Helion Energy to demonstrate net electricity production by 2024

[Munchausen]

Article with David Kirtley among the authors published monday this week:

https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.03425

An improved understanding of Field Reversed Configuration (FRC) merging and stability in high acceleration and compression magnetic fields is needed to speed up the development of the pulsed fusion concept developed at Helion Energy

[Skipjack]

Yup! Great paper!

[jrvz]

Article with David Kirtley among the authors published monday this week:

https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.03425

An improved understanding of Field Reversed Configuration (FRC) merging and stability in high acceleration and compression magnetic fields is needed to speed up the development of the pulsed fusion concept developed at Helion Energy

They suggest an energy gain of Q around 2, without specifying the fuel mixture.

Regardless, this should make it easier to tune Polaris.

[RERT]

Given my bad mental health, please forgive me.

But this reads awful: they are quietly saying their system doesn’t work.

Can anyone help understand and/or cheer me up?

RERT

[Carl White]

Given my bad mental health, please forgive me.

But this reads awful: they are quietly saying their system doesn’t work.

Can anyone help understand and/or cheer me up?

RERT

Looking at the paper, I don't interpret it that negatively. They're doing simulations and are learning from them.

The results of the 2D merging simulation studies presented herein demonstrate that FRCs can merge fully in the presence of compressing mirror fields, and the midplane magnetic reconnection can occur quickly and completely. The merging process converts FRC kinetic energy and magnetic field energy near the midplane into ion thermal energy. The simulations shed some light into the operation of Trenta, and build confidence in Helion’s technique applied to future device designs. The additional physics insight will lead to improved operations of Polaris and will feed into full device modeling in the near future.

[jrvz]

Given my bad mental health, please forgive me.

But this reads awful: they are quietly saying their system doesn’t work.

Can anyone help understand and/or cheer me up?

RERT

Well, Polaris is certainly not generating electricity YET. But we shouldn't expect that. As I read the paper, they expect their hybrid simulation to match reality better than the MHD simulation, and they're exploring the parameters under which they give different answers - in particular where the hybrid code says the two FRCs will merge (as necessary for Helion's plans to work out) while the MHD code says they'll just bounce.

So why don't they dispense with the MHD code and just use the hybrid code instead? I suspect it's because the hybrid code requires much more processing time, memory, or both. If they can use the MHD for most of their planning, and the hybrid code only where they need to, they might make more progress.

Why do they bother with simulations when they can just run their system? Probably because it takes longer to dig through the diagnostic data to find out what happened. And maybe a bad shot could damage their equipment? I think that can happen with a Tokamak - I don't know whether that's true of Helion's machines.

[Skipjack]

Given my bad mental health, please forgive me.

But this reads awful: they are quietly saying their system doesn’t work.

Can anyone help understand and/or cheer me up?

RERT

Eh? Where do you see that? They have already been doing the things the paper suggests need to be done (increasing mirror fields) in previous machines. They just now have the simulation to show why this worked better than other things they had tried.

Also note that they found that even a incomplete merge (doublet) was not all that terrible for performance, but that a complete merge is better.

[mvanwink5]

Everyone has problems with their models, it is why they have to build these expensive machines in stages of increasing size & power. Models are getting better, but by using patches (hybrids).

[RERT]

Ok, unable to answer I’ll shut up! Enjoy folks. R.

[sdg]

Given my bad mental health, please forgive me.

But this reads awful: they are quietly saying their system doesn’t work.

Can anyone help understand and/or cheer me up?

RERT

This is scientific writing and the statement that "a better understanding ... is needed" is merely the opening sentence in the abstract. The first sentence of an abstract typically states "The Problem". The next sentences describes what "Methods" the researchers used to try to address the problem, followed by "The Results" they found, and "The Conclusion(s)" they came to. This is the standard format used in most scientific manuscripts, the full body of the paper goes into detail on all of these.

The takeaway from the full text of the paper is that their application of hybrid modeling to the Helion FRC is helping them better understand the plasma dynamics involving the merging of the two plasma balls fired at each other, in contrast to merely using MHD modeling. In other words, this paper is reporting on their success to date in applying 2d hybrid modeling to better understand the Helion FRC plasma dynamics. So it actually is a success story about their modeling.

Cheers!

[Skipjack]

Recent post by Helion on X:

While we operate our 7th fusion prototype, Polaris, we're continuing to improve performance for our future commercial systems.
Our team is developing new materials to increase strength and conductivity in our generator’s coils, enabling more efficient fusion to take shape.

