRC has been abandoned for a reason och the other approaches pursued also for a reason. Which seems to be the professional judgement of pretty much any knowledgeable plasma physicist anywhere in the world.

Because they cannot be kept stable nearly as long as tokamaks. However, Helion has neatly sidestepped that issue and managed to capture 90% of the plasma energy directly into electricity at the same time, simply by moving to a pulsed regime with fast switching using FPGAs. It is quite elegant in that respect!

But while it's good to know they can at least reach the peak temperature of the D-T power curve, there is not a ton to be excited about here, as they are still orders of magnitude away from a net electric pulse per their last blog.

What is exciting is they should generate one within the next few months using Polaris.

They've missed their 2025 goal but we'll see by how much.

basics of their approach here: https://link.springer.com/article/10.10 ... 23-00367-7

It should be technically possible for Polaris to generate a net power pulse with D-T (roughly the same heating power as D-He3 because it's five times the power at 1/5th of the heating efficiency, depending of course where you are in the curve) but I suspect they will not due to the higher amount of radiation and risks inherent in a totally new fusion technology. So I would guess they are switching to D-He3 soon to try to reach ~20KeV after which they could scale density and size to produce a net power pulse with far fewer and slower neutrons.

[sdg]

Personally, I think that fusion will be much bigger than AI. If you think about the fundamental physics of everything humanity does, then energy is ultimate limiting factor.

I absolutely agree. Cheap, reliable, accessible energy is a complete game changer. A global tsunami of change.

And I am convinced Helion will succeed.

The reason Helion is "doomed to succeed" is that with the Helion topology, ALL of the plasma physics issues have been solved by Helion. And Kirtley confirmed that SIX YEARS AGO. Helion is so different because the remaining big challenges have been in electrical engineering (plasma formation, compression and extraction), mechanical engineering (keeping the magnet generating near unity Beta from exploding) heat transfer for commercial (preventing the losses from bremsstrahlung, synchrotron and transport from melting the reaction chamber while operating at 10 Hz, 30T continuaous) and material science (dealing with relatively low energy neutron flux damage from side reactions).

16 years ago I was hoping Polywell would take off, but it didn't, and won't . Leaky field and inadequate containment topology never made it. Art Carlson did a good job of explicating why it wasn't likely to ever work.

Since then, we've seen all the players, TAU, Commonwealth, Zap, etc. Helion stands apart. And who knew if Helion would hit the same fate? We finally know now. They won't. D-T demonstration is huge because it behaved exactly like they thought it would, according to their modeling. So no more lurking by me. They nailed it, and their modeling with tools available today is way more accurate and reliable than their modeling 5 years ago.

They will definitely demostrate non-net D - He3 fusion this year. Possibly by Summer. And they be the first to net energy. With a reasonable chance of attaining it by THE END OF THIS YEAR. With Polaris. As planned (but two years late). Per design, it will be only a tiny net. Like 1.05 gain, and only briefly. If for some reason Polaris doesn't attain that net, a scientific successor will, and in less than 5 years in the WORST case. Which is still WAY ahead of anybody else.

Get ready, because THE big energy change is coming!

[sdg]

This is all very exciting and nice reading as an evening pastime but perhabs you shouldn't get your cylinder head gasket blown over this recent announcement.

I get the skepticism. Anyone who knows me knows I'm a skeptic, with a pretty reliable and accurate BS detector.

But I respectfully disagree that we shouldn't get our cylinder head gaskets blown over the D - T news. Rather:

NOW is THE time to get our cylinder heads blown over Helion's D - T confirmation!

I've been modeling Polaris for the last couple of years. I've learned a lot about it in the process. It's not at all like the topology I thought it was half a year ago. I've just posted on a new thread regarding a recent critique by Lackner, et. al. 2026 in the Journal of Fusion Energy. It's a thoughful analysis, but almost entirely irrelevant (I've desribed why in a separate, more technical rebuttal: https://talk-polywell.org/bb/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=6614). And admittedly, just because Lackner et. al. concerns are essentially irrelevant doesn't mean Helion will succeed.

The reason Helion WILL succeed is because they've proven that all the blockers have been addressed. The remaining obstacles may present challenges, but NONE of them are challenges money can't solve. And they now have plenty of money! The parameters Helion is operating under are now either disclosed or easily calculated. There's little ambiguity at this point, and modeling to verify has become dead simple, and repeatable.

Meaning, in the worst case, they will demonstrate net but not in a commercially viable way. The chances of that are extremely low, in my opinion - there's a VERY high chance of commercially viable electicity generation, I believe. Regardless, it's virtually certain that we'll see a Helion topology reactor demonstrating net fusion by the end of this decade. Not "20 years from now".

And I'd be shocked if net energy hasn't been demonstrated by 2028. I think it's more likely than not that we'll see net energy demonstrated by Polaris before year end. And that in five years, Helion will be producing low cost electricity, and the number of people who have NOT heard of Helion will be about the same who haven't heard of Tesla, or Google. In other words, fasten your seat belts, our head gaskets are about to be blown!