SpaceX was building their factory to make the Starship as they were developing the prototype, 'prototypes are easy,' and their goal is to make 1000.
If Helion were to do that that would be revolutionary. Extreme innovation.
Antares is the factory next door to Polaris, where they will build their first production models.
I agree with the notion that the mass production will be the hard part. They will have to establish supply chains and manufacturing belts, etc.
That will be hard and expensive.
Have I gathered correctly that they will be putting 50MW on the grid, or did that come to me in a dream?
The Helion Energy FAQ states the goals for Polaris:
What will Polaris do?
Helion's 7th fusion prototype, Polaris, will be primarily built to produce helium-3 through deuterium-deuterium fusion. Helium-3 production at lower cost is possible because Polaris directly recovers electricity leftover from the input as well as new fusion reactions, eliminating the high costs usually associated with helium-3 production. Alongside helium-3, Polaris is also expected to generate a small amount of net electricity as a byproduct of its fusion reactions.
When will Helion produce electricity?
We expect that Polaris will be able to demonstrate the production a small amount of net electricity by 2024, but its main focus will be to produce helium-3. We will continue to iterate our device quickly so we can offer commercial fusion power for the grid as soon as possible.
I think that the emphasize in the statement from Helion Energy in a small amount of net electricity by 2024 is on the word small. If they can achieve that it would be of course great whatever value "small" would represent.
Experiences gained from propulsion work done by the Helion team in the past, now help with the challenge of increasing rep rate in Polaris:
David Kirtley wrote:Biggest one is the move from limited pulses to high rep-rate. We showed this in the old pulsed propulsion work and early energy recovery demos, “the millionth pulse is different than the tenth, and that’s even different from the first”.
This might give you an idea what they are currently dealing with:
David Kirtley on Twitter wrote:One more optimization level that goes on the stack! Time pressure definitely drives feature and complexity reduction. Supply chain time is maybe even a stronger forcing. “Do we really need that specialty alloy in this accelerator Rev?”
I have had a few more thoughts:
You might have seen my pretty "outrageous" calculation for Helion earlier that essentially says that Helion does not even need a Q(sci) >1 for a small amount of net electricity production (potentially as little as Q(sci) ~ 0.105).
Now they are doing D-D and D-He3 which is harder than D-T. So their Q(sci) would be a higher triple product than D-T.
BUT, there is something else that works in their favor:
From what I understand all of the current numbers floating around for triple products for D-D and D-He3 assume steady state and a plasma that is at an equilibrium of ion and electron temperatures Ti = Te (or could even have a higher Te than Ti).
Most of Helion's losses due to the use of these advanced fuels would be from Bremsstrahlung since FRCs suffer very little synchrotron losses. Those losses are driven by the electron temperature. But if you look at their Ti/Te ratio you will find that it is somewhere between 1:4 to 1:8 and that depends largely on the operating parameters that they can (almost) freely choose!
The equation for P(fus)/P(loss) scales as Ti^1.5/(Z^2 *Te^0.5). Where Z is the atomic number. So hydrogen = 1 and helium =2, etc.
A "skewed" ion to electron temperature ratio is an advantage that is not just unique to Helion, btw but a lot of pulsed approaches have the same advantage (and from what I have seen, TAE also has a higher Ti to Te ratio). What that means is that they could get away with a much lower triple product than what is "generally" considered necessary for a Q(sci) >1 with advanced fuels.
Because the relationship is nearly exponential with temperature, this gets better with higher temperatures.
A D-D fueled Polaris might actually get away with a triple product that is lower than what is considered Q(sci) > 1 for D-T fueled Tokamaks and still produce net electricity!! I am not sure if I missed something somewhere. So please point out any mistakes I might have made in my calculations and assumptions!
Helion has another update on Twitter. New and pretty cool video showing a few small views of Trenta and more information on Polaris and beyond.
Polaris will be 1Hz but it looks like they are aiming for a 10 pulses per second now: https://twitter.com/Helion_Energy/statu ... 49280?s=20
Helion has another update on Twitter. New and pretty cool video showing a few small views of Trenta and more information on Polaris and beyond.
Polaris will be 1Hz but it looks like they are aiming for a 10 pulses per second now: https://twitter.com/Helion_Energy/statu ... 49280?s=20
Amazing changes will take place in the world of electric power this decade. Wish we could invest something in it.
Counting the days to commercial fusion. It is not that long now.
Our plan is to make steady operating pulsed plasma systems that are highly variable. For a generator, that means pulsing at 1 to 10 Hz to adjust output power to follow the grid’s needs.
A key statement by Helion is that Trenta already performs fusion and electric energy extraction from the plasma at 95%. Therefore Polaris is not breaking new ground in achieving these key abilities. Indeed, I know of no other project that has demonstrated electric energy extraction from fusion. Further, Polaris then is an extension of Trenta's routine proven fusion and electric energy extraction.
Counting the days to commercial fusion. It is not that long now.
Time pressure definitely drives feature and complexity reduction. Supply chain time is maybe even a stronger forcing. “Do we really need that specialty alloy in this accelerator Rev?”