Aside from the obvious statement that they are looking for new, better materials for their magnets, it also re- affirms that Polaris is operational. I suppose that this is meant to address the claims to the contrary made by some people (citing permits).

https://x.com/Helion_Energy/status/1881733496567472522

David Kirtley then added this:

There are some wild, advanced materials out there. These strengthened materials get near copper electrical conductivity but yield strength at a GPa! This lets us build smaller, lower cost fusion systems.

https://x.com/dekirtley/status/1881739082646315370

This is also interesting. I was under the impression that the size of the systems were dictated by plasma physics and wall loads more than by the magnet strength.

[mvanwink5]

This is also interesting. I was under the impression that the size of the systems were dictated by plasma physics and wall loads more than by the magnet strength.

Perhaps David Kirtley is talking about the length of the system?

[Skipjack]

So, I hear that they can indeed go smaller with stronger magnets. They affect everything positively including radius. Wall loads are more from X-rays. For those it is a factor of wall thickness that matters. Also how well the material absorbs X-rays, I suppose.

[jrvz]

I recently ran across a paper by Parisi, Diallo, and Schwartz (DOI 10.1088/1741-4326/ad7da3) discussing the use of spin-polarized fuels to improve the performance of tokamaks. The cross section for D + T → α + n, would be increased by 1.5 if the fuels were injected with parallel polarization. I started wondering whether an FRC machine like Helion's could use polarized fuels.

Eventually I found a really good paper by Baylor et al. (DOI 10.1088/1741-4326/acc3ae). The cross section for D + 3He → α + p would also be increased by 50%. They proposed to use that reaction to study how well the polarization would survive in a research tokamak without having to handle tritium. They have a detailed discussion of the preparation, storage, and injection of pellets of the polarized fuels.

So, has Helion considered using polarized fuel?

Baylor et al. propose to inject fuel pellets into an existing tokamak plasma, and depend on the plasma to release and ionize the fuel. Would that work for an RFC machine?

I suspect that the polarization lifetime would not be an issue in a pulsed FRC machine. How much could an increased cross section be worth? Fig. 1 in the Baylor et al. paper suggests that a 50% increase in cross section would correspond to something like a 50 KeV reduction in the required plasma temperature.

[baking]

Aside from the obvious statement that they are looking for new, better materials for their magnets, it also re- affirms that Polaris is operational. I suppose that this is meant to address the claims to the contrary made by some people (citing permits).

I felt I should respond to this. Maybe this is a better venue because there can be so much noise on Reddit. There is something to be said for a three-year-old thread that is still going strong.

TL;DR: While Helion can do a lot of non-fusion work with Polaris using Hydrogen plasma, including FRC formation, merging, and compression, I don't believe they can do fusion, including net energy or net electricity, until they get an operating license from the state and I believe that is at least a few months away.

All of my information is public, either from the City of Everett Permit Services or the Washington State Department of Health. Relevant documents can be found here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/ ... sp=sharing (Edit: Link should be public now.)

Only a handful of building permits are currently outstanding for Ursa. A final electrical inspection (E2407-059) is scheduled for Tuesday (1/28) afternoon. Two permits for high pile racks for the capacitors (B2312-034) and rectifiers (B2405-074) were given extensions in early December, but there is no reason to expect they won't get their final inspections soon.

The other outstanding permit (B2304-083) is for the shield walls and roof. Detailed plans can be found in the link above, but in addition to the cast-in-place walls which were poured a year ago, the remaining two corners will be filled with 76 modular pre-cast concrete blocks, 5' wide by 5' high and 2.5' thick, with a large steel door in each corner. Then 206 2.5' thick blocks of borated polyethylene (BPE) will be mounted on the entire inside surface of the walls. Finally, 36 roof segments will be placed with 11" high steel beams supporting 1' thick concrete panels and 1.5' thick BPE blocks.

After the roof is in place, they still need to install tritium exhaust for the generator hall and a fire suppression system inside since the roof will block the existing sprinklers. Neither of these permits has been applied for, so this is the main reason I don't expect the operating license for at least a few more months. The license itself should not be a major delay because it only requires an amendment to the existing license to remove the "Notice of Construction" which can be done in 60 days or less: https://app.leg.wa.gov/wAC/default.aspx ... 46-247-060

There was a flurry of inspections by the city in December culminating in a 6-month temporary certificate of occupancy for Ursa on December 24 (B2104-001) which I think was so they could receive an operating license for the tritium lab which they will need to fully commission before doing fusion in Polaris.