Helion Energy to demonstrate net electricity production by 2024

[usesbiggerwords]

I think, at the beginning, fusion will supplant this mad race to put solar panels and wind turbines everywhere, because why use 2nd and 3rd hand solar power when you can use the Actual Power Of The Sun (APOTS (tm) usesbiggerwords, 2023). The US Navy will be particularly interested, since they've been driving towards all-electric carriers for years now. The regulatory environment is already going to be much lighter than fission, so adoption will be much faster. I think the capital dollars are there to crank out fusion generators as fast as they can be built, so by the end of the decade it wouldn't surprise me to see the Westinghouses and GEs and Siemens of the world licensing Helion tech and building generators, because they already have the manufacturing infrastructure to do so, and there's too much money to be made.

Will it be 50% by 2050? Probably not, but I could certainly see 25 - 30% being a realistic goal.

[charliem]

I think, at the beginning, fusion will supplant this mad race to put solar panels and wind turbines everywhere

We wish, but I have my doubts.

In these forums most may know a bit more about fusion than the average Joe, but few can call themselves experts. Knowing enough to be hopeful, but not enough to see all the obstacles ahead is the perfect starting point for the Dunning-Kruger effect. Let's try not to fall in that trap.

Sure, reaching fusion break-even is going to be a huge step ahead, but not the last one. I compare the situation with achieving self sustaining, controlled fission reactions. It took another 15-20 years from that point, to the beginning of use/commercialization.

Some issues that I don't think are totally solved yet in fusion:

1. Fuels: AFAIK, breeding for Tritum production is not even in the prototype phase. Producing Helium-3 by fusing pure Deuterium implies handling one third of the energy in the form of neutrons; that means complex, expensive arrangements for shielding and cooling, and faster degradation of the machine; the engineering of that have not been done. For Proton-Boron (if at all possible), its development is still years away (we'll see if TAE, LPP, or anyone else can gives us any good news about that).
   .
2. Materials: Only recently have we started compiling information about long term effects in many candidates. In quite a few cases we have hunches about their behavior, but those need to be translated into certainties before asking the big money to step in.
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3. Maintenance: How often, how deep, how difficult, in summary how expensive it is going to be.
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4. Liquid blankets: Another interesting technology that has not reached the experimental phase. It is not even in TRL-3. It will take years to take it to TRL-9, when it can be deployed.

And surely there are other problems pending solution.

I don't se any big company transitioning all their investments, one day to the next, from new wind turbines, to fusion plants only. It is going to take time.

Edits: grammar and clarity.

[Skipjack]

Producing Helium-3 by fusing pure Deuterium implies handling one third of the energy in the form of neutrons; that means complex, expensive arrangements for shielding and cooling, and faster degradation of the machine; the engineering of that have not been done.

D-D neutrons are only 2.45 MeV, which is below the activation energy of many materials. Helion uses quartz tubes for the first wall. Silicon has to absorb three(!) neutrons to be come unstable. Then it is a beta emitter with a half life of only 2.5 hours. I did a back of the envelope calculation with very unfavorable assumptions and it would take over a year for 1% of the quartz tube to become radioactive and then that would only be the part surrounding the central burn chamber. Since radiation falls off with the distance squared, it would be much less further away from that point.
Their magnets are made from aluminum which has a half life of 2.25 minutes when it absorbs a neutron. So does not stay hot very long. Magnets are not covering the chamber continuously and are already a bit further away from the neutron source.
Cooling is not a big deal. Trenta was air cooled. Polaris will be water cooled, from what I have heard. The waste heat is only about 10 MW for a D-D-He3 machine.

Materials: Only recently have we started compiling information about long term effects in many candidates. In quite a few cases we have hunches about their behavior, but those need to be translated into certainties before asking the big money to step in.

See above. Helion has done and is still doing extensive materials research but from what I understand that is only meant to improve maintenance cycles for continuous power machines in the future. It is not a show stopper.

Maintenance: How often, how deep, how difficult, in summary how expensive it is going to be.

Maintenance for Helion's machines will be much simpler than for Tokamaks because of the linear design. They do not have to dismantle any coils and there is no liquid breeding blanket that they have to drain or otherwise work around. I am not sure, but I would assume that they will just replace the entire core, take the old one back to the factory and refurbish it. Easy to do when your machine is road transportable.
I estimate maintenance at most 2 weeks/year for the later models. The Microsoft plant will likely see more because it is a first of a kind.

Liquid blankets: Another interesting technology that has not reached the experimental phase. It is not even in TRL-3. It will take years to take it to TRL-9, when it can be deployed.

Helion does not need any breeding blankets.

[usesbiggerwords]

I estimate maintenance at most 2 weeks/year for the later models.

This is your standard industrial plant annual turnaround duration. Not even a bump in the road, and well within most downtime models for plant profitability.

[charliem]

Hope you are right Skipjack, but I'm still unsure. I'm trying not to trick myself into thinking that I know what I don't know.

Thing is, Helion has not been exactly open about their lasts results, and they have hardly given any details of their future designs either. It's their right but that means we are short on hard info, and without that there's no way to make accurate guesses.

