Talk-Polywell.org

believe they only said they had recaptured 95% of the compression energy in a smaller machine, which is entirely different from capturing 95% of the total energy of a fusion pulse (maybe someday!)... remains to be seen experimentally what fraction of fusion product energy can be captured magnetical...

Some of the naysaying is highly likely linked to entities seeking to undermine positions of others in order to improve their own. Specifically along the lines of funding access and levels and additionally costing for access to other's work. Given the jump in money made available for fusion efforts ...

Additional: Thinking about some of the things I remember hearing and reading and looking at the paper again, most particle losses would follow the magnetic field lines and leave the FRC axially towards the divertor. It could be feasible to assume that they would induce charges in the acceleration co...

Ions & electrons don't thermalize in a pulse operation which is a big point in a pulse operation and improves direct magnetic recovery efficiency. Quartz is transparent to UV, but I do not know how much of the X-rays will pass, quartz is certainly not opaque to X-rays though and the tube is not tha...

Bremsstrahlung is not that high. It is more like 5%.

The heat load may be instantaneous and it may sound like a lot, but the total amount of energy transferred to the walls is not that high and that is what counts in the end. I would want to think that the people at Helion know what they are doing after they have built how many machines with the same ...

Oh yeah! I have noticed that a lot. Usually it is because someone made a YouTube video. And somehow that someone knows everything and everything better than the people actually working on it. A good term is "arm chair engineers".

ran across this video explainer on Kirtley's paper, sorry if it was shared earlier but it really sheds a lot of light on why Helion's FRC approach has exceeded other FRC efforts (ion/electron temperature ratio was the major key) https://mediacentral.princeton.edu/media/JPP08December2022_DKirtley/1_...

I think ‘counter intuitive’ is a little kind. I heard that France was reducing nuclear power and adding gas to make way for renewables, because the gas plants were required for load following. In that context if Helion can load follow, it’s a big deal. If it’s baseload cost is less than wind and so...

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. Oh, yeah...

The thing about peakers is that they have start up costs due to heat stress cycles so they use significant life every time they start up even if they do not generate 1 MW. Helion would run their units all the time even if it were only to generate more He3 & tritium. I am not sure about the heat str...

One other source of revenue for Helion not mentioned much is licensing. Once the technology is proven later this decade (something which I have little doubt will happen), the Mitsubishis and Westinghouses of the world, or those looking to supplant them, will be chomping at the bit to license the te...

Has any estimate been put forward by Helion as to what it will cost to manufacture a 50 MWe power plant? I think that it depends on how far into the mass production they are. The first plants likely won't be as cheap as the later ones when mass production is in full swing and they have built their ...

The obsession is not with tritium burning, it’s with evacuation being a limiting factor for power production. Evacuating less means putting up with burning waste tritium. They are still limited by wall loads more than anything. There are a few other things too that I am not sure I am at liberty to ...