6 ms·
Helion https://www.helionenergy.com/technology/ https://www.helionenergy.com/technology/ is a commercial fusion company working on a design that theoretically w
by geuis 2y ago
Helion https://www.helionenergy.com/technology/ https://www.helionenergy.com/technology/ is a commercial fusion company working on a design that theoretically would use direct energy capture from the magnetic fields generated during the fusion event. They made some headlines last year. Not clear if their approach will be successful but it certainly is an interesting approach.
- TheRealPomax 2y agoCommercial energy company. Not fusion company. There are no fusion companies on this planet yet.
- ChrisClark 2y agoWhat do they plan on using to generate energy then, oil, coal, solar, wind? Something else?
- TheRealPomax 2y agoSo far: looks like hope and promises rather than any of those.
- Intralexical 2y agoThey claim to have performed fusion, but not yet produced net energy. So they're very much a fusion company, but not an energy company: > In 2023, we will end operations on Trenta, our 6th fusion prototype… Our results suggest that Trenta is currently the best performing privately-funded fusion machine in the world. After these last weeks of plasma operations under vacuum, we will retire Trenta and move all focus to Polaris, our 7th fusion prototype, expected to demonstrate net electricity in 2024. So, they have 143 days left to make good on their current timeline, I guess.
- TheRealPomax 2y agoThey're an energy company that has failed to produce any yet because of how they chose to generate that energy. Unfortunately, like everyone else who tried this so far, they can make tiny bang go flash, and that's unfortunately still just about it. So, indeed, so far they failed at energy, and they've only succeeded at fusion in the same way and at the same scale that university labs have. So I guess you're right: they're not even any kind of company at the moment. They don't sell anything. They're an R&D lab.
- Intralexical 2y agoEh. They don't sell anything of immediate utility. But they definitely sell fusion. Think of it as a conspicuous luxury handbag for weird finance/tech bros. "Oh yeah? Well MY investments are going to save the world!!!"
- sigmoid10 2y agoFusion is infinitely harder for this than fission. No company has demonstrated stable fusion with a positive net energy gain. Most of these startups are borderline scams for milking gullible VCs. Helion in particular has been around for more than a decade and was supposed to reach break even in 2023. They haven't even achieved a fully stable D-D reaction so far. The biggest thing it has achieved is siphoning tons of money from OpenAI's investors because of some questionable actions by Sam Altman.
- Intralexical 2y agoFusion overall is harder than fission. Is the direct energy capture part also harder for glowy fusion gas than scary fission rocks?
- selectodude 2y agoI think the concepts are the same but the execution (heat up water with plasma) is still a work in progress.
- Intralexical 2y agoThat's the "thermal middleman" part they're trying to cut out. By analogy, compare Concentrated Solar Power versus Photovoltaics.
- thayne 2y agoI think in a Deutritium-Tritium fusion reaction a lot the energy is in the neutron. And since neutrons are neutral you can't really directly convert that into electrical energy.
- DennisP 2y agoYep, for D-T 80% of the energy is in neutrons. Helion is using D-D/D-He3, and for that it's about 5% in neutrons, and most of the rest in fast-moving charged particles. So they have a simple way to extract electricity directly. They squeeze the plasma with a magnetic field from a copper coil, then there's an explosion of charged particles, which pushes back against the magnetic field and causes electricity to flow in the coil.
- exabrial 2y agoThere definitely trendy since some high profile YouTubers were invited to tour! I sincerely hope they can succeed. I believe a limiting factor is going to be fuel unfortunately, as well as I’m not entirely sure it’ll be radiation free.
- DennisP 2y agoThe original fuel is deuterium, which is absurdly abundant on Earth. Pure deuterium fusion results in half helium-3, and half tritium which decays to helium-3 with a 12 year half-life. Then their main reaction is D-He3. The D-D reaction is less energetic and produces a neutron, and the D-He3 reaction doesn't produce a neutron. The combined reaction would release about five percent of its total energy as neutron radiation. The neutrons from D-D are about as energetic as fission neutrons, rather than the extremely high energy of D-T fusion neutrons. They'll never run out of fuel; there's enough deuterium in your morning shower to provide all your energy needs for a year. But the need to breed He3 will put a limit on how fast they can possibly scale up. It could be that manufacturing will be slower than that anyway though.
- exabrial 2y agoThanks for the insight. I remember it being like the raw ingredients were plentiful, but the main reaction ingredients were not.
- waryFormerNuke 2y agoI don't remember the details, but the last time I looked into Helion I came away with the belief that their technology flat out doesn't make sense and will likely never be anywhere near net-positive. Like, the numbers literally don't add up and their design could never be anywhere near net-positive.
- foobarian 2y agoI had the impression that the energy flux required to break even is higher than any known materials can support, at any geometry. I really hope that's wrong :-)
- dclowd9901 2y agoCan someone who has a firm grasp on this stuff explain to me how nuclear reactions don’t create massive amounts of electromagnetism that we can just capture directly? Is it really just heat that it produces?
- db48x 2y agoThey kinda do. When a fissile atomic nucleus splits, the daughter nuclei repel each other; they are both positively charged and the strong force is no longer holding them together. So they fly off in opposite directions at a measurable fraction of the speed of light. But they don’t generally get very far, because they are embedded in a solid fuel pellet. They can push their way through a few µm of uranium before they are stopped, bumping into thousands of atoms along the way. That’s really where the heat comes from; all that electrostatic force accelerates them to high velocity, but they dump it all very quickly into the material around them as heat.
- Muromec 2y ago> Is it really just heat that it produces? Yep, it's a big nuclear powered boiler. Boil water, get the steam, spin the turbin, cool the water, repeat.
- lazide 2y agoIt’s amazing how many generators basically boil down to the same ‘boring’ process of ‘boil water. spin turbine. repeat.’
- Iulioh 2y agoI mean, that's just because water is a simple medium we can just literally trow out in the environment after use, using basically anything else to spin said turbines would require a closed system and cooling. Gravity batteries could be a thing but pumped water is the best version of that system, in this case we don't boil the water tho
- 2y ago