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Old 11-06-2021, 11:50 AM
 
2,289 posts, read 1,542,233 times
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Sounds too good to be true, and maybe it is. The Title is just a teeny bit clickbaity. The Devil made me do it.

Redmond, Washington-based Helion yesterday announced a $500M funding round, with a further $1.7B conditional on meeting targets. The funding is led by Sam Altman ($357M) a leading Silicon Valley venture capitalist. It's the largest individual investment he has ever made. He also becomes the Executive Chairman.

So far, Helion has met their targets, if not always on time. They plan on building systems the size of a shipping container that can power 40,000 homes. Their cost, not yours would be $0.01 PKWH. They'll likely go after the data center market first. It strikes me that their approach is similar to that of Craig Ventner when he was racing the NIH to sequence the human genome.

Quote:
In June of this year, Helion published results confirming it had become the first private fusion company to heat a fusion plasma to 100 million degrees Celsius, an important milestone on the path to commercial electricity from fusion. Soon after, the company announced it had broken ground on building its factory to start the process of preparing for manufacturing of its seventh-generation fusion generator, which the company calls “Polaris.”

https://techcrunch.com/2021/11/05/he...WS1pHFYchuamml


https://tracxn.com/d/trending-themes...Nuclear-Fusion

https://www.helionenergy.com/
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Old 11-08-2021, 06:09 AM
 
884 posts, read 352,306 times
Reputation: 721
I think sustainable fusion generators with economically feasible net energy gain will happen but the question is when? I'm not just talking about Q>1 but a high enough Q to be economically feasible.

As for this company, have they even reached net energy gain? They seem to have set that as a target, missed it, and not have electricity generation for data centres as a new target. But net gain has to be hit first, before they can generate electricity to power anything.
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Old 11-08-2021, 08:32 AM
 
Location: Wooster, Ohio
4,009 posts, read 2,932,321 times
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A star needs to be about 10% of the mass of our sun in order to undergo nuclear fusion. I have my doubts it will ever be a practical source of energy.
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Old 11-08-2021, 08:37 AM
 
Location: Wisco Disco
2,130 posts, read 1,180,425 times
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Imagine all that heat (energy) flowing out of something that small. Can you say melt?
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Old 11-08-2021, 04:57 PM
 
2,289 posts, read 1,542,233 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Peter600 View Post
I think sustainable fusion generators with economically feasible net energy gain will happen but the question is when? I'm not just talking about Q>1 but a high enough Q to be economically feasible.

As for this company, have they even reached net energy gain? They seem to have set that as a target, missed it, and not have electricity generation for data centres as a new target. But net gain has to be hit first, before they can generate electricity to power anything.
They are expecting Q > 1.0 in 2022 with the generator they are currently building.

https://lynceans.org/wp-content/uplo...-converted.pdf
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Old 11-08-2021, 04:59 PM
 
2,289 posts, read 1,542,233 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by mshultz View Post
A star needs to be about 10% of the mass of our sun in order to undergo nuclear fusion. I have my doubts it will ever be a practical source of energy.
No, they are not building a star (I think).
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Old 11-08-2021, 05:01 PM
 
2,289 posts, read 1,542,233 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ManApplet View Post
Imagine all that heat (energy) flowing out of something that small. Can you say melt?
Local fire departments have been warned and are assessing.
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Old 11-08-2021, 05:01 PM
Status: "I've got a fightin' side a mile wide but I pray for peace" (set 8 days ago)
 
Location: Florida
14,435 posts, read 9,517,868 times
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This recent breakthrough is a wow!

https://news.mit.edu/2021/MIT-CFS-ma...on-energy-0908
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Old 11-08-2021, 05:18 PM
 
2,289 posts, read 1,542,233 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Dave_n_Tenn View Post
If I understand correctly, and maybe I don't, (I got my Ph.D. [Divinity] mail order), Helion is further along to a different and easier goal. When I referenced Craig Ventner and the Human Genome sequence race with the NIH in the OP I drew a parallel. Ventner decided to cut some corners and won the race. NIH came along 6 months later with a better product.
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Old 11-08-2021, 07:52 PM
Status: "A solution in search of a problem" (set 8 days ago)
 
Location: New York Area
34,393 posts, read 16,502,517 times
Reputation: 29551
This would be great but would defeat the objectives of many of the "climate change" alarmists. There are several possibilities for defining this group:
  1. An effort to punish the population of the West for the sin of affluence and waste, to wear the hairshirt if you will. See the Club of Rome report, written over a period between 1968 and 1972, affiliated with MIT (link). This punitive ideology has been kicking around for a while;
  2. To perpetuate a governing class and world bodies; or
  3. Some combination of the two.
The underlying objective is to lower living standards, for everyone but themselves that is.
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