Search found 6805 matches

by Skipjack
Thu Jan 25, 2024 6:45 pm
Forum: News
Topic: Helion Energy to demonstrate net electricity production by 2024
Replies: 660
Views: 104540

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 Skipjack
Wed Jan 24, 2024 1:22 am
Forum: News
Topic: Helion Energy to demonstrate net electricity production by 2024
Replies: 660
Views: 104540

Re: Helion Energy to demonstrate net electricity production by 2024

The pulse only lasts 1 ms give or take a few microseconds. They can't keep it up much longer than that (for several reasons). So they have about 99 ms between pulses at 10Hz and 999 ms between pulses at 1Hz to evacuate the chamber using their custom turbo molecular pumps. Either one is a very long t...
by Skipjack
Wed Jan 17, 2024 4:14 am
Forum: News
Topic: Helion Energy to demonstrate net electricity production by 2024
Replies: 660
Views: 104540

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 Skipjack
Mon Jan 15, 2024 7:47 pm
Forum: News
Topic: Helion Energy to demonstrate net electricity production by 2024
Replies: 660
Views: 104540

Re: Helion Energy to demonstrate net electricity production by 2024

Ok, feels like closing in. Polaris runs at 0.1 Hz+. If each pulse is like the power plant, it would be net 5MJ, up to 45MJ in and 50MJ out net of losses. So 500kW is ball-park power if each pulse is as good as the final design. So expectation must be lower. You mentioned a light-bulb would do, but ...
by Skipjack
Sun Jan 14, 2024 5:54 pm
Forum: News
Topic: Helion Energy to demonstrate net electricity production by 2024
Replies: 660
Views: 104540

Re: Helion Energy to demonstrate net electricity production by 2024

Not entirely clear if that's Polaris or the power plant. If it's the plant at 50MW it doesn't work at 1 Hz: the capacitor bank will be empty after supplying the grid when the next shot cues up. At 2 Hz, I don't think it can work at a Q of 2, because of losses. A consistent picture at 3 Hz would be ...
by Skipjack
Sat Jan 13, 2024 2:03 pm
Forum: News
Topic: Helion Energy to demonstrate net electricity production by 2024
Replies: 660
Views: 104540

Re: Helion Energy to demonstrate net electricity production by 2024

mvanwink5 wrote:
Sat Jan 13, 2024 2:42 am
SJ, any idea what the new earthwork is all about at Helion's new plant? Accelerating production plans?? :D
Been trying to get information on that.
by Skipjack
Fri Jan 12, 2024 10:39 pm
Forum: News
Topic: Helion Energy to demonstrate net electricity production by 2024
Replies: 660
Views: 104540

Re: Helion Energy to demonstrate net electricity production by 2024

No, I don’t think so. If its producing a net 5MJ in each pulse, and doing one pulse per second, thats 5MW: a Watt is a Joule per second. What is strange is that the core seems to be idle something over 99.7% of the time. Seems like an opportunity…though I dimly recall 10Hz as the target for the com...
by Skipjack
Fri Jan 12, 2024 2:03 pm
Forum: News
Topic: Helion Energy to demonstrate net electricity production by 2024
Replies: 660
Views: 104540

Re: Helion Energy to demonstrate net electricity production by 2024

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...
by Skipjack
Fri Jan 12, 2024 1:16 am
Forum: News
Topic: Helion Energy to demonstrate net electricity production by 2024
Replies: 660
Views: 104540

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 Skipjack
Thu Jan 11, 2024 1:56 pm
Forum: News
Topic: Helion Energy to demonstrate net electricity production by 2024
Replies: 660
Views: 104540

Re: Helion Energy to demonstrate net electricity production by 2024

https://www.spglobal.com/commodityinsig ... -by-summer

This does confirm that the final assembly of Polaris has shifted to the right by a few months and is now scheduled for summer.
by Skipjack
Thu Jan 11, 2024 1:52 pm
Forum: News
Topic: Helion Energy to demonstrate net electricity production by 2024
Replies: 660
Views: 104540

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...
by Skipjack
Thu Jan 11, 2024 1:38 pm
Forum: News
Topic: Helion Energy to demonstrate net electricity production by 2024
Replies: 660
Views: 104540

Re: Helion Energy to demonstrate net electricity production by 2024

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 ...
by Skipjack
Mon Jan 08, 2024 1:50 am
Forum: News
Topic: Helion Energy to demonstrate net electricity production by 2024
Replies: 660
Views: 104540

Re: Helion Energy to demonstrate net electricity production by 2024

From what I understand, pulse length in Polaris is somewhere around 1 ms, give or take a few hundred microseconds. They can not make it much longer for the reasons outlined by Charliem. Again, as mentioned, Helion would rather terminate the pulse early and recover the energy than keep the plasma ali...
by Skipjack
Thu Jan 04, 2024 8:08 am
Forum: News
Topic: Helion Energy to demonstrate net electricity production by 2024
Replies: 660
Views: 104540

Re: Helion Energy to demonstrate net electricity production by 2024

thanks Skip, much appreciated been looking over Kirtley's paper, this seems to be the crux https://media.springernature.com/full/springer-static/image/art%3A10.1007%2Fs10894-023-00367-7/MediaObjects/10894_2023_367_Fig15_HTML.png so if that's accurate they expect usable power to be about 3x combined...
by Skipjack
Tue Jan 02, 2024 7:08 am
Forum: General
Topic: Humble hopes for 2024
Replies: 6
Views: 889

Re: Humble hopes for 2024

Second those hopes...