3 ms·
Okay, a little further digging into their claims and successes reveals what I think Sam's point of "they built a generator that produces electricity" means. As
by creeble 5y ago
Okay, a little further digging into their claims and successes reveals what I think Sam's point of "they built a generator that produces electricity" means.
As some one else mentions, part of Helion's novelty is that they don't use heat to produce the electricity (through steam and traditional generators). They use the Faraday effect on the (pulsed) magnets.
This is (I think) unique to their approach. Therefore, if they actually have "built a generator that produces electricity", it may prove that part of their concept.
Then all they need to do is get the fusion part working for longer than 1ms.
- DennisP 5y agoThe reactor is supposed to be pulsed, so 1ms might be fine. Skipping the heat cycle is possible if they achieve their goal of using aneutronic fuel. With D-T fusion (the easiest) the output energy is 80% neutrons, so you're stuck with heat. With aneutronic, you mostly get fast-moving charged particles.
- chillacy 5y agoTheir current prototype fuses 1ms every 10m, their next is aiming for 1ms every 1s: https://www.helionenergy.com/faq/ https://www.helionenergy.com/faq/