Saying that all problems regarding Helion's tech have already been solved, all questions answered is, in my opinion, wishful thinking, at least for us outside the company.

That's why I resort to History (science and tech history is one of my hobbies). It has not predicting power per se, but experience says most times future is not that different from past.

Helion claims they will reach wall-plug break-even in 2024, and have an operational reactor in 2028. Do you know of any substantially new technology in the past that went from proof of principle to first operational prototype in only four years? I can't think of one right away.

Planes took more than that. Controlled nuclear fission took more than that. Steam engines took more than that. Rockets. Computers. Radio. Electricity. Jet engines. ... Even many technologies evolved of previous ones took more than that. TV, for example, or the industrial production of steel, diesel engines, the Internet, mobile phones, secondary batteries, etc.

Of course, that doesn't prove it is impossible, just that it would be unusual.

One more thing.

Yes, 2.45 MeV neutrons, but a LOT of them (from the numbers I've seen, one or two orders of magnitude higher than in most fission reactors).

Even if activation of materials is not such a tough problem (and that needs more testing), the neutron flux inside the machines used to generate Helium-3 is going to make life tough for the first walls. How tough? Who knows, I certainly don't, and I suspect that not even Helion knows (yet). The state of Trenta's inspection window after decommission does not look promising, and that was after only 10,000 shots. A year have 31.5 MILLION seconds.

If I had to take a guess, I'd say that Helion is probably going to reach their electricity production break-even goal in 2024 of 2025, but from that point to first working production prototype, it is going to take more than 4 years, but what do I now.

[Skipjack]

Helion claims they will reach wall-plug break-even in 2024, and have an operational reactor in 2028. Do you know of any substantially new technology in the past that went from proof of principle to first operational prototype in only four years? I can't think of one right away.

I suppose it depends on how you define "substantially new".
Helion did not just start working on their design yesterday. They started over 15 years ago. They have had 6 prototypes in that time. All of them taught them something. E.g they had a small prototype that made a billion FRCs is very short succession.
They kept refining their design based on these lessons. They also have a lot of experimental results from other designs to help their decisions. I think you want to consider Polaris the Wright Flyer but it might just as well be fair enough to call IPA-C the Wright Flyer, since much of the same design principles apply there. Its been more than ten years since that (and FRCs go back much longer).
In fact, they got their patent granted around that time. So that would be a pretty good corresponding time frame.

Yes, 2.45 MeV neutrons, but a LOT of them (from the numbers I've seen, one or two orders of magnitude higher than in most fission reactors).

All of their other prototypes since IPA (except the billion FRC one, I believe) produced a significant amount of neutrons. IPA did 10^9 neutrons per pulse. Venti did 10^11. We don't know about Trenta but given their scaling laws it would be around 5x10^12 or more with D-D. Trenta also did D-T experiments, which means an even higher neutron flux (10^14?).
They can extrapolate the damage that they will have to expect from these experiments.

Even if activation of materials is not such a tough problem (and that needs more testing), the neutron flux inside the machines used to generate Helium-3 is going to make life tough for the first walls. How tough? Who knows, I certainly don't, and I suspect that not even Helion knows (yet). The state of Trenta's inspection window after decommission does not look promising, and that was after only 10,000 shots. A year have 31.5 MILLION seconds.

They had 10,000 shots in the first year and Trenta operated for 3 years with occasional D-T campaigns as well.|

Pure breeder machines would come later. The first ones will be mixed mode (breeding and burning). The design of the breeders will likely be a bit different from the mixed mode and from pure D-He3 machines. I would expect them to be larger and they might be using other materials, have more shielding, etc. They might even burn Tritium for extra power (most of it extracted the traditional way via steam turbines) or might be used for industrial heat or district heating.

I am not sure about what picture you are referring to. I might have missed it?
There was a picture of the divertor which showed deposits on it That was after the first campaign and they added changes like magnetic shielding and other things since then. Also changed the materials.

[charliem]

I suppose it depends on how you define "substantially new" ... I think you want to consider Polaris the Wright Flyer but it might just as well be fair enough to call IPA-C the Wright Flyer

Well, the Wright Flyer was the first to meet all the main goals for a powered, heavier than air, flying machine. Able to take off from level ground, self powered, fully controllable. There were gliders before 1903, and there was powered flying too, but Flyer 1 was the first to do it all.

I'd say that IPA-C is more akin to one of the Wright's gliders. It could form FRCs, compress, accelerate, and collide them, but fell short on the "self-propelled flight" goal, as did all of their other machines up to date.

All of their other prototypes since IPA (except the billion FRC one, I believe) produced a significant amount of neutrons. IPA did 10^9 neutrons per pulse. Venti did 10^11. We don't know about Trenta but given their scaling laws it would be around 5x10^12 or more with D-D. Trenta also did D-T experiments, which means an even higher neutron flux (10^14?).
They can extrapolate the damage that they will have to expect from these experiments.

Can they?

