Most frauds don't take the trouble to actually build half a dozen reactors. Helion might fail, but they're clearly making a real attempt.
Then you still have few megawatts of neutrons! More than in the most power dense fission reactors, but without water to protect the reactor parts.
> which will mostly be the lower-energy neutrons of D-D reactions.
2.45 MeV. Which may be better, or worse from the capture, and transmutation side.
On the bonus side, it's just enough to fission U238! It may make sense to just to run it to burn U238, or possibly Th232.
Considering that they have no need to dissipate 150 MW of waste heat, and no need for turbines, generators, offices or water treatment, what else do you imagine they need to fill up their land purchase with?
People investing $millions of their own money are generally able to afford, also, to hire competent people to evaluate the wisdom of their choices. Assuming your off-the-cuff judgment is more competent than of their employees, who spend months studying plans in depth, is a losing game. Better, instead, figure out where you are mistaken.
I'd say, they don't. I haven't seen as many "technical analysts" failing at phys101, and eng101 level matters employed anywhere outside of the so called "VC fund community"
Anyway, the smart money buys smart analysis. Money that can't tell the difference does better aping the smart money; the losers are the ones who only think they can.
Nothing but economics means both are being replaced with cheap, distributed renewables. If your nuclear reactor produces steam then it's already basically useless in terms of power generation as it will cost more to run the steam turbine alone than to build renewables of the same capacity.
This idea is aiming to re-use the existing transmission lines of fossil generators, but not the steam generator itself, something that many renewable and battery projects already do to lower costs.
Can you provide _any_ source for this?! You're saying geothermal and hydro (w/o the environmental issues) aren't competitive with other renewals? They turn turbines as well.
See any recent Lazard's Levelized Cost of Energy Analysis for full details.
For my specific claim about the cost of running just the steam part, look for the golden diamonds on the first chart here:
https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-energy-...
They mark the marginal cost of running a fully depreciated nuclear, coal or gas plant. Note how you can build new wind and PV for the same price as running the existing turbine based plants.
Those costs still include fuel, but don't include building the structures. So magical, fuel-less heat source powering steam is still going to struggle as PV and wind continue to drop in price.
On other hand there are other things screaming fraud:
1. “We directly convert fusion energy into electricity, which means that we don’t require “ignition” and can produce net electricity at much lower net energy [Q] values. Our challenges now are primarily engineering challenges rather than science challenges.”
Bullshit, if they get net energy gain, then there must be a self-sustaining fusion even for a microsecond, even if they are using pulsed operation.
Second, a near 99% certain "engineering solution" to fusion is ITER — the bigger you build a tokamak, the more stable is the fusion plasma. ITER is this "build it big enough" solution.
They don't address unsolved science challenges facing every fusion reactor: material science to withstand the neutron flux, removal of "nuclear ashes," working long term cooling solution, which will not require overhaul, or coolant replacement every few days.
2. One of the key obstacles for many fusion power proposals is that using them will require upgrades to the existing power grid. Helion claims it is side-stepping this issue.
“Helion’s fusion electricity generators are compact, use small amounts of fuel, and can run 24/7. Therefore, one of the key benefits of Helion’s power facilities is that they can directly plug into existing transmission infrastructure and replace current fossil-fuel-based power generation without significant investment in additional infrastructure. Grid-level transmission infrastructure is a requirement of large-scale, gigawatt-class power associated with traditional fusion approaches,”
Bullshit, what will make it harder for a fusion reactor outputting steam to just turn the same turbine as a fossil fuel power plant?
On other hand, they will require way more power conversion equipment to output the high voltage 3 phase AC coming from regular generators.
If a company like this is challenged by such a triviality as electric power conversion, you really should challenge their engineering acumen.
4. “Fusion is an abundant source of zero-carbon baseload power, but unlike fission, fusion cannot produce a runaway chain reaction. If something goes wrong, fusion simply stops. Fusion also does not produce any long-term waste and cannot be weaponized,” said the Helion rep.
A thermal explosion of the reactor casing if the cooling channels are breached/rot/rust, with ejection of neutron activated isotopes may well be possible. Short lived isotopes of light elements are more radioactive, predominantly non-metals, more volatile, and have higher biological affinity than heavier elements. Short term waste may not be killing you over 100 years, but may well kill you in a few days. This may well be worse than conventional reactor meltdown.
5. FRC devices confine plasma on closed magnetic field lines in the form of a self-stable torus. Together with the spheromak they are considered part of the compact toroid class of fusion devices. FRC devices normally have a plasma that is more elongated than spheromaks.
“An FRC is a stable, self-contained plasma which can be accelerated and super-heated to 100 M°C+. Further, FRCs are high Beta, which enables direct electricity recapture and require no particle beams, lasers, superconductors, or antimatter,” said the Helion rep.
Spheromacs been a research subject of USA's, and USSR's national thermonuclear research programs for decades, and been independently concluded as a dead end development by both sides despite the great enthusiasm about inherent advantages.
High, or low Beta will make little difference to the fact that they will invariably need to dissipate double digit percentage of the power output as heat. Having few coils for direct energy capture would probably only mean few percents difference to the net energy output, and I believe will just make the whole thing more complicated, and harder to control.
6. “Our facilities can operate continuously no matter the weather or time of day, which is ideal for baseload power. Moreover, they are compact and can produce 50 MW of power in a 20,000 square foot space.
Bullshit, try to put a conventional powerplant capable of producing 50MW of electricity into half an acre. Even if you remove the biggest part, the boiler, and the support equipment to run it, there is no chance you can physically fit the cooling stacks to dissipate around 150MW of waste heat, turbines, generators, transformers, offices, water treatment plant into 0.5 acres.
7. “Modern gigahertz-class fiber optic triggering, monitoring, and field programmable gate array (FPGA) processing allow the reliable, synchronous, and efficient operation of Helion’s fusion system. At the generator scale, the ability to provide reliable and throttle-able power allows Helion to load-follow existing renewable generation, eliminating the need for new power management or storage technologies,”
This is pure technobabble. This man either doesn't know what he is talking about, or knows, but pretends that he doesn't.