Helion’s fusion fuel and byproducts: paving the way for commercial fusion energy
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- Опубліковано 14 гру 2024
- Helion will use deuterium and helium-3 as fuels for its fusion power plants. These fuels produce byproducts that can be safely managed, stored, or reused in the process.
D-He-3 maximizes our ability to directly capture electricity, a large advantage when building a fusion system for commercial deployment. Helion has used, or will use, three fuels at some stage in our path to commercialization: deuterium, tritium, and helium-3. In their gaseous forms, each can be heated to plasma conditions and used in a fusion reaction. Helion’s machines inject these fuels as a gas and heat them to plasma conditions. We then use magnets to accelerate, merge, and compress these plasmas until fusion occurs. Depending on the injected fuel mixture, varying results and byproducts occur.
For more on Helion’s fusion fuels, from testing to commercial operations, read more: www.helionener...
About Helion
Helion is a fusion energy company building the world’s first fusion power plant. Its mission is to fully satisfy the world’s need for clean abundant energy, saving the planet from climate change and improving the well-being of humanity. To keep up with the latest progress, follow Helion’s social media:
LinkedIn: / helion-energy
Instagram: / helionenergy
X: x.com/Helion_E...
Facebook: / helionenergy
OK.... but what's your progress on Trenta.......?
trenta was retired a ways back
I think the better question is progress on Polaris
Forget Trenta man... they are building Polaris that is a upgraded version of Trenta
I understand the basics of how Helion's reactors 'work'. I just hope I'm here to see ANY profitable fusion power generation happen before I die. And for some reason Helion's approach also seems more achievable and quicker to achieve the prize than the other approaches being made. I hope I'm right.
Your dependence on Helium-3 is your main hurdle in achieving a reactor capable of properly generating energy in my opinion, so it's good that you guys are doing the most you can to recycle and not waste a single atom.
Good luck.
It appears they're describing a breeder reaction for He3 and Tritium.
That seems more honest and open, not obfuscating, than I expected from a companies official public relation video. Good.
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.
What's new for Polaris?
Thank you for this message i was concerned about the neutrons, glad to see your on top of this.
OK, but what's your progress on your next actual REACTOR? This kind of "update" makes you look sus. I am a big fan though. ❤❤
They reached first vacuum a few weeks ago, so still a few months of building before first plasma.
@@B0obJunior lol
I don't see this as an update. This is an informative mini documentary.
All we have is a neutron radiation surge, and by the time we're close enough to record it we're ashes.
I wish you would have explained the difference between a deuterium deuterium rector vs, the He3 reactor and the difference in output. Its a detail but a very important one.
They can do it all in the same machine by fine tuning the temperature vs density to slightly favor D-D reactions over D-He3 reactions.
@ I thought that these are two types of reactors. One that uses He3 and can be much lighter and produce more power. The other one deu- deut which produces less power but can generate tritium which in 12yrs turns into He3.
This was explained by the Helion Ceo in another HELION video
@@pedrosura I am not sure where you think that you saw that. Generally, Helion's machines can do both, breed He3 and burn He3. The D-D reaction produces He3 directly in one branch and Tritium (which will eventually decay into He3) in the other branch. Both D-D reaction branches have the same chance of happening. So, Initially, Helion will need to do two D-D reactions for every D-He3 reaction (since Tritium takes a long time to decay).
Now, they could do this with separate machines, which does have some advantages (e.g. siting and more targeted design variations). But from all that is known, initially at least, all Helion machines will perform both tasks (breeding and burning of He3).
@ “Now, they could do this with separate machines, which has some advantages”
You said it. I think the CEO said you could have 1 machine producing He3 for 9 that do not. The radiation, overall mass and radiation shielding on the He 3 is lower which os why it is so attractive.
Obviously, I didnt make this up since I heard it from the horse’s mouth and it sound like you understand it as well.
@ Here it is. The CEO explaining the twi machines. The He3 machine is 8 times more efficient at making electricity and diesbt produce neutrons.
ua-cam.com/video/_bDXXWQxK38/v-deo.htmlsi=8hO4LEjp5YsjPATI
Go to 16:19
Love hearing about the details of how you plan to make this a sustainable endeavor!
