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by TallDave
Mon Mar 11, 2024 3:26 pm
Forum: News
Topic: Helion Energy to demonstrate net electricity production by 2024
Replies: 660
Views: 104398

Re: Helion Energy to demonstrate net electricity production by 2024

I wonder whether their formation test section campaign is aiming to achieve just that. To my understanding the separation between Te and Ti happens during the formation, whereas the two temperatures want to return to equilibrium during the compression stage but again, the total pulse length is too ...
by TallDave
Fri Mar 08, 2024 5:00 pm
Forum: News
Topic: Helion Energy to demonstrate net electricity production by 2024
Replies: 660
Views: 104398

Re: Helion Energy to demonstrate net electricity production by 2024

I had thought Helion said they had over all 95% efficiency fusion energy to electric believe they only said they had recaptured 95% of the compression energy in a smaller machine, which is entirely different from capturing 95% of the total energy of a fusion pulse (maybe someday!)... remains to be ...
by TallDave
Wed Mar 06, 2024 5:45 pm
Forum: News
Topic: Helion Energy to demonstrate net electricity production by 2024
Replies: 660
Views: 104398

Re: Helion Energy to demonstrate net electricity production by 2024

Power transfer is not thermal; the plasma ions & electron motion produces a magnetic field which is coupled to the compression coils. The power transfer then behaves the same as a utility power transformer, only without the iron core hysteresis losses. The quartz tube will see neutron heating thoug...
by TallDave
Tue Mar 05, 2024 4:02 pm
Forum: News
Topic: Helion Energy to demonstrate net electricity production by 2024
Replies: 660
Views: 104398

Re: Helion Energy to demonstrate net electricity production by 2024

Loads on the first wall are expected to be in the 1 to 2 MW range. Hmmm, so 1-2MW sounds like the total load per second from 1-2GW pulses over 1ms. Say the Polaris reaction chamber interior is a cylinder of 1m radius/base, the surface area is then 12.5 m^2, and at 1GW the instantaneous load would b...
by TallDave
Fri Mar 01, 2024 5:06 pm
Forum: News
Topic: Helion Energy to demonstrate net electricity production by 2024
Replies: 660
Views: 104398

Re: Helion Energy to demonstrate net electricity production by 2024

ran across this video explainer on Kirtley's paper, sorry if it was shared earlier but it really sheds a lot of light on why Helion's FRC approach has exceeded other FRC efforts (ion/electron temperature ratio was the major key) https://mediacentral.princeton.edu/media/JPP08December2022_DKirtley/1_9...
by TallDave
Tue Jan 30, 2024 2:57 pm
Forum: News
Topic: Helion Energy to demonstrate net electricity production by 2024
Replies: 660
Views: 104398

Re: Helion Energy to demonstrate net electricity production by 2024

along with the 75% of the 10GW D-D reaction that ends up in MeV neutrons, of course... might also take a stab at calculating peak neutronicity for the shielding requirements Only about 33% of the D-D energy is released in neutrons. Over two reactions you get: 4.85 MeV (66%) in charged particles + 2...
by TallDave
Thu Jan 25, 2024 3:04 pm
Forum: News
Topic: Helion Energy to demonstrate net electricity production by 2024
Replies: 660
Views: 104398

Re: Helion Energy to demonstrate net electricity production by 2024

the problem is even the minimum 50GW (note this is an average, not a peak!) recapture of power per 1ms pulse required for a 50MW plant at 1 Hz (or .1% utilization) is probably going to melt something, to elucidate this a bit, it's not so much the 50GW power being safely recaptured and stored in the...
by TallDave
Wed Jan 24, 2024 3:42 pm
Forum: News
Topic: Helion Energy to demonstrate net electricity production by 2024
Replies: 660
Views: 104398

Re: Helion Energy to demonstrate net electricity production by 2024

Mixing power and energy is obscuring things in regard to capacitor bank size. I don't see a problem. Neither pulse frequency, nor peek power production determine capacitor size. Energy needed to get to reach fusion conditions, Q, and energy recovery efficiency do. the capacitance really only repres...
by TallDave
Fri Jan 19, 2024 4:16 pm
Forum: News
Topic: Helion Energy to demonstrate net electricity production by 2024
Replies: 660
Views: 104398

Re: Helion Energy to demonstrate net electricity production by 2024

Ok. Presumably yield is strongly related to B, so it seems quite unlikely that a generator targeting low-Q will produce a remotely similar yield per pulse with the mag field down by a third. The penny finally drops as to why they recently added DT to their program. It is down by a quarter . At B^4 ...
by TallDave
Fri Jan 19, 2024 3:48 pm
Forum: News
Topic: Helion Energy to demonstrate net electricity production by 2024
Replies: 660
Views: 104398

Re: Helion Energy to demonstrate net electricity production by 2024

HERT: So 1Hz, circa 50 MJ in, say 55 MJ out, is 5MW. yes but unfortunately it's only 5MW for 1ms, which is not very useful, practically speaking, as it would only provide 5KW over the 1 second, or enough to power an average home (although again I have to emphasize this is still 50 years ahead of ma...
by TallDave
Thu Jan 11, 2024 10:17 pm
Forum: News
Topic: Helion Energy to demonstrate net electricity production by 2024
Replies: 660
Views: 104398

Re: Helion Energy to demonstrate net electricity production by 2024

I still don't know how to put all this together to do what Dave is trying to do, but I sense a path. thanks, I think I got where I was trying to go, more or less :) but my previous estimate rests on the assumption losses must come from the pulse energy and not the fusion products (we might call thi...
by TallDave
Thu Jan 11, 2024 9:57 pm
Forum: News
Topic: Helion Energy to demonstrate net electricity production by 2024
Replies: 660
Views: 104398

Re: Helion Energy to demonstrate net electricity production by 2024

Skipjack wrote:
Thu Jan 11, 2024 1:56 pm
This does confirm that the final assembly of Polaris has shifted to the right by a few months and is now scheduled for summer.
too bad, sounds like it may be late fall before they're getting into the 10KeV+ range
by TallDave
Thu Jan 11, 2024 9:53 pm
Forum: News
Topic: Helion Energy to demonstrate net electricity production by 2024
Replies: 660
Views: 104398

Re: Helion Energy to demonstrate net electricity production by 2024

HERT: So 1Hz, circa 50 MJ in, say 55 MJ out, is 5MW. yes but unfortunately it's only 5MW for 1ms, which is not very useful, practically speaking, as it would only provide 5KW over the 1 second, or enough to power an average home (although again I have to emphasize this is still 50 years ahead of maj...
by TallDave
Wed Jan 10, 2024 5:34 pm
Forum: News
Topic: Helion Energy to demonstrate net electricity production by 2024
Replies: 660
Views: 104398

Re: Helion Energy to demonstrate net electricity production by 2024

(sorry, had to break these replies up, forum not allowing as one) From what I've watched and read, Polaris aims for one pulse per second interesting, that makes sense as the website says Polaris will do 1+ pulse per ten seconds (way up from Trenta's 625 seconds)... of course with 1 ms at 1 Hz we're ...
by TallDave
Wed Jan 10, 2024 5:33 pm
Forum: News
Topic: Helion Energy to demonstrate net electricity production by 2024
Replies: 660
Views: 104398

Re: Helion Energy to demonstrate net electricity production by 2024

(theoretically Q-eng>1 should be possible even with Q-sci<1) at one point I also thought this might be true, but then I decided it can't be because then there's nowhere for the losses to come from (as per above) i.e., if per Kirtley's graph you have to spend 10MW in losses to get 50MW in output, th...