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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 12 ม.ค. 2023
- Helion CEO, Dr. David Kirtley, presents the theory behind Helion’s approach to building commercial fusion generators. This information was originally presented at the Fall 2022 Meeting of the American Physical Society (APS) Division of Plasma Physics in Spokane, Washington.
Presentation title: Fundamental Scaling of Adiabatic Compression of Field Reversed Configuration Thermonuclear Fusion Plasmas
Presented by: David Kirtley
Learn more about Helion: www.helionenergy.com/
Follow Helion on Twitter: / helion_energy
Follow Helion on LinkedIn: / helion-energy
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Please continue releasing more videos! I subbed to your channel after the real engineering video. Amazing work! I never thought I would be optimistic about fusion as an energy source.
I second that! Need more videos and more information! :)
I third that! I never thought I would be optimistic about fusion as an energy source as I am now after seeing Helion's research work.
Haha same.
Me too😊
How this aged like bread in a field full of pigeons
I understood about 2% of this but could listen to this guy all day.
well, get a degree in math and you'll be able to understand 3% like me.
Awesome, hope we get commercial fusion soon!
commercial fusion just means you do it for a business. It doesn't mean it reaches any benchmarks or is even profitable.
@@davidanalyst671 If it's not profitable it won't be a business.
We won’t
Awesome work! Looking forward for commercial fusion energy!
I've been watching their buildings go up in a nearby industrial area, and it's so exciting to see this technology taking off! I'm hoping they'll offer tours at some point.
Really? Update? They posted of a new building, I believe. Thanks.
-Ken
I have been watching your company for a year now. You guys make me feel hopeful.
So much videos on this technology. Will it really work or what? If so than every country on earth will be Saudi Arabia
Not sure if it's just me, but it sounds like the audio has been passed through a noise removal filter turned to maximum. It's a little distracting, but thanks for the interesting video - would be great to see the original presentation from the conference if that's anywhere.
Not sure you understand but they've solved fusion for reliable and scaleable use. They just made OBSOLETE every other fusion reactor. (that we know of) They have a fuel supply and a distribution proposal that is exciting. This is it the moment I've been waiting for since I was introduced to the fusion energy concept with the cold fusion experiments of Fleischmann-Pons. It's like this, this time in history will be the succeding moment for electricity putting fossil fuels to sleep. This guy is GIDDY with excitement. I don't care if he farts an explanation out his ass, I'd listen to it.
@@ChrisVicari did they?
Astounding. This MUST be fast tracked immediately
If you guys get successful it will change the world forever
High hopes for Polaris getting ALL the kinks reliably worked out for stable clean electricity come 2024!
Awesome !! continue your amazing work guy
Good stuff. Keep up the good work.
So awesome!
While I certainly can't follow the uber-complex math and physics at play here, it sounds really encouraging and I'm excited by the prospect of achievable Fusion power at a commercial scale. Fusion power will be a game changer!!
Lots of showmanship but as I understand it he is saying this will never make cheap electricity and they know it. He mentions a theoretical Q of 10 for D-T which is still unlikely to be enough to hit engineering break even (with all the losses 20-40 is usually estimated to be needed, not sure about this specific design), and then later goes through the D- he3 cases and says maybe they can hit a science Q of 1… which is similar to the successful NIF test a couple months ago. He says they don’t need to break even or even get ignition to be commercially viable - no idea how they plan to make back the investment
There is a missing slide here.
yes in a tokamak you would need 20-40 times the input power, in order to drive a turbine and overcome Carnot
however since Helion's fusion products are recovered directly by the magnets you could in theory produce net electric power even at Q
Super interesting!
Thank you.
Love these videos!
On Wednesday, Microsoft announced that it has entered into a power purchase agreement with nuclear fusion startup Helion Energy. Under the agreement, Microsoft will buy electricity from Helion in 2028. This is a significant development as it marks the first time a fusion company has signed a deal to sell electricity.
please update what's up with polaris
Thank you Dr. David Kirtley for your presentation here. I could use this to teach children fusion outside of the Sun and fusion power generation. Where is nu in all of this?
I think I have to watch that multiple times to understand everything.
When does Helion anticipate being able to demonstrate net gain? This seems better than current Taurus approaches in several ways.
Polaris is still on track to demonstrate net electricity (not just net energy which is a bendable term) from fusion in 2024.
Will be keeping up with you all....great future ahead.....😎
@scottmanley This looks really interesting. But... I don't fully understand it. Can you do a video where you explain it to the Fusion interested Layman?
Get this genius communicator of complicated fusion physics and electromagnetics (and potential historic figure of fusion generated electricity) some chap stick!! Wow courage and best wishes
Fantastic job! Could you please explain if there are something similar to fission reactor critial parameters (material and geometric) for fusion reactor? Like undercritical, critical and overcritical.
There's hundreds of parameters. One of the major ones mentioned here is beta, which is the ratio of external magnetic field to the particle pressure. Kirtley claims higher performance at high beta.