You should make it look more like from Fallout.
Right. Now that you guys got a president right out of fallout, everything else should look like it, too
Bad comment! Bad! You've got no clue who made this. Could be a child. Could be a child from Australia. They've already got enough problems. Stop being mean to Australian children.@@VolkerGoller
Isn’t tritium also a fusion fuel?
It is not a good material for fusion because it takes way too much energy to make it fuse. Helium-3 is the better material in comparison.
@@mikeybhoutex I did some research and found this DOE article.
www.energy.gov/science/doe-explainsfusion-reactions
Can you provide a source?
Yes. It is a good fusion fuel. It should be left in the mix to keep it running stable. ❤
New way to generate 1.21 GigaWatts from the Mr. Fusion into the Flux Capacitor.....😂
Polaris isn't necessarily delayed as the timeline was intentionally ambitious, very interesting year coming
You got neutrons, make useful radio isotopes with them. Also if you line the reaction chamber with beryllium you can make more of them, then use that to create tritium from tubes packed with lithium 6 deuteride. Either use as fuel or store the tritium for outer uses. I'm not sure how well direct collision will work for fusion, but you could use the acellerators to drive a pulsed vortex tube z pinch reactor. The neatest part is that once you got a fusion reaction started it should be self sustaining as the reacting plasma will preheat the incoming plasma. Your accelerator tech would be ideal for kick starting the fusion reaction ❤
I don’t get the Helion approach. The plasma conditions for D-D fusion are way more difficult than for the D-T reaction and after 60 or so years research, that reaction is still nowhere near being efficient enough for commercial reactors.
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.
Cool, but whats the timeline?
Thanks!
She said. "Will."
Soon(tm).
Polaris is still (hopefully) going to be completed this year, though it might slip a bit to early next year. Then it is a few months of tweaking and optimizing and then they will start net electricity experiments (so hopefully some time next year). If that all works out as predicted, they have to build a first fusion power plant for Microsoft before the end of 2028.
@ 🎸🎸
Demonstration plant?
Comming sooooooon . . . .
Let's do this!
So… timeline?
As with such things... Soon(tm).
Helium3 is abundant on the moon so using helium 3 for rocket ships lunar launched is highly efficient as well as powering the lunar bases. Starship could land a Helion reactor on the moon to power a base and power humanoids and bots for maintenance while expanding the base with minimum human action. Robots don't need air and aren't bothered by g-force or radiation as much as humans.Nuclear clocks will help stabilize the reactors.
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.
Hope for an update on what's happening RN
yo why am i getting female joker vibes? cast her for harley quinn. yes im an agent ma !
Question for Helion?????Hold on I thought the plan was to make the Helium 3 in one reactor (ie Deuterium Deuterium reactor) because of the uncontainable Neutron problem which will drastically reduce the lifespan of the reactor and create shielding problems. Then use the helium 3He deuterium 2D in a separate reactor to create the power. Now correct me if I am wrong but 3He / 2D reaction happens just north of 100 million degrees where as D2 / D2 reactions require over 250 million degrees. This means that even though the compressed fuel has multiple 2D atoms in addition to multiple 3He atoms the only fusion that can occur at 150 million or lower is 2d / 3He or 3He / 3He as it is not hot enough for 2D / 2D fusion events. Even if you have 3He / 3He fusion events in the chamber the result will be 4He and two protons and NO Neutrons. Thus eliminating the shielding problem and increasing the lifespan of the reactor. Did I misunderstand what David said in your Helion's approach video?
- No, they COULD make separate machines for He3 breeding, but they do not have to. It was always the plan for the initial machines to do both.
- In Helion's machines, they can (almost) linearly favor temperature over density and vice versa. D-D reactions favor lower temperature and higher density and D-He3 reactions prefer higher temperature and lower density (so the opposite of what you said). At the temperatures Helion is aiming for (at least for their first machines), D-D side reactions happen anyway.
