Helion has been working through Polaris construction issues as mentioned in their progress update:
https://mailchi.mp/helionenergy/polaris ... 060651cce5
It’s been a great start to 2024 for the Helion team. Every team member is ultra-focused on pulling all the pieces together for Polaris. Coils are assembled, sections are built, capacitors are on an assembly line – things are really moving!
As of today, we continue to be on schedule to have Polaris built this year and begin operations and machine bring-up.
Compression coils are arriving and being assembled
For the last two years, our team has been working through supply chain challenges related to our compression coils. In the first two months of this year, we managed to overcome many of these challenges, using a multidisciplinary approach. Our engineers worked closely with our supply chain team, and our supply chain team worked closely with our machinists.
We managed to overcome what could have caused a significant schedule delay (1 year or more!) for us, keeping the Polaris build moving forward this year.
Vacuum vessel material testing is providing viable manufacturing pathways
Polaris requires the largest quartz vacuum vessels ever made, which has been an extremely tough manufacturing challenge for our team. We have been parallel pathing a few different approaches for Polaris, each with its own technical or economical merits. The start of this year has proved these paths were right to try; we’re seeing positive results for two so far. Our test operators, engineers, and production teams have been putting in a lot of work to iterate on both options at the same time, and I know we are all excited to close in on a final solution. Facing hard problems with iteration in real time!
Counting the days to commercial fusion. It is not that long now.