Talk-Polywell.org

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 though.

The wall load is not really a major concern for them

Fusion power is coupled magnetically directly to the plasma & the walls (enclosing the plasma) are quartz. Contrast this to all the other approaches, for example, the walls of General Fusion and Zap Energy are liquid metal.

How many years would they work before needing to be replaced? Size, metalurgy, how they are operated are factors, but I am way out of date so whatever I remember is old info. I do know it is still important. Replacing gas turbine peakers will be low hanging fruit to target for Helion. On the other ...

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. The key h...

For utility power, locating on nuclear power sites would be obvious for permitting especially considering low heat rejection compared to a nuclear plant. For steel mills and aluminum foundries the number of units would be dictated by the mill or foundry size. The thing about peakers is that they hav...

My understanding was that the goal for the tritium was to store it, allow it to decay to He3, then burn that in the generator. Of course, this was before I knew the market price for tritium was so high. I was not paying attention to the tritium price either. There are at least two likely viable com...

LM-26 was mentioned in their January 11, 2024 news letter, but I had no idea what it was and this latest publication (TY Crowberry) illuminates that. In abbreviated review (my understanding), GF has followed a fusion path of concept (mechanical compression of plasma using steam pistons and a spinnin...

AI compute clusters are power hogs & huge pressure to supply it is escalating exponentially. If Helion can scale there will be a market that dwarfs steel foundries.

SJ, any idea what the new earthwork is all about at Helion's new plant? Accelerating production plans??

I am not sure whether future power plants will need much larger capacitor banks. I would not be surprised if you are largely correct that there would not be a significant increase in capacitor energy storage to handle net power. 3 phase power summed is non time varying, constant, and transformers a...

Remaining gasses have to be evacuated after the pulse, and their patented high volume vacuum pump is key to doing this fast.

happy if they managed to power a light bulb. Yes. That was the context for Polaris power production, just to reach net electric, not commercial. I thought that was understood. Hence the capacitor sizing for polaris is just to form the plasma, accelerate, then compress it, then recover it minus loss...

The article conflates Polaris starting operation with operation to produce net electric power by mid 2024. I am happy to hear Helion's progress towards operation of Polaris. So is this schedule improvement or delay, I cannot tell; if it is a delay, any idea the cause?

Huge announcement by General Fusion. Their last hurdle was a proven liquid metal wall compression chamber for their plasma.
https://mailchi.mp/generalfusion/publis ... c2986861e1

pulse length in Polaris is somewhere around 1 ms Plasma duration at point of compression in the device center is one time, which I suspect SJ is saying is ~1ms, then there is the magnetic field sequential firing to accelerate the plasma from each end to collide & to be further compressed, and that ...