4 ms·

As with all of these threads, someone needs to tell me why I shouldn't be optimistic about this. I'm not a physicist, and only partially grok all the technical

As with all of these threads, someone needs to tell me why I shouldn't be optimistic about this. I'm not a physicist, and only partially grok all the technical challenges with making something like this work. I'm skeptical, but that's because so many others with so much money have been working on Fusion, so why is Helion different?

csense 4y ago
The company's FAQ page addresses this: https://www.helionenergy.com/faq/ https://www.helionenergy.com/faq/
- remarkEon 4y ago
  Right I get that, I guess I'm looking for an unbiased party to evaluate what they're saying here.
  - hef19898 4y ago
    All easy, Helion will just do it better than everyone else. They can even produce Helium-3 themselves! Which kind of raises the question why they are not aiming to sell said Helium-3... I call BS on basically all of it. Except their cookie banner, that has an "opt-out" button right next to accept.
ZeroGravitas 4y ago
If you want to feel optimistic, solar pv tech that's been improving over decades should be hitting the same price point around the time they intend to actually produce net energy for the first time. Other pv tech in the pipeline that may or may not work aims to make it cheaper still. So if this works great, if not it's not the only shot we have. Also the most important price point is "less than fossil fuels" which renewables have reached already in most of the world. That's when you start displacing large amounts of carbon. But more new cheap, clean energy sources are always welcome news.
- jeffreyrogers 4y ago
  I doubt renewables are cheaper once they start making up a majority of the supply (except in small countries that can get most electricity from hydropower). Sure batteries or other storage technology may get there eventually but that's very much TBD.
  - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
    Well, you're wrong to have that doubt. 80 or 85% is the figure that people usually quote as being when solar and wind will start having issues (the exact division between the two varies by latitude mostly), but at that point you're saving money on 85% of your energy expenditure so things have to go pretty drastically wrong for you to end up in the negative. As this post notes, with cheap power you can make liquid fuels for less than it costs to dig them up. This web site here will give you example renewable only grids for most of the earth and how much battery and power2x renewable gas you'd need. It's generally not a lot, wind and solar do the heavy lifting. https://www.wartsila.com/energy/towards-100-renewable-energy/atlas-of-100-percent-renewable-energy#/ https://www.wartsila.com/energy/towards-100-renewable-energy... You get lots of batteries in sunny places, but that's just because it's cheap and we know it works well with solar. But yes anywhere with hydro gets to take advantage of cheap renewables much more easily.
    - jeffreyrogers 4y ago
      Interesting. I'll have to look into it more closely. Sounds like the "climate crisis" (don't like that term but everyone knows what it means so it's convenient) is basically solved if everything you've said is true.
      - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
        Yeah, it's always been a political problem, not an engineering one. If you're effectively getting paid to release carbon into the atmosphere, then you're going to release a lot of carbon into the atmosphere. You're also going to get really pissed if someone wants to start charging you for it rather than paying you. Luckily there were enough people who pushed for renewable subsidies to get them over the hump where even supervillains would use them for their own selfish profit. Still to be seen whether we left it too late, how long disinformation and lies will hold us back still and so on, and whether any petro-states will start a big war to distract from the new reality but I'm generally positive (or as positive as you can be when you realise some of the largest corporations in the world and their pet politicians were literally gambling the future of the human race just so they'd get a fat bonus while making everyone else sicker and poorer, again).
momojo 4y ago
I have a friend who did their dissertation particle physics at a fusion lab, modeling Alcator c-mod tokamaks, and was reached out to by Helion for a R&D position. The general consensus among him and his peers is that the hardest challenge to overcome is the energy capture. As interesting as it is, it's not efficient enough to be useful yet. The company is by no means snake-oil, but there's a reason the energy-capture part of the video is a bit vague. Take all that with a grain of salt.
- DennisP 4y ago
  Helion claims to have already demonstrated sufficient energy capture in their current reactor. Guess we'll see.

csense 4y ago

The company's FAQ page addresses this: https://www.helionenergy.com/faq/ https://www.helionenergy.com/faq/

remarkEon 4y ago
Right I get that, I guess I'm looking for an unbiased party to evaluate what they're saying here.
- hef19898 4y ago
  All easy, Helion will just do it better than everyone else. They can even produce Helium-3 themselves! Which kind of raises the question why they are not aiming to sell said Helium-3... I call BS on basically all of it. Except their cookie banner, that has an "opt-out" button right next to accept.

ZeroGravitas 4y ago

If you want to feel optimistic, solar pv tech that's been improving over decades should be hitting the same price point around the time they intend to actually produce net energy for the first time. Other pv tech in the pipeline that may or may not work aims to make it cheaper still. So if this works great, if not it's not the only shot we have. Also the most important price point is "less than fossil fuels" which renewables have reached already in most of the world. That's when you start displacing large amounts of carbon. But more new cheap, clean energy sources are always welcome news.

jeffreyrogers 4y ago
I doubt renewables are cheaper once they start making up a majority of the supply (except in small countries that can get most electricity from hydropower). Sure batteries or other storage technology may get there eventually but that's very much TBD.
- ZeroGravitas 4y ago
  Well, you're wrong to have that doubt. 80 or 85% is the figure that people usually quote as being when solar and wind will start having issues (the exact division between the two varies by latitude mostly), but at that point you're saving money on 85% of your energy expenditure so things have to go pretty drastically wrong for you to end up in the negative. As this post notes, with cheap power you can make liquid fuels for less than it costs to dig them up. This web site here will give you example renewable only grids for most of the earth and how much battery and power2x renewable gas you'd need. It's generally not a lot, wind and solar do the heavy lifting. https://www.wartsila.com/energy/towards-100-renewable-energy/atlas-of-100-percent-renewable-energy#/ https://www.wartsila.com/energy/towards-100-renewable-energy... You get lots of batteries in sunny places, but that's just because it's cheap and we know it works well with solar. But yes anywhere with hydro gets to take advantage of cheap renewables much more easily.
  - jeffreyrogers 4y ago
    Interesting. I'll have to look into it more closely. Sounds like the "climate crisis" (don't like that term but everyone knows what it means so it's convenient) is basically solved if everything you've said is true.
    - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
      Yeah, it's always been a political problem, not an engineering one. If you're effectively getting paid to release carbon into the atmosphere, then you're going to release a lot of carbon into the atmosphere. You're also going to get really pissed if someone wants to start charging you for it rather than paying you. Luckily there were enough people who pushed for renewable subsidies to get them over the hump where even supervillains would use them for their own selfish profit. Still to be seen whether we left it too late, how long disinformation and lies will hold us back still and so on, and whether any petro-states will start a big war to distract from the new reality but I'm generally positive (or as positive as you can be when you realise some of the largest corporations in the world and their pet politicians were literally gambling the future of the human race just so they'd get a fat bonus while making everyone else sicker and poorer, again).

momojo 4y ago

I have a friend who did their dissertation particle physics at a fusion lab, modeling Alcator c-mod tokamaks, and was reached out to by Helion for a R&D position. The general consensus among him and his peers is that the hardest challenge to overcome is the energy capture. As interesting as it is, it's not efficient enough to be useful yet. The company is by no means snake-oil, but there's a reason the energy-capture part of the video is a bit vague. Take all that with a grain of salt.

DennisP 4y ago
Helion claims to have already demonstrated sufficient energy capture in their current reactor. Guess we'll see.