Is it possible to actually get any useful Energy out of a system with Qsci of 1-5, when taking real-life losses and inefficiencies into account?
I would love to work for Helion even if I'm only a mechanical technician!!! You guys seem like you do amazing work and I thank you for it!!
They just made a post on Linkedin that they are looking for a mechanical engineer.
@@elmarmoelzer2229 I live in Montréal unfortunately.... I'll still check it out, thanks!
They are hiring fusion technicians now! Worth a shot
I wonder just how more efficiency could you squeeze out of such a machine were a room temperature and room pressure superconductor availaible. Working on it.
If they were actual room temperature super conductors, then that might help. Right now, they are using non super conducting magnets because the cooling would take too long and cryostats would eat too much into their energy balance.
My other question got some amazingly good answers (thank you!), so now for a basic question about magnets. It doesn’t look like cooling is required, is that right? I was wondering if the pulsed system, which only sustains current for short periods of time, doesn’t require as much cooling as a traditional tokamak that has a sustained current for a longer time. This seems like (another) big advantage for Helion’s design.
They do require less cooling and they can make them pretty thick because they don't have to fit through a donut hole in the center. AFAIK, future machines will use water and maybe oil cooling.
Trenta, their current machine only has air cooling but it also only does one pulse every 10 minutes or so. Polaris will do 1Hz and future power plants will do anywhere from 0 to 10 Hz depending on demand and operation modes, etc.
@@elmarmoelzer2229 Does that mean 1~10 plasma operations (shots?) per second?
Cooling will be a bigger concern as they close in on their target prototype fusion system.
@@davidshelby7518 Yes, they will have up to 10 of those cycles a second. So 10X formation, acceleration, compression, expansion, evacuation of vacuum chamber, repeat per second.
@@ByteSizedSociety Cooling is IMHO not that big of a problem. Their magnets operate at room temperature. For Trenta, even air cooling is enough. Polaris will use water cooling. Actual power plants might use oil cooling. I see the bigger problem with evacuating the chamber quickly without consuming too much energy and just general power supply-recovery management. But then, they have experience with that (though at a smaller scale).
If you guys could convince Microsoft, I’m onboard! All the best for you, I’ll keep following your work!
Very good$$$$$
Are the other distributions of density and temperature relevant if the distribution of electrons is engineered to generate other magnetic field topologies? Because, otherwise from the point of view of losses, thinking naïvely; it would seem to me that it might make sense to have electrons bypass the central fusion chamber.
For some in depth physics, it might be worth watching David Kirtley's recent talk at PPPL. Do a search for JPP08December2022_DKirtley .
I wish I knew what these formulas mean! Can anyone explain it???
Is there room in your company for a Physics intern/job shadow?
Any updates on Polaris? It is supposed to begin operations "by early 2024". Very exciting.
Still on track for that time frame?
Date slipped a bit to summer 2024. For an undertaking of this scale, a relatively small delay of 6 months is not unusual, nor unexpected given, given their aggressive timeline. COVID and the supply chain problems that followed did not exactly help either.
Given Pulsed Nature of the Field Reversal, would the Electricity vary, surge and then reduce?
The electricity output would be over a very short period of time (less than 1 ms), but it does not really matter. The electricity that is recovered is stored in a capacitor bank and then gradually released to the grid.
What about Boron proton? does that work here or is the B ion too heavy?
funny I saw P-B11 in one of the charts, but he didn't mention it... looked like D-He3 was just a better profile at the same conditions
Why would exhaust heat if available?
I'm no scientist but I get that with this type of fusion, rather than high temperature it's high density that is needed and by doing this less energy is required to achieve a gain in energy output. Is this correct?
It needs higher temperatures but the FRC plasma has the advantage of much more density. I think tokamak beta (density) is .1 while Helion beta is 10x that. It's not so much that less energy is needed but that the energy can be so efficiently applied and recovered along with the energy produced that you don't need much gain to recover the input plus surplus energy
The density does help, but another important key is the extremely high ion to electron temperature ratio. Unfortunately, that last slide is missing from this video (it was in David's presentation at Princeton and he posted it on the twitter thread of this video), but it makes a huge difference. Power/m3 is almost an order of magnitude higher for a given temperature!
@@elmarmoelzer2229 the problem with that ion to electron temperature ratio is that the two temperatures will tend to balance with time. At high densities the process is faster and the alphas produced with the fusion will be mainly absorbed by the electrons (their temperature will rise faster than the ions). Honestly this presentation including that of princeton is useless close to a "joke" because it doesn't explain ANYTHING. It's not a surprise that their credibility is considered so low...
@@francescoG5
Yes, they do balance over time and the same happens in Helion's machines. But by the time the ion and electron temperatures are in equilibrium, the pulse is already over.
So, for the most time, the ions are still much hotter than the electrons. And that difference actually increases with temperature. So the hotter they go, the bigger the difference between ion and electron temperature and the longer it takes to reach equilibrium.