- Those D-D reactions will produce a He3 atom and a neutron in one branch and a Tritium atom and a proton in the other (both have a 50% chance of happening). The Tritium with a half life of 12.5 years is going to eventually decay into more He3 for additional fuel. They could also trade it for whatever He3 they can buy on the open market (Tritium price is currently higher than He3, which will also be a REALLY nice source for revenue for them). But unless they can buy enough He3 and/or until they have enough He3 from Tritium- decay, they will need to do two D-D reactions for every D-He3 reaction. That means one neutron for every 3 reactions. Now, at 2.45 MeV the D-D neutrons are actually relatively benign compared to D-T neutrons. A lot of materials can handle them quite well. So, the damage will not be that bad. Their machines will still need regular maintenance, though, but their moderate size and cylindrical design makes that a lot easier and cheaper.
@@elmarmoelzer2229 Some of what you are saying contradicts what I have read about fusion elsewhere especially D-D fusion. So please clarify at what density you mean. All fusion on earth is based on higher temps because we can not achieve higher density. With Helions method of fusion as you increase density you increase temperature the two are linked. After the two donuts are accelerated and collide the Temp / Density increases to about 10 Million degrees (kinetic to heat) and density doubles as there is now two donuts together so twice the material. Now if you could reach density of 150g/cm3 at that temp you would have fusion. However we are no where near that density. You then increase the Magnetic field crushing the fuel vastly increasing the density and there by Temperature to 100 Million plus (I would love to know what density the fuel is at at this point). Which leads me back to my point about known fusion temperatures of different material at densities we can achieve. IE H3-D at 100 million and D-D at 250 million plus. Now from what I have read the 250-400 range for D-D fusion is based on amount of material ie density of the D atoms we have achieved. What I have been able to read is 250 is the lowest temperature with the highest density (we can achieve other then at CERN). So less density means you need higher temperatures however there is no scenario available yet where you can increase density and lower temp and achieve D-D fusion events below 250 million. Unless you can reach densities of 150g/cm3 ie the sun and there by get D=D fusion at 10 million degrees. Now I am sure there is a scale that goes from 10 million degrees at 150g/cm3 to what ever the density is at 100 million degrees. Having said that I do not believe we are able to achieve those densities yet. I do not believe Helion's reactor is producing those densities of Deuterium. My understanding is no one has created a magnetic field powerful enough to create and maintain those density levels yet ie to get D-D fusion at 10 million or even a factor of 10 ie 100 million degrees. Crap does anyone know what the density of Deuterium has to be to fuse at 100 million lol
@@stepheng905 Fusion rate is a result of the triple product of density, temperature and confinement time, nTTauE. The density n is the number of ions per cubic meter. There is a minimum temperature (T in kilo electron Volts, keV) that is needed for fusion to occur but beyond that the density and confinement time (TauE) are equally important. Helion's machines can achieve much higher densities than Tokamaks but are much lower in confinement time ( TauE is around 1ms). Tokamaks are usually in the 10^19 to 10^20 range for density. Helion's machines are in the range of 10^22 to 10 ^24 ions per cubic meter. So at least two orders of magnitude higher in density than Tokamaks. D-T fusion is generally starting to become high enough in the range of 100 million or higher degrees Celsius ( ~8.5 keV). Please read up on the nTTauE requirements for D-T, D-D and D-He3 as well as the optimal temperatures. For D-He3, the temperature is higher than for D-D but in turn D-He3 is OK with slightly lower density. Mind you, we are not talking about an order of magnitude difference here but more like 20 to 60 keV at around 10^23 ions per cubic meter (give or take a few depending on what reaction you favor).
From all I know, Helion aims for about 25 keV for their fusion machines with about 5 x 10^22 ions per cubic meter. In that range, you get slightly more D-D reactions than D-He3 reactions, which is what they need to make their fuel cycle close (two D-D reactions for every D-He3 reaction). If they went down the route of dedicated He3- breeder machines and dedicated He3 burners, the breeders would likely be in the 10^23+ range for density and 20keV for temperature, while the burners would be in the 10^22+ range for density and 30+ keV for temperature. Those are my rough estimates on my side based on the information they have published.
