Talk-Polywell.org

It they had tried burning D-T (which at the 8 keV ion temp they reached is ~750 times more reactive than D-D), they would have a clue, but they didn't, or at least Helion's web says they didn't (which confuses me because Dr. Kirtley is shown in one of the videos from last year with a small tank of ...

1) Stability of the FRC during the fusion stage: Starting with a 10^22 - 10^23 m(-3) ion density, 20-30 keV ion temp, D-3He FRC. If 1% undergo fusion, that will create 10^20 - 10^21 high speed charged particles, directionally isotropic at birth (I think). Will that perturbe the FRC structure? I ima...

The point of the Nucor deal is to explore "beyond the meter" electricity production for various purposes. Right now, it takes over seven(!) years to get a license for grid connection in the US. In order to accelerate commercialization, Helion is looking at alternative routes. Kinda sucks, but the US...

RERT wrote: ↑

Tue Oct 03, 2023 6:35 am

Thanks: so, barring something surprising, the 2028 Nucor power will be 50MW units, I surmise.

I think 2028 is Microsoft. Nucor might be later.

mvanwink5 wrote: ↑

Sun Oct 01, 2023 9:13 pm

It is not clear from Helion's press release on the 500 MWe power plant for NUCOR, but I presume it is ten 50 MWe fusion electric power generators?

Yet undetermined. They can generally build these machines as big as they want. So it it could be one or 10 or anything in between.

One cool thing about Helion's machines is that they can load follow really, really well. That means that they do not have to rely on a large grid for stabilization. I think that should help with smaller consumers that need/want their own plants. It is a shame though, that it is so hard to get a grid...

Helion is collaborating with Nucor for a 500 MWe power plant for the steel sector. To my understanding, this will happen some time after the one for Microsoft. One goal of the collaboration is to accelerate behind the meter timelines. From my understanding, the US permitting system is too slow for g...

Great talk at the All-In Summit 2023 with David Kirtley and Bob Mumgaard. There is not really much new information in case you are wondering. Love the optimism and the friendly competition between the two. And mind you, they emphasize that the market is so huge, that it is not really a competition. ...

Yeah, they have a paper coming up on diagnostics for Trenta and I believe there are more papers coming. But that process takes a while. So be patient.

New paper by Zap! They are not talking about achieved Q quite yet. It seems like they are still optimizing the machine and are also improving diagnostics before they want to talk about that. What is important is that their scaling laws still seem to hold up in experiment. There are nuances though. I...

Helion's David Kirtley is in the schedule for the 65th Annual Meeting of the APS Division of Plasma Physics, for a short intervention at 09:30 on next November 3: https://meetings.aps.org/Meeting/DPP23/Session/YO08.7 From the abstract, it seems he is not going to talk about anything new (so, no Pol...

I agree. Germany's view on fusion is incredibly conservative and uninspired. It is also incredibly late to the game. I doubt anything will come from it.
The country is pretty much doomed unless a miracle happens.

More information at the FIA:

https://www.fusionindustryassociation.o ... finitions/

KitemanSA wrote: ↑

Wed Sep 06, 2023 5:34 am

I am back after about a decade.

Yay! Welcome back! Lots of exciting stuff going on these days.

I've written a few long, detailed answers to a few people objections and doubts, that took me some time to compose to my satisfaction, and they are just hidden to everyone. :roll: YouTube apparently allows content posters to "hide users", meaning they can select users to make their comments invisib...