@@elmarmoelzer2229 do you know how long the confinement time or the "burn time" will last for polaris? this is because from what I know the "thermalization" (MeV to KeV) time for fusion products is in the order of milliseconds...
How much energy is required to produce the bursts? And is the energy released in the bursts greater? if it’s less doesn’t that mean that we have no meaningful fusion happening?
The results of Trenta's last campaign(s) are not public yet. They are planning to not just produce net energy, but net electricity by the end of 2024 with Polaris.
Any good news? Are we closing in on a fusion reactor that can be used to provide power?
They are aiming to complete Polaris around the end of the year. Then it will likely take a few months of optimization.
I would love to see a graph of maximum fusion power output compared to "Beta", because from what I understand in practice plasma B is not fully 1 an I would guess especially after the collision of two plasma units. Other problem I could see is how much energy of the plasma can be extracted via Helion method, it should be high because we are skipping steam turbine part, but exactly how high is the question. That are two problem that my uneducated eye catches with the theory, but other than that it looks promising. And from what I understood for calculation classical cross-section of electrostatic repulsion was used but in reality it should be a bit higher (quantum effects). And to add some wild idea, maybe x-ray reflecting material could be used to recover a portion of energy lost due to radiation directly (heating the plasma even further).
The two FRCs merge into a single, hotter and more stable FRC. That FRC still has a beta of ~1.
@@elmarmoelzer2229 I really hope so, but I want to have good understanding of real feasibility of this method.
@@ukaszlampart5316 The merging process of two hypersonic FRCs is pretty much accepted by now. TAE and other teams are using it successfully as well.
Could venting out the plasma act as rocket propulsion for a space craft to both propell the craft while generating electricity at the same time? Would the environment in space improve the efficiency of this design? Very low temperatures to reduce the costs of cooling superconducting magnets and an existing vacuum would improve the ratio of energy in to energy out. I'm very excited for space manufacturing and taking advantage of resources in space. Being able to go get asteroids quickly and bring them back to an orbital industrial park on the dark side of the moon sounds.... Awesome
It is actually really hard to keep things cold in space. Space is cold, but a vacuum is a perfect insulator. So, you can only radiate heat away and that is limited by black body radiation.
The plasma is not very dense. So, the thrust would be rather slow, though the specific impulse would be very, very high. The guys at Helion do however have a concept for an FRC- fusion - based space propulsion system in a drawer. It works slightly differently but combines decent thrust with decent Isp.
Look up Fusion Driven Rocket. There are some videos on TH-cam and I believe you should still be able to find some NIAC presentations they did on it.
How do you shield your reactor hall from neutrons?
From their FAQ: A borated polyethylene and borated concrete shield vault will surround Polaris to protect the area outside the machine from neutrons.
Trenta produced relatively few neutrons, but there was still permitted shielding in the walls around the machine, just not close to it. The controls are remote and neutron radiation, like any radiation declines with the square of the distance.
It was stated that at higher ion temperature, there is lower density, but I don't understand why that is. The graphs show bremsstrahlung decreasing with ion temperature instead of increasing; I gather this is because density is decreasing.
Yes, in a high beta plasma you can almost linearly scale between temperature and density at the same Magnetic field strength. So, e.g. if your machine has 20 Tesla field strength, you can reduce the density and increase the temperature. There is another effect in their machines where, the electron to ion temperature ratio decreases with increasing plasma temperature. The lower the electron temperature, the lower the Bremsstrahlung losses.
So I have a basic question about deuterium-deuterium fusion. When doing fusion with He-3 and deuterium, does the deuterium-deuterium side reaction produce enough He-3 to produce future fuel? Or alternatively, are there separate fusion cycles for generating energy vs producing fuel?
Someone from Helion can probably answer this better than me, but in case they won't, here is my two cents:
Helion got a few options for this and from what I have heard, they themselves are not quite sure yet which way is the best (as some of that decision depends on external factors like regulation or market demand).
1. They could have a lean burning D-He3 machine that essentially has a much higher ratio of Deuterium to He3 in the fuel mix and will essentially do two D-D reactions for every D-He3 reaction. AFAIK, there are some parameters they can tune to favor D-D over D-He3 reactions as well (density over temperature among other things).
2. They can vary fuel mixture, density and temperature on a per pulse basis to favor D-D reactions over D-He3 reactions (or the other way round). So have two D-D pulses for every D-He3 pulse. This could be interesting for plants that have to load follow a lot. Do more D-D pulses during time of low demand, then do more D-He3 pulses during time of high demand.
3. They could have a separate machine (of similar design) that is dedicated to He3 breeding. That would do D-D pulses only.
This potentially has some licensing/regulatory advantages because D-D reactions produce neutrons and also Tritium as a byproduct that has to be stored and transported. It could be harder to get regulatory approval for a mixed mode machine than for a dedicated D-He3 machine. So, you have D-D only breeders in a single (or few) location where you got (easier) approval. Then the He3 gets delivered from there to distributed, dedicated D-He3 machines (that try to suppress D-D side reactions as much as possible).
