Talk-Polywell.org

New blog post by Helion: Measuring electricity production from fusion: Electrical diagnostics https://www.helionenergy.com/articles/measuring-electricity-production-from-fusion-electrical-diagnostics/ Thanks for alerting us to that new post, SJ. Not very informative, since they don't provide any ac...

it may be an act of unmitigated chutzpah, even hubris, but all indications are it's an honest (albeit audacious) business venture I don't know if you've been keeping up with the news, but it's to keep the OpenAI bubble from popping. that's a bit silly, Helion is worth $5B, OpenAI is more like $750B...

everything they are doing is exactly what you would do if you were already sure the physics works ! Or if you wanted people to think that you were already sure the physics works. in this scenario, who are they trying to convince by building a factory? the public? who cares what they think? it's not...

I asked the google AI whether the 95 % energy recirculation number was a proven fact. The answer I got was: lol of course it's not proven, it was a comment he made last week about a proprietary technology I have clients with trade secret manufacturing processes dating back to the 1950s, none of whi...

yes, Helion looks strange because they aren't building a fusion reactor, like everyone else is doing they're building a fusion reactor factory their goal is to pump out 50MWe units like aircraft that seems absurdly optimistic because almost no one has been able to a plasma ignited for more than a fe...

Well, this is for experiments right now. Polaris is meant to demonstrate both: Direct electricity from fusion and the production of He3 and Tritium in a way that it can be used for fuel (e.g. He3 separated from He4). But, I presume the numbers are relatively small for all of that. Commercial plants...

Guys! He3 is not that big of a problem. You can buy it on the free market at less cost than the Tritium. IIRC, Helion already has the He3 they need for their campaign. That said, Polaris is still meant to demonstrate He3 production (and all that goes with it) at scale. sure, but as pointed out abov...

Just to wrap my head around the cost of D-He3 reactions in initial testing, i tried some reverse-engineered back of the envelope calculations for Orion (or maybe more likely Polaris), assuming 100MJ of harvestable ⁴He (alpha particle) energy, but 50% harvest efficiency factor due to all loses (e.g....

I can’t understand why Elon Musk talks about Tokamak first wall heat problem as representative of Fusion (latest pod cast, at the end, around 1hr25min), when Helion Energy converts plasma power via magnetic dynamics. As Kirtley pointed out just the other day, Elon is correct! In fact, Helion's reac...

Yes! Size of plant & heat rejection criteria on siting & permitting cannot be overstated, this is a huge factor. Even for space stations, heat rejection is a major issue (after SpaceX's success we need to expand our use geography to space). Somewhat counterintuitively, heat rejection is actually ha...

They are planning for somewhere between 20 keV to 30 keV for their actual power plants. That seems like a reasonable guess pre-Polaris, but we've yet to see how the plasma reacts to significant fusion heating. I'm sure they have models but I wouldn't trust them without more data. China's very good ...

my summary: on track for testing before end of year, demonstrate electricity likely next year. Thanks, would love to see them break 10K eV before the end of the year. Then we'd start to learn just how much fuel ion heating by fusion products is actually possible. 20KeV? 50 KeV? Since this is pulsed...

I don't understand this choosing of sides when talking fusion. Competition for scarce resources, reputations. Honestly, I don't think it matters that much, though. As with SpaceX, a lot of what makes the tech commercially viable is a stack of fairly recent and obscure innovations across multiple un...

Time to commercial is the most important milestone in one sense, but time to net electric will change the public perception of fusion power. Another important milestone is meeting power contracts already signed by Helion. October for full assembly would be nice & worthy of celebration. Maybe, I was...

As for D-He3 vs D-T: So, at least for now, the 3.52 MeV alphas produced by D-T would be the main source of recoverable energy. That said, D-T should still produce more net electricity in Polaris than D-He3, but the disadvantages for materials in particular make it tough to do so economically in a p...