Відео

20 years 😉

@realsemig till than thorium, uranium breeders, space based solar power, renewables with 24/7 storage, all will be online powering my lightbulb.

you don't have to wait and it's 1-2 years

@@DeonexGlower maybe

No, the fusion reactions of course add energy. So, you have (input energy) * 0.8 + (fusion energy) * 0.8 > (input energy)

Specifically, the point with the neutrons is hard to explain, and I think you got it right. I mean, you end up with blocks of radioactive concrete. Theoretically dangerous somehow, but not really. How do you even start to explain that in detail?

@@vsiegel Concrete is pretty hard to make radioactive. That is why fission reactors use it almost everywhere. From their testimony to the NRC a Helion power plant could be fully decommissioned two weeks after the end of operations and all of the materials would be below background radiation after less than a year.

Not that terrible because there is so little of it. A 50 MWe Helion power plant would (my estimate) use about 20 kg of Deuterium/year. Granted, they won't have that high burnup. So there will be more, but we are not talking about 100s of tonnes or something. Plus, IIRC at least some of the separation of products and remaining fuel already happens at the divertor anyway.

Internal pressure to external pressure but in both cases it is ~1 in FRCs ;)

We could have built a D-T machine that does Q>1 some 25 years (or longer) ago but all the funding went into ITER and mind you, it was not that much money on a grander scale either (look up the ERDA plan and fusion funding!). With private investors, there is now finally enough funding to explore alternative ideas. There are plenty of those and not just Helion. Either way, whether D-D is a lot harder or not depends on what you consider the hardest part. Helion thinks that a little more than twice the ion temperature is not that much harder and the benefits are huge. There are fewer neutrons and they have a lot less energy. So, materials are easier, shielding is easier, etc. Plus D-D produces a He3 in one branch. That He3 can be fused with another Deuterium atom and the reaction is very energetic. The biggest advantage is that all of the resulting particles of D-He3 fusion are charged particles with a total energy of 18.3 MeV. With their direct conversion and their ability to recover most of the input energy the same way, they can get away with a relatively low Q. So, by having easier energy conversion and fewer neutrons and easier materials, they trade moderately harder physics for much easier engineering. There are a lot more nuances that work in their favor. Overall, I think they have a very good shot at it. Not a 100% chance, but a good chance. We will know some time next year, probably whether they were right.

Concrete shielding doped with Boron Carbine as well as lead and hydrogenous shielding.

It is actually not that abundant. I think the highest concentration is 15 parts per billion. So you would have to mine one billion (!) tonnes of regolith to get 15 tonnes of He3. Better to make it the way Helion does: By fusing Deuterium.

@@elmarmoelzer2229 Yup. I violated rule no.1 never take information at face value. Nuclear clocks will however improve the precision and stability over atomic clocking.

Trenta has been retired for a while now. They are almost done building the successor, Polaris which they hope will demonstrate net electricity.

Yes Exactly!! What a total waste using the "ancient" Tea-Kettle approach to energy where you boil water to make steam and use the Steam to turn a generator. I mean, this isn't an ancient old-world Steam Locomotive we're talking about here. They were all well and good back in the day, but let's please just GET PAST the whole boiling water way of generating energy!! Let's do it without Water like Helion is working on doing it!!

Sorry to burst your bubble of hope. Fusion will come with the age long boiling water. Do not be too optimistic about Helion's design.

@eeshwargrewal, the magnetic field generated by the plasma is not the defining parameter _per se,_ but the ratio of the externally applied field to the internally generated one. That ratio is the "beta" that he referred to. In theory, energy output scales with some power of beta. Helion say they have generated external fields in excess of 10 Tesla.

Something something "our plasma is high density and opaque to its own radiation, just like the sun but cooler but hotter but no neutrons, 80% energy efficency"

They do have some Bremsstrahlung losses, but they are lower than other loss mechanisms, e.g. Thermal transport losses. The reason is that due to the pulsed nature of their design, Helion has a very low ratio of electron temperature to ion temperature of 0.1 or less right after compression. Over time, the ions will pass some of their energy to the electrons but by the time they would be reaching equilibrium, the pulse is long over.

What do you mean with “it doesn’t even work on paper”? I am interested in learning more about Helion so if you could share any information that would be appreciated

@lvb3575 They aren't even using the correct fuel to theoretically sustain net energy production, deuterium-deuterium is one of the weakest fusion reactions possible, whereas what ITER is seeking is deuterium-tritium fusion, like what we use for thermonuclear weapons. They claim they'll achieve 99% direct energy conversion from "fast alphas", which is contradicted by experiments and theory capping the maximum recoverable power at 62%... The company tries to present the field reversed configuration reactor design as completely novel innovation, but the truth is it emerged more or less around the same tame as other ideas like the Tokamak and Stellarator. FRCs have not really been seriously considered a path to net energy production since the 80s as they ran into serious problems scaling up, you can see this through how the DOE virtually gives Helion no funding as there's basic conceptual problems they have not answered. Physics is a very transparent field. Most researchers today upload papers to Arxiv so that they're freely available to be viewed by all. Helion does not publish peer reviewed research while making very bold claims to have leaped lighyears ahead of all of our best plasma physicists around the globe... Remember when a Silicon Valley start up was going to make a quantum leap in blood testing? Helion is that bad... frankly I worry it'll poison the well and make the public distrustful of the general field...