It also allows them to optimize breeders and D-He3 power plants for their respective tasks.
There could also be some odd combinations/variations of all three concepts.
The important part is that Helion has a lot of options and ways to tackle this. Flexibility is key and they can adjust to (external) realities when they have to. One of many things that makes the concept amazing in my book.
@@elmarmoelzer2229More or less this.
You need a fair amount of helium-3 inserted to begin with but not nearly as much as the deuterium.
But the downwide is it produces more neutrons which can't be stopped and damages the reactor walls...
So the sensible thing would be to make / source helium-3 outside the reactor and have a deuterium heavy fuel mix.
I can't really see many good ways to get Helium 3.
It's basically.
- Make an overbuilt pulsed reverse field configuration machine that is primarily for fuel manufactering and focuses on replenishing its own energy,
rather than the grid.
- Seperate from natural helium extraction
- Bombard lithium with neutrons to create helium 4 and tritium in massive quantities and let the Tritium decay into Helium-3
The half life of tritium is over 12 years btw. you need a lot...
@@Mallchad
I am not sure I understand.
They do not need He3 from the very start in any of the scenarios I laid out.
They could just start with a few pure deuterium pulses and get He3 for later.
The neutrons are not that bad compared to D-T neutrons. The D-D neutrons only have 2.45 MeV energy (vs 14+ MeV for D-T neutrons). This is below the activation energy of many materials. Neutron damage should not be a problem until many years of operation and then components can be easily replaced in a cylindrical machine (compared to a Tokamak).
The D-D reaction will produce a He3 in one branch and a Tritium in the other. The Tritium would eventually also decay to He3, but they can just sell it and take the money from that. Likely more profit in that than in the electricity.
So, they will get a Helion for every two D-D reactions right away and another one some years down the road.
They will likely be fine with just the He3 from the immediate branch and the He3 from Tritium decay will be nice to have in the future (or they sell it and pocket the money or trade it for He3).
Wow, really good answers- informative and thoughtful.
Interesting that there are several different options. How much of a consideration is net energy gain? Does it help to incorporate some He-3 / D fusion into the D-D fusion to increase the energy output? Or will it actually be possible to achieve net energy gain with D-D fusion alone?
Regarding the damage from neutrons in D-D fusion to generate He-3, how big of a problem is this really? These neutrons are of much lower energy compared to D-T fusion. Plus, the reactor wall doesn’t need to incorporate a breeder like a traditional tokamak, so would it be possible to have some kind of replaceable barrier to shield the magnets?
@@elmarmoelzer2229 Sorry.
I misunderstood the reactor concept, I didn't realize they were genuinely going to try deuterium only start fuel.
I heard it mentioned in some of the other information and inverviews (not here) that they're still damaging equipment even though its much slower. Mainly just because of how far neutrons travel.
(indirectly answering Jonathan).
To build a reactor that *can* deal with the neutrons and wouldn't actually wreck the reactor even long term (we want sustainable reactors ideally), you really need very very thick shielding. Many meters of concrete, or similar. Maybe water.
Which is probably why Helion keeps bringing it up.
It does make a lot of economic sense to sell Tritium and Helium instead of using it as fuel. It might even be easier to sell it directly and not bother refining it even.
(To Jonathan)
I don't know the exact specs of their reactor, whether you can get net energy gain from deuterium-deterium reactions depends on their reactor.
I'd say they are mainly looking for the Deuterium - Helium-3 reactions because they want charged particle energy, not neutrons. So they prefer the reactions that produce less neutrons
Very cool. I'm wondering which generation of Helion's prototypes will achieve net power generation. Currently I've seen the one they are building, with the testing for power delivery, and I'm really looking forward to all these developments.
Polaris (the one they are building now) will demonstrate net electricity production next year. It won't be quite on the same level as the final power plant design but it will be enough to verify that it works. The next machine after that will be the first commercial power plant.
Nowhere do they state that Polaris will have net power production.
That would be a massive worldwide sensation.
So, no. Polaris will demonstrate electricity production, but at a net loss.
@@vonnikon They state it on the FAQ on their web site. "We expect that Polaris will be able to demonstrate the production of a small amount of net electricity by 2024."
@@jRoy7 wow! Did not know that.
Getting net positive that soon is hard to believe, to put it lightly.
They have not even achieved ignition yet.
Helion need to achieve ignition, then I'll take net electricity predictions a bit more seriously.
@@vonnikon Helion will (likely) never achieve ignition, their approach doesn't require it and they aren't working on it.
I understood some of that. It sounds like that if the cylindrical model holds as an accurate representation of what's going on, you've got something there. I subbed after seeing the Real Engineering video. It seems odd to me that you picked them to come out to. What is your purpose for coming out, especially thru a specific TH-cam channel? Are you looking for funding? Are you just letting the world know there is hope? Everything about what you are doing is a bit mysterious.
Keep the videos coming. I may have to watch them a few times to really understand what's going on but I'm liking the rabbit hole so far.
