Helion Energy Commits to Fusion Energy Delivery to Microsoft in 2028

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Helion Energy will provide Microsoft (MSFT.O) with electricity from nuclear fusion in about five years. It is the first purchase power agreement for commercial nuclear fusion energy.

Helion Energy (based in Washington State near Microsofts head office) agreed to provide Microsoft with at least 50 megawatts of electricity from its planned first fusion power plant, starting in 2028. Fifty megawatts is enough electricity to power a data center or factory, said David Kirtley, Helion’s CEO.

Founded in 2013, Helion has launched a multi-billion-dollar effort to produce electricity from fusion, the nuclear reaction that powers the sun and stars.

Helion Energy has received over $570 million in funding and commitments for another $1.7 billion to develop commercial nuclear fusion.

Helion has performed thousands of tests with their sixth prototype called Trenta. In 2021, Trenta reached 100 million degrees C, the temperature they could run a commercial reactor. Magnetic compression fields exceeded 10 T, ion temperatures surpassed 8 keV, and electron temperatures exceeded 1 keV. They reported ion densities up to 3 × 10^22 ions/m3 and confinement times of up to 0.5 ms.

7th prototype Polaris
Helion’s seventh-generation prototype, