Helion Energy to demonstrate net electricity production by 2024

[Munchausen]

Stock market conspiracies is taking it to far. Please don't foul the thread with that sort of thing. We see large construction work, visits from high ranking officials, interviews with young enthusiastic technicians among large scale pieces of equipment in huge warehouses, filed patents, peer reviewed articles, participation at scientific congresses and a well behaving spokesperson with relevant academic background.

The most credible explanation is a company believing in what they are doing. Razor of Occam.

That being said, we are all very eager to get decisive confirmation that everything works as expected. It is also correct that, at this stage, no one can tell that for certain. Probably not even the Helion compani itself.

[Skipjack]

I don't know if you've been keeping up with the news, but it's to keep the OpenAI bubble from popping.

Conjecture. OpenAI is not even a customer of Helion yet.

They are obviously smarter than that.

LOL, you were the one who made that statement. People here try to have serious conversations. If you want to be an edgelord, do that on Reddit, please.

[baking]

Conjecture. OpenAI is not even a customer of Helion yet.

They are obviously smarter than that.

LOL, you were the one who made that statement. People here try to have serious conversations. If you want to be an edgelord, do that on Reddit, please.

There are other ways to feed the Hype train without becoming a mere customer.

Sam Altman, October 31, 2025: "The technological landscape shifts in big ways, so if a very cheap form of energy comes online soon in mass scale and a lot of people are going to be extremely burned with existing contracts they've signed."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gnl833wXRz0&t=1190s

Sam Altman, November 7, 2025: "Scale it up and see what happens, something he’s found effective with everything from large neural networks to fusion reactors."

https://www.forbes.com/sites/rashishriv ... ing-spree/

Again, all that I am saying is that hiring engineers and building buildings does not mean they have hit some experimental milestone. I realize people here survive on hopium, but a little pragmatism is good too.

[mvanwink5]

On a different note:
There is a new video on Youtube. It shows some new (previously unseen) footage of their facility and has some interesting insights into their engineering, the magnet development and the challenges.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XyOL2S3N6Kw

Super video. Thanks SJ for the link & Helion for making the vid! The engineering is indeed extreme, super talented engineers for an impossible task. Outside doubters are right to have doubts without getting a glimpse that such a video provides. Exciting times ahead!

[TallDave]

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... an ant cannot be much help to a falling elephant

and as I've said from the beginning the public should not invest in Helion, because the market for terrestrial fusion power is just not that all large relative to their current valuation (and the space market is still decades off, if ever, though Helion is remarkably well-positioned)

at any rate the experimental milestones are built into their funding... they feel Trenta proved the physics and Polaris the engineering to their satisfaction, and I haven't seen any convincing evidence they must be wrong

I hope Kirtley is kind enough to share their first net-power D-He3 pulse, which I am still hoping will happen in 2025, but even that doesn't prove Orion will work

we'll just have to wait for them to build it

[Skipjack]

New blog post by Helion:
Measuring electricity production from fusion: Electrical diagnostics

https://www.helionenergy.com/articles/m ... agnostics/

[sdg]

New blog post by Helion:
Measuring electricity production from fusion: Electrical diagnostics

https://www.helionenergy.com/articles/m ... agnostics/

Thanks for alerting us to that new post, SJ.

Not very informative, since they don't provide any actual results. However, the claims reveal that they know with high accuracy what their system losses are, what their fusion gain is (presumably gain in various modes as determined both from Polaris empirical data and estimates via Trenta scaling), and they aren't flinching on ultimately achieving net power with Polaris (at least not publicly).

I'm an optimist, but this rather "uninformative" post looks like more good news to me: accurate diagnostics are in place and Kirtley says Polaris optimization runs are moving along and productive.

The anticipation keeps growing!

[jrvz]

They're emphasising their efficiency, which as a physicist agree is important, but I can't help thinking that it's much more important to eliminate the cost and delay of obtaining and installing all those heat exchangers, turbines, and generators.

Speaking of supply chains, has anyone at Helion speculated about production rates, once they've proven the technology?

[Munchausen]

They're emphasising their efficiency, which as a physicist agree is important, but I can't help thinking that it's much more important to eliminate the cost and delay of obtaining and installing all those heat exchangers, turbines, and generators. Speaking of supply chains, has anyone at Helion speculated about production rates, once they've proven the technology?

Which, to some extent, is outweighed by a huge and complex capacitor bank and switching assembly. That will probably be dealt with in the long run. An obvious idea is to have a twin assembly with two machines sending the energy back an forth between them.

A flywheel solution is another. Even low grade flywheels have energy densities in the low two digit area counted as Wh/kg whereas capacitors generally are low single digit. Cast iron is vastly cheaper than capacitor materials.

Or perhabs even dare to ask the world leading capacitor company to have a look at the problem and hear what they can do:

https://www.skeletontech.com/

[jrvz]

I can't imagine a flywheel being practical, at the very least because it would require a very high power motor/generator.

The twin assembly sounds more interesting. I would require slowing down the "expansion" phase of one machine so it could supply power for the FRC formation, acceleration, and compression phases of the other machine. That doesn't sound like something you would attempt in a first generation system.