They are fully funded all the way to commercialization. They do need qualified employees and they are trying to prepare the public for a future where fusion power plants exist.
It's true that it's mysterious, but I'm looking forward to seeing the masterplan unfold. They really are pushing for it, and it's great
@@elmarmoelzer2229 That’s a great point. With all their recent $500m in funding, I wouldn’t be surprised if Helion is bringing in new scientists.
I think you’re also right about preparing the public. Helion’s announcement was timed just after the highly publicized net gain from the government. I imagine that Helion needed a TH-cam channel with a good science reputation, and maybe also one that could release the video on relatively short notice.
I wish I had studied plasma physics. Helion's approach skips the whole heat engine( steam power plant) step and avoids most of the downside of neutron emmision. Their generators have a small enough footprint to be put on-site with existing infrastructure. Very cool, world changing stuff.
Helion's approach does not avoid neutron emission at all. True aneutronic fusion comes to proton-boron at least. Fusion is a probabilitic thing like everything in the atomic scale. Thus you cannot guarantee that there is no deutrium-deutrium fusion when you are doing deutrium-helium3 fusion. Neutron emission is guaranteed. It is not an issue now because there has not been any fusion yet. When they generate electricity in commercial scale, it will be a big issue. I doubt whether they can get a NRC nuclear plant certificate.
Helion is the best fusion generator. Why don't do D+D fusion and He-3 send to helion and T to other fusion power plants, that use D+T fusion
I think Kirtley spoke on that in a previous video.
So can you shoot lasers down the middle of the cylinder to compress the plasma pillar further or ignite the collided plasma from the center outward?
Ever since NIF, everyone is obsessed with lasers ;)
It is much easier for them to just increase the magnetic field strength. Is more efficient too, since current lasers have a very low efficiency.
@@elmarmoelzer2229 been joking for decades now that NIF is a advanced laser light show whose primary potential customer base is DJs
Hoping you are successful.
The low beta chart was very confusing. Gland the high beta is working.
Is it theoretically possible to retrofit a hadron collider with your system? What is the efficiency like when it is scaled up or down? Does the fusion power output increase as the velocity of the plasma increases? Could one create a sattelite propulsion system by electromagnetic ejection of plasma?
The LHC is a very different system for a very different purpose. The particles in the LHC also move almost 1000 times as fast.
@elmarmoelzer2229 I guess retrofit was the wrong word. I think I meant to ask if the plasma could achieve fusion if you had something along the lines of 2 stellerators intersecting. Just the general shape of the LHC.
@@GammaFields
The merging of the two plasmoids is not enough to get sufficient fusion reactions. The temperature after merging is only in the hundreds of electron volts (around 4 million degrees). They have to magnetically compress the two plasmoids after merging to drive the temperature to 10s of kilo electron volts (100s of millions of degrees).
Plus, there is a reason why Helion chose FRCs for this, rather than stellarators or individual particles like the LHC.
What are you going to do about neutrons?
@Deonex even their low neutron approach is going to eat the machine as it runs
Please God let this thing work. 🙏🏼
So basically Helion will be selling 'Mr Fusion' in a couple years. :) God that would be nice....
very informative, thank you for taking the time to elucidate, particularly the power balance equations and the electron/ion temperature ratio
the Q>5 prediction at under 100KeV is quite interesting, can't wait to see if Polaris bears this out at scale!
I can’t help but wonder if a longer acceleration phase would help.
I mean, it’s a relatively short run up.
I asked David Kirtley about this on Twitter and it is an interesting problem.
Cold FRCs tend to be less stable and have thermal and magnetic flux losses. So, they want to have them merge as soon as possible because the resulting single FRC is hotter, more stable and has less losses and accelerating over a greater distance would increase the time to the merge. At the same time, it would help to have them come in faster since that would mean a hotter merged FRC as a target for compression. Electron to Ion temperature of the merged FRC would be lower too. David explained that the current limitations for FRC acceleration are:
1) trigger and monitoring speed of switches ( limited by speed of light in fiber optics for system of their size) and
2) rise time of the current pulse in a large magnet.
Hope that helps!
@@elmarmoelzer2229 Do you think it would be possible to start the next cycle before the current cycle is complete? As in start powering up the outer magnets on each end while the previous pulse is still expanding against the inner magnets / exhausting? I'm not sure if the magnet power-up or trigger times are a limitation to pulse rate or just plasma speed.
@@joefioti5698 Limitation to pulse rate is not just the pulsed power system, but also the pumps. They have to pump all the fusion products out of the chamber before the next shot. That takes time.
I know it is not commercially viable to produce helium-4 compared to harvesting. Yet I am curious: What do you do with Helium-4, and how do you extract/store it after the fact? I can't imagine you vent it into the atmosphere. I've hit a chat gpt wall. It keeps saying that is proprietary knowledge and is not open to the public(as of 2022) and keeps recommending me to ask the conpany itself.