I think you are going to save the world . Keep it up and thank you Helion team .
I think solar + batteries can already provide all the energy we need today, but fusion will provide the energy we will need tomorrow, and tomorrow coming fast...
sounds like they need some seed funding
Helion has been in business a long time and already has all the funding they need for their next reactor. If that works, funding isn't likely to be a problem for the foreseeable future.
You could have brought Cody's Lab if you didn't want to drink it yourself. Missed opportunity.
You are creating exotic vacuum objects 🎉🎉 u will be confused with your results until you realize this
Good luck. Time after time.
Tritium is handy for nuclear weapons as well.
Not by itself it isn't. Activation energy is so high that you need to use a separate supercritical plutonium core to initiate the deuterium-tritium reaction. The reason why before late-2023 we only ever achieved fusion ignition in H-bombs and not reactors is because of just how much energy is needed to get the reaction started.
@RayTheMickey Have you ever considered to lower energy density to anti-proton powered shield as anti-nuclear weapon system?
Haha, you said the quiet part out loud. The tritium being stored rather than burned as fuel pretty much discloses the use. 😂
@kennystrawnmusic you don't need terribly high energy to get tritium and deuterium to fuse, 120kv through a low pressure mix will do it. In a nuclear weapon it's the neutrons made when it reacts that help the core fission more than it normally would. The fusion of the 5.5g of DT in the core alone would add about a 3kt and the Pu alone would be about 15kt, but combined it gives about 45kt from the more complete burning. The biggest issue with fusion plasmas is that the ring design like tokamac variants have a lot of surface area to cross section so the energy gets lost. Also the tube I mentioned is called a Farnsworth fusion machine and it's not practical for power because the extremely low pressures of DT present essentially trading density for favorable geometyr. A travelling wave vortex tube reactor excited with 6 of the Helion modules would do both. In this case the modules would only be the starting impulse but once ignited in the throat of the reactor the energy from the reaction would keep it alive as long as the gas circulates through it.❤
Not really. H-bombs use lithium deuteride as fuel. This creates tritium at the start of the explosion. Tritium's short half-life is not great for storage, and so for use as weapon.
Since tritium decays into He3 instead, to use it as a source of the actual fuel you need, and that practically doesn't exist on Earth, seems pretty clever.
3:02 Your monitoring guy looks a bit young ^^‘
Love the video! Cool technology!
Year, in 30 years.
✅ Corporate Music
✅ Oversimplified Explanation
✅ Cheap Animation
Yup. It’s a corporate video.
It's a puff piece until they actually start selling energy on the grid.
@@HuxleysShaggyDog At least they should have a running prototype, that is producing real amounts of usefull energy . . . Nobody has this so far!
You speak as if you have a working fusion reactor. Do you? Is Bruce Wayne your CEO?
Yes they have a working fusion machine, it just doesn't generate enough energy yet to be economical. They are still doing experiments and iterations to improve the reaction process so that it can generate economical power.
@@chipotlemayo Then they should collect their Nobel prize in Physics!
No, she doesn't. She keeps saying "will". Are you unaware of the tenses of English?
@@petermgruhnTheir reactor, as is the case everywhere else so far, does not generate more energy than it's put into the system. The information on their current reactor design and prototypes is not based on this video specifically, so the specific tense she used is irrelevant.
@@ScientificGlassblowing You can build a working fusion reactor in your garage for about a thousand bucks. It will fuse atoms, it just won't generate more energy than you put into it. Same with Helion so far. They're hoping the reactor they're building now will put them over the top.
Fascinating. It would be Even better w/captions. Thanks!
When free energy machine
Never. Impossible, as far as anyone knows.
Just 20 years away guys
@@The-Saus this a joke right?
"Our thingy will..."
It /will/.
No working prototype?
Oh, wait. You have a tin can. Well, I'm debunked.
What's that "facility" footage and which stock agency did you buy it from?
They built 6 working prototypes so far. Deuterium-Deuterium fusion had been achieved since the 3rd. They still can't produce more energy than used (ignition).