Talk-Polywell.org

I think ‘counter intuitive’ is a little kind. I heard that France was reducing nuclear power and adding gas to make way for renewables, because the gas plants were required for load following. In that context if Helion can load follow, it’s a big deal. If it’s baseload cost is less than wind and so...

SJ We had gas turbine peakers at our plant & they were dispatched based on the number of 'cycles remaining'. Gas turbines operate at high temperatures & large pieces of metal that go through a heat up & cool cycle will see fatigue, that & stress due to rotation speeds cause cracks to form. Oh, yeah...

The thing about peakers is that they have start up costs due to heat stress cycles so they use significant life every time they start up even if they do not generate 1 MW. Helion would run their units all the time even if it were only to generate more He3 & tritium. I am not sure about the heat str...

One other source of revenue for Helion not mentioned much is licensing. Once the technology is proven later this decade (something which I have little doubt will happen), the Mitsubishis and Westinghouses of the world, or those looking to supplant them, will be chomping at the bit to license the te...

Has any estimate been put forward by Helion as to what it will cost to manufacture a 50 MWe power plant? I think that it depends on how far into the mass production they are. The first plants likely won't be as cheap as the later ones when mass production is in full swing and they have built their ...

The obsession is not with tritium burning, it’s with evacuation being a limiting factor for power production. Evacuating less means putting up with burning waste tritium. They are still limited by wall loads more than anything. There are a few other things too that I am not sure I am at liberty to ...

If Helion's reactor could run in 'dirty' mode, still evacuating at 10Hz, but with two pulses between evacuations, it would generate circa twice the power. The machine would still be limited by the wall loads. You don't want your first wall to melt or crack. What I think would be easier is to have t...

This from the UK: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/jan/29/gas-fired-plants-uk-lights-on-cost-profits-energy-crisis Producers getting up to £6 ~$7 per kWh at some times. Yeah, that is for gas peaker plants. They are notoriously expensive. One reason is that they are on so rarely. So in orde...

It should be more like 50 cent/kWh. They would make ~7 kg of Tritium/year. Also, do not compare end consumer prices to the price the producer gets. E.g. nuclear fission plants produce electricity at between 4 cents to 8 cents/kWh. Solar and wind can be lower than that, but then they have hidden cost...

The point about selling the Tritium is a good one. Yeah, this is the crazy part. At the projected cost of 1 cent/kWh a 50 MWe Helion mixed mode power plant would make about 4 million/year in revenue. At the current price of 30,000 USD/gram, selling the Tritium from the same power plant would make H...

If they don't evacuate the chamber every time, D-T reactions, and subsequently 14 MeV neutrons, become a much bigger problem. Yes, I was aware, but there may be compensating advantages. Given the T is highly reactive, is it safe to assume that all of the T from one pulse would react with D in a sub...

But I don't see the other scenario. If they had enough 3He, operating at 25 keV, with a 1:1 D-3He mix, then for each 2 D-3He reactions they would have 1 D-D. Am I wrong? I am not sure what you are getting at here. Are we just assuming a 1:1 ratio of Deuterium to He3? Generally, Helion NEEDS a ratio...

charliem wrote: ↑

Sun Feb 11, 2024 11:41 pm

If they don't evacuate the chamber every time, D-T reactions, and subsequently 14 MeV neutrons, become a much bigger problem.

This! That is also what they talk about in their fuel cycle patent.

Yeah, I think they are still aiming for 10 Hz for the power plant design. As for the math: A D-He3 reaction should be 18.3 MeV in charged particles 2He4 (3.6 MeV) + p ( 14.7 MeV ) IF they have enough He3 from T- decay, then D-D reactions would be 1/2 of the total. If they do not, then they would be ...

Making vacuum vessels for our fusion systems!

https://x.com/Helion_Energy/status/1755 ... 68320?s=20