Also, how much is Helium-4 produced? Seeing as yielding energy is still a good way away; could this be a potential method to keep this relevent in the market by producing the finite resource of Helium-4?
I kept asking, and it eventually claimed that it depends on the cross section and specific conditions but that "the conversion efficiency is only within a few percent".
I was under the impression that this produces nearly the same amount of He-4 as it does protons?
Sorry for the bombardment of questions. You are inspiring the next generation.
I estimated that a 50 MWe power plant would produce about 7kg of He4 a year. IF all of the worlds energy needs were provided by Helion fusion power plants, then that would mean about 1,600 tonnes of He4 a year. In comparison, the US alone produces about 100,000 tonnes annually right now.
The resolution of the slides is abominable! is there a site where they can be downloaded?
Great video but render math with LaTeX next time. This looked like somebody tried to write mathematics in powerpoint. I'd love to hear more details about the plasma to electricity without turbines.
I wasnt' expecting a math lesson, but this is certainly interesting. Maybe if you slowed it down a little more I would be able to make more sense out of this as a BS in math. But certainly very interesting is you guys' clear physical drive and energy to get an efficient and energetic fusion device. I agree, that you don't need to be efficient to a certain degree in order to generate electricity and see a return on your investments. All you need to do to become the first commercial reactor is a reactor and a cash flow that you can count on for the time being!! lolz. If you have input $costs of fuel and lectric, and gasses? and then you are able to build this pulsed system, I am curious how you are planning to remove this energy from the system and turn it into electricity without melting the fusion reaction chamber. While this may be proprietary, using a liquid coolant makes sense to me as a stupid because it has the ability to handle the stupdenous energy variations.
are instabilities avoided by pulse system-- time scales?
Yep!
From the elemental e-Pi-i AM-FM sync-duration bubble-mode function POV, there's a reason why the cylindrical model of plasma form is probably better than a string, ..to nodal-vibrational emitter-receiver, Fusion-Fission abstraction, because it's a Superposition-point i-reflection inclusion.
The Scattering air vibrations of a Whistle tuned to convert, ie demodulate Neutronic UHF "gravitational" frequency fields to the "onion shell" orbital-orbits of Hydrogen and associated decomposition wave-particle packets of Electron-photon-phonon-Proton oscillation, holography dimensionality, from the Neutronic resonance bonding state.., is plausibly a resonance cylindrical mass-energy-momentum continuous frequency inversion, like a whistle in operation, emitting notes, overtones, etc.
E-Pi-i Fusion is the Observable Eternity-now Universe of "thermodynamical" log-antilog relative-timing ratio-rates of orbital-orbits in perspectives vanishing-into-no-thing, of coherence-cohesion objectives.
The images of components in the device assembly are affected by whatever we think we intend our words to convey, yes bubble-modes fuse "shells", but relative-timing bubble-modes are always continuously fused here-now-forever, Holographicly.
Should the device operate as a Frequency Inversion-Converter? Universe-Singularity reciprocation-recirculation demodulator?
Great, you nailed it bro, that's exactly what he is talking about 🙂
I hope for Fusion Pulse Engine and entire Solar system will be open for us, and even allow for interstellar travel.
Hello geniuses, I want to know how much one megawatt hour costs?? As well as the time that your great invention will operate commercially
Goal for their 50 MWe power plants is 1 cent/kWh cost. Commercial operation depends on many factors, some of them external and hard to predict like where the currently in development regulatory framework for fusion in the US is going. Their current estimate is before the end of the decade. That could go faster if everything goes well, or take longer if everything goes bad...
does the helium react with itself and create neutrons?
I assume the He3 with more He3? That reaction does not make neutrons.
The audio is so bad I can barely understand it :(
I don't have issues with the audio
Random question, if batteries have an issue with charge/discharge rates and you have to use capacitor banks for storage, could you use some of the energy to power a carbon capture device that pulls carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and converts to biofuel which is super straightforward to store and deliver?
Im sure it introduces a host of new issues but just a thought.
It's a reality in greenland or iceland or those eco-countries.
Some of these is called recombination of CO2.
This is not a tought, it's basically machine-photosynthesis.
@@ivobrick7401 very cool, I was thinking Direct Air Capture like Carbon Engineering up in Canada
don't ask stupid questions
Pardon my ignorance but isn’t there a huge amount of high energy neutrons created in helion’s process? These particles are not amenable to magnetic confinement? What am I missing?
To the best of my knowledge 1/3 of the reactions will result in a 2.45 MeV neutron that has no effect on confining the other particles. Only about 5 to 10% of the fusion energy is released in neutrons. The rest is in charged particles.
Compared to D-T fusion, where a 14 MeV neutron (carrying the majority of the fusion energy) is created by every reaction, it is a lot more benign.
Thank you. I’ve learned it really comes down to the mix of the fuel. If the mixture is rich, say, 85% D-He 3 the neutron production decreases. Can we agree to call helium-3 “Helion”? I believe they are synonymous
@@docjaramillo
They have a lot of options for the fuel mix.