@lvb3575 im trying but you know youtube these days jfc

@lvb3575 They aren't even using the correct fuel to theoretically sustain net energy production, deuterium-deuterium is one of the weakest fusion reactions possible, whereas what ITER is seeking is deuterium-tritium fusion, like what we use for thermonuclear weapons. They claim they'll achieve 99% direct energy conversion from "fast alphas", which is contradicted by experiments and theory capping the maximum recoverable power at 62%... The company tries to present the field reversed configuration reactor design as completely novel of theirs, but the truth is it emerged more or less around the same tame as other ideas like the Tokamak and Stellarator. FRCs have not really been seriously considered a path to net energy production since the 80s as they ran into serious problems scaling up, you can see this through how the DOE virtually gives them no funding as there's basic conceptual problems they have not answered. Which leads to the fact that physics is a very transparent field. Most researchers today upload papers to Arxiv so that they're freely available to be viewed by all. ------- does not public peer reviewed research. They are claiming they are on a path to achieving fusion power generation in 5-10 years (it was the same 10 years ago...) while the field of plasma physics wrestles with fundamental problems

@lvb3575 unfortunately AI overlords will not allow my detailed criticism but its not hard to find on the internet- Basically physics is a very transparent field - helion claims to have solved challenges that stump plasma physicist globally with no published research to back it up - sound familiar to other silicon valley start ups in the past?

Helion working to its potential, but also adding spin polarization on top, would be unreal. I've seen a figure of 90% increase in power for a D-T tokamak and they're actually testing it with He3 next year so it should work equally well

What education have you pursued?​@@Canucklug

@@Godl_Damon Amateur interest in fusion degree

In the FAQ section of Helion's web site, they say, "Our earliest machines demonstrated that we could take electricity stored in capacitors, convert it to magnetic fields, and then recover it back out as electricity at as high as over 95% efficiency (without plasma present)." They apparently want us to believe that is an impressive achievement, but that is done routinely all over the world in a myriad of equipment such as power converters and power factor correction devices. They go on to say, "To date, we have not released results overviewing our energy recovery with plasmas present." So they are not yet publicly verifying an essential requirement for their success. It appears they want us to assume great things, but they are not revealing their actual results. We are only guessing what they might extract from the plasma. We must wait to see some actual results for energy extraction. They say, "Helion is expected to start producing electricity by 2028 from its first commercial power plant which will provide electricity to Microsoft. They don't say how much, if any, of the energy will come from fusion. We can wish them good luck, but the path to commercial viability of fusion-produced electric power remains a dream for now.

Here is your quote written in 2023, according to the comment dating system: "They are fully funded actually and their investors have been on the board since the company got started. They also had their results peer reviewed by reviewers brought in from the big national labs. And they are aiming for net electricity some time around the end of 2024." Now on their web site they say, "Helion is expected to start producing electricity by 2028 from its first commercial power plant which will provide electricity to Microsoft.” Perhaps we can all agree there has been great progress in wording.

@@analog_guy No, Polaris is still meant to produce net electricity (says so in their FAQ as well) and it is almost complete (they are still aiming for this year, but I feel it might be slipping to 2025. They had some delays because of the supply chain issues that have been plaguing literally everyone. They had to build manufacturing lines for capacitors and quartz tubes in that time. Therefore the delay. Either way, if all goes well, Polaris will demonstrate net electricity some time next year. The 2028 target is a full power plant for Microsoft. Polaris is a smaller scale experiment still aiming to produce small amounts of net electricity from fusion.

@@elmarmoelzer2229 Thanks. How is "net electricity" defined?

@@analog_guy I think for Polaris they are just hoping to have (some amount of) more energy in the capacitor bank after the pulse than they had before the pulse. So, I don't think they are looking for a total system thing where every light bulb and computer driving the machine is accounted for. Though I might be wrong (and then be pleasantly surprised). Either way would still be a huge step for fusion (when no one has really done net energy yet, even). We will see how it goes. Fingers crossed!

Doc Ock at it again… The people wants numbers, not so called, “education”. Mother Nature has it figured… Why can’t you figure it out yet Dr. Kirtley… Hurry, the world is dying…

@ninefox344 Like it violates the laws of physics. So I'm waiting for Helions big announcement of why the entire literature of plasma physics is wrong actually

@@randomchannel-px6ho IMO there's still a 30% chance this is Theranos level BS but you'd think the investor's hired experts would be able to show this quite clearly if it's as cut and dry as you propose.

@ninefox344 it's a bit nuanced. The man Plasma physicist behind it is John Slough who was previously working on FRC type reactors at the University of Washington. In the 2000s he left an spun off his own company which eventually sorta morphed into helion. He seems to have interpreted the results of experiments with an appartus he built called the inductive plasmoid accelerator as evidence the FRC design could be scaled up. It's a very very fringe position he holds, and it seems to be partially be based on handwaving away problems like the energy to work ratio, the Q>1 target, and maintaining stable confinement. He I believe is a genuine good hearted scientist who may just be a blinded by pursuing a dream. Other's who have since gotten involved in the venture definitely weaken it's credibility to me though

@@randomchannel-px6ho thanks for the background. For most people it seems like a win-win. Either they're right and we get real fusion tech or they're wrong and some interesting work got done (mostly) at the expense of private investors. The government pitched in a few million bucks at the beginning but that's crumbs these days. Microsoft is invested too and they paid 70 billion dollars for a crappy video game studio so they clearly have more money than they know what to do with.

@@randomchannel-px6ho It does not violate the laws of physics.

The energy capture method has been used for many decades. For instance, look up explosive generators. It is really just moving a magnetic field through a conductor such as a coil of wire, as was discovered by Faraday.