The neutron flux in Venti and Trenta was multiple orders of magnitud bellow what they are going to see in a breeder machine of similar dimensions to the 50 MWe prototype:

• Just by shot frequency, 10 per second vs 1 per 10 minutes, that's 3.5 orders of magnitud.
• Plus, higher B means higher T.n, means higher reactivity, means higher neutron flux. According to my BOE numbers, no less than 2 orders of magnitud over Venti, and one over Trenta.
• And then is size. I don't know how bigger in volume are going to be the final FRCs in the breeder machine, but from all I've seen, larger.

In summary, we are talking, maybe, 6 orders of magnitud above previous experience. That's a lot to extrapolate.

I worry about the first wall, not only regarding activation, how about spallation? How about capture and out-gassing of fusion fuels and products? Will those be enough to poison the reaction significantly? After how long? Will the walls retain meaningful amounts of tritium?

Many questions. Only guesses as answers.

A few weeks back I read my alma mater is right now building facilities to research materials under fusion reactor conditions. Pity I don't live there anymore. Maybe some of my old friends will work inside, then I could pester them with questions.

[Skipjack]

Well, the Wright Flyer was the first to meet all the main goals for a powered, heavier than air, flying machine. Able to take off from level ground, self powered, fully controllable. There were gliders before 1903, and there was powered flying too, but Flyer 1 was the first to do it all.

I'd say that IPA-C is more akin to one of the Wright's gliders. It could form FRCs, compress, accelerate, and collide them, but fell short on the "self-propelled flight" goal, as did all of their other machines up to date.

I do not think that it can be compared like that. IPA-C, Venti and finally Trenta did everything too, but were lacking performance. The first Wright Flyer was lacking performance as well. It had a very short range.

All of their other prototypes since IPA (except the billion FRC one, I believe) produced a significant amount of neutrons. IPA did 10^9 neutrons per pulse. Venti did 10^11. We don't know about Trenta but given their scaling laws it would be around 5x10^12 or more with D-D. Trenta also did D-T experiments, which means an even higher neutron flux (10^14?).
They can extrapolate the damage that they will have to expect from these experiments.

Can they?

The neutron flux in Venti and Trenta was multiple orders of magnitud bellow what they are going to see in a breeder machine of similar dimensions to the 50 MWe prototype:

• Just by shot frequency, 10 per second vs 1 per 10 minutes, that's 3.5 orders of magnitud.
• Plus, higher B means higher T.n, means higher reactivity, means higher neutron flux. According to my BOE numbers, no less than 2 orders of magnitud over Venti, and one over Trenta.
• And then is size. I don't know how bigger in volume are going to be the final FRCs in the breeder machine, but from all I've seen, larger.

In summary, we are talking, maybe, 6 orders of magnitud above previous experience. That's a lot to extrapolate.

I do not think it is. Behavior of the materials they are choosing under fusion conditions is pretty predictable. Quartz is used very often. It works really well. It was even proposed to be used with gas core reactors (nuclear lightbulb).

I worry about the first wall, not only regarding activation, how about spallation? How about capture and out-gassing of fusion fuels and products? Will those be enough to poison the reaction significantly? After how long? Will the walls retain meaningful amounts of tritium?

I think all of that is a lot less of a problem when you evacuate the chamber after every single pulse. Also note that FRCs are a lot more tolerant towards background gasses in that they operate at initial neutral pressures of ~1E-2 Torr and compressed densities of 1E22-1E23 m-3.

[billh]

I appreciated the extensive interview Kirtley did a few months ago and all the recent news about Helion is very encouraging. I was curious that with all the topics he covered I don't recall him talking about cost. Sometimes when an obvious issue goes unmentioned it indicates potential issues. Any thoughts on cost competitiveness compared to conventional, non-nuclear power sources?

[Skipjack]

I appreciated the extensive interview Kirtley did a few months ago and all the recent news about Helion is very encouraging. I was curious that with all the topics he covered I don't recall him talking about cost. Sometimes when an obvious issue goes unmentioned it indicates potential issues. Any thoughts on cost competitiveness compared to conventional, non-nuclear power sources?

Helion has a FAQ on their website. That states that they are aiming for 1 cent/kWh. That would be the long term. Things are always harder in the beginning.

[Skipjack]

Trenta says "good bye". Kinda sad, but that is the fate of experimental machines.
https://twitter.com/Helion_Energy/statu ... 81472?s=20

[usesbiggerwords]

Trenta says "good bye". Kinda sad, but that is the fate of experimental machines.
https://twitter.com/Helion_Energy/statu ... 81472?s=20

University lab donation, perhaps?

[Skipjack]

Helion's website has seen a refresh with fancy new graphics.
https://www.helionenergy.com
There is also a section on the "technology" page with papers. One of them is fresh of the press!!!
https://link.springer.com/article/10.10 ... 23-00367-7
Grab it while it is hot!

[Skipjack]

Design specifications for Trenta and Polaris:

PolarisSpecSheet.jpg (83.24 KiB) Viewed 802 times

TrentaSpecSheet.jpg (87.17 KiB) Viewed 802 times

[mvanwink5]

SJ
In the paper, Trenta is reported to be >0.5 m radius and Polaris as >1 m diameter. I found that to be odd and wondered if what was meant was Polaris was >1 m RADIUS? Looking at pictures I am guessing it was a typo in the paper and it should have been >1 m radius.