Generally, they will want a 2:1 ratio of D-D to D-He3 fusion reactions to always breed enough He3 for the next pulse.
They do have a few options though for how to do that. E.g. the He3 breeding can be done in a dedicated separate machine, or the same machine. They could alternate between pulses for He3 breeding and pulses doing D-He3 reactions as long as the overall ratio of D-D to D-He3 is maintained. Or they could adjust the fuel mix and temperature as well density for the ideal ratio of D-D:D-He3 reactions in a single pulse.
- A Helion is a single He3 atom.
Thank you for your brilliant reply. Those of us arm chair engineers are thrilled by these developments. Do you have any recommendations on learning the electromagnetic details of this energy recovery scheme? Is it because helium-3 has been so rare historically that this fuel cycle has not been more recently probed?
@@docjaramillo
Their fuel cycle works because they have a pulsed system. So they can extract bred He3, unburnt fuel and fusion products between pulses, then feed the He3 and Deuterium back into the machine for the next pulse.
One reason why it has not been considered much (there are some) is that doing economic D-D fusion requires conditions not possible in a Tokamak, which still is the dominant plasma configuration.
Seems like he is giving answers to inaudible questions that's only hearable to him not viewers like us or is it? If it really worked I hope this brings new industrial Revolution once again
I think he was trying to answer questions that have been asked of him before. E.g. at his recent talk at Princeton, which used most of the same slides.
@@elmarmoelzer2229 may be
I'm a mathematician that's interested in perhaps one day coming to work for Helion after I get my PhD and DSc (which is a higher doctorate here in Australia). That being said I found this video th-cam.com/video/3vUPhsFoniw/w-d-xo.html with criticism of Helion's approach to fusion quite insightful and I'd be interested in hearing your response to it.
Lots of mistakes in that "critique" video. See my response to other posts about it in the comments here.
@@elmarmoelzer2229 yes clearly they did not watch this video first
@@daveprice74 Or read their patents, etc...
Please describe your method of He3 obtaiing, since it’s dramaticaly rare ! It’s a stable isotope of helium and makes up only 0,000137% of the Earth natural helium! I suppose, that this is theme for a separate stream.
Helion will produce their Helium3 by fusing Deuterium in the same machine. D+D => He3 +n or D+D => T + p (the Tritium eventually decays to He3 as well).
@@elmarmoelzer2229 There are several different fusion reactions happening in reactor. How they separate and extract He3 from such radioactive coctail? Also is not clear how they insert a fresh new portion of D and He3 if trere is such mad pressure and temperature in FRC? David says "we take FRC plasma..."?, that's it. Where he takes it from?
@@user-zr2xi4bw2z
What "radioactive cocktail"?
The two fusion reactions happening in the machine are:
1. Deuterium-Deuterium. Which results in either a Helium3 atom and a neutron or a Tritium atom and a proton.
2. Deuterium with Helium3 which results in a Helium4 atom and a proton.
Between pulses, the fusion products and remaining fuel are extracted. They are then separated and the unburnt Deuterium and the Helium3 are re-used. The Tritium is stored until it decays to more He3 or is traded/sold.
No, Tritium will not fuse with Deuterium during the pulse (in relevant amounts anyway) because the Tritons that are born from the reaction are too hot and non collisional on the short timeframe of the pulse. Just in case you were wondering.
I don't know what you mean with "mad pressure". Even during the compression phase, when density is highest, the plasma has a density closer to a vacuum than to ambient air. When fusion scientists talk about "high density", they do not mean what common folk understand with that.
Equally, temperatures are high, but again, the density is very low. When the plasma expands again after compression, it quickly cools off.
Their patent has some clues about the separation methods, they could be using:
Generally, the extraction techniques take advantage of the fact that the particles all have different mass-to-charge ratios and have a large energy spread. Suitable techniques include but are not limited to cryogenic separation, mass quadrupole separation, inversion-ion cyclotron extraction, and as well as a host of standard chemical processes.
For Tritium separation and storage there are even off the shelf solutions from a company in Canada.
Radiation containment.
Extreme caution is advised!
Not really my brosky. As long as you stay on the outside of the reactor when it is firing and you don't touch it, you should be fine. The pulses last only a small portion of a second, and they can't keep the fusion reaction going longer or it will melt the machine. When it melts the machine, it loses the vacuume... or "no air" and it stops the reaction. This is much much much safer than a nuclear reactor, and nuclear reactors are much safer than coal in terms of lives lost. More people die every year mining coal for electricity than you would believe
Helion
My fusion powerplant is generating 38 000 000 000 000 PW net per second, how much is yours?
PW per second? That makes zero sense. It is either PW (constantly) or a PWh (or whatever you get) per second.
Was this meant to be for the layman?
For people with a decent understanding of the physics. The likely audience is people who they want to hire.
So Hyped about this new era of energy coming in to our world. The innovations due to excess energy will be immerserable!!
Toujours pas de traduction en français. TH-cam c’est navrant 😮
J'ai regardé la traduction automatique, c'est pas glorieux pour les termes techniques :/
Instructions unclear ... stuck in the turbomolecular pump
So they made two fusion cannons stuck them together and now they're going to turn into a reactor!
It is a bit more complicated than that. The two plasmoids merge into a single, hotter and more stable FRC. That is then compressed to fusion conditions by another set of even stronger magnets.
@@elmarmoelzer2229 I knew I just wanted to be funny something I'm not all that good at though I would love to see this be turned into a plasma cannon though! You think Hellion would be good at making plasma cannons?
@@mrnobody.4069
I don't think it would work well.
You can theoretically eject the accelerated plasmoids, but they would immediately expand and cool off. Would cool off even quicker if they were exposed to ambient air.
Also, the plasmoids only stay stable for about a millisecond and less when they cool. So while it could make a for a good premise for a scifi story, it would likely not work well in practice. But never say never. Maybe someone will come up with a way to make it work.
@@elmarmoelzer2229 Yes I have noticed that too with a real life plasma weapon and it would essentially have to carry its own fuel source the beam itself for long range fire and have been thinking on a real life version that would have its own magnetic field to hold itself together until the fuel burned or having a laser also fire and opaque or non-transparent gas that would be confined and ignite by the laser while moving at fantastic speed or perhaps someday we can learn how to recreate ball lightning within a atmosphere and also the chamber of a gun and fire it out the barrel but probably knowing from ball lightning that it is possible to shoot a high powered self-contained energy projectile!
Or you know you straight up radiation particle beams like Star Trek phasers!
yes. But the fusion is at 100million degrees C and every metal known to mankind melts below 1 million C. So calling it a reactor is a little bit of a stretch because it can't hold the reaction for any longer than a trillionth of a second.
Making a plasma confinement reactor and making a commercial fusion reactor are not the same thing. They are different machines. At 100,000,000 K there are no physical conditions for nuclear fusion.
Изготовление реактора для удержания плазмы и изготовление коммерческого термоядерного реактора - это не одно и тоже. Это разные машины. При 100 000 000 К нет физических условий для ядерного слияния.
Why don't you need fusion ignition?
Fusion ignition is the point at which a nuclear fusion reaction becomes self-sustaining. This occurs when the energy being given off by the reaction heats ...
Ahh okay. I see
Ignition means that there are enough hot Alpha particles (fusion products) that they can heat the plasma so it becomes (almost) self heating.
Helion are using a pulsed system that can recover 95% of the input energy (plus a significant amount of the fusion energy) directly as electricity. So they do not need ignition because the energy recovery they do is essentially taking care of heating the plasma again for the next pulse.
I have a way to miniaturize this Helion system down to be as small as just a few inches in diameter and would only function when fully submerged underwater
Drop the alcohol
Me too.
You forgot to tell us about your cold fusion generator. Your anti matter generator?
This is not cold fusion!
This.... guy has actually built several fusion reactors bro. They have built several of them. They release their data to the international physics community when the get results too. What they don't have yet is a reactor that can make electricity profitably and sell on the grid. Thats what his goal is.
You’ve been Offaly quite lately, so Umm 🤔. So Where is the Fusion energy breakthrough you promised??? 🤨 🤨 🤦
Check their social media accounts.
Did he say ARPA 🤣
yes? why is that funny?
Yup ARPA-E (partially) funded and evaluated their earlier prototypes.
Impossible folks .
He's holiness . Donald J turmp
WHRE ARE THE TEST RESULTS.. that demonstrate your potential to reach breakeven ?? This 20 minute video creates less than ZERO CONFIDENCE .. either you got the data or you don't.
Does SpaceX release all of their test results to the public? This is a private company. The only ones who need to know the test results are their investors.
Scam for Venture Capitalists
I guess you did not understand the physics and now resort to insults.
@@elmarmoelzer2229 I don't understand all of it but I do understand the energy gains
@@thanoscube8573
Dangit! TH-cam keeps deleting my comments.
I am not sure what you mean by "understand energy gains".
The power plants will have sufficient energy gains to be economic.
remember you said this in 10 years my brosky
This is an investment scam.
No, it is not.
@@elmarmoelzer2229 would you rather be a useful idiot and let these people keep wasting billions of dollars on a technology that is going nowhere not necessarily because the technology is bad. It’s a very old system but it just is not the direction we need to be going or would you rather make sure this money is being properly invested in legitimate fusion technologies?
@@resenese573
1. It is not a "very old system". Yes, FRCs have been around for a while and Helion's founders were involved in FRC research since the 90ies (or longer).
They then applied the lessons learned from those earlier experiments and the way they are doing FRCs is completely NEW. They even have patents for it.
2. Why do you think that investing in Helion is not "properly invested in a legitimate fusion company"? Do you even know anything about them or their technology?
I have known the guys at Helion personally for almost 10 years. They are legit.
3. Don't call me a useful "idiot", when you are the one who is talking about something you clearly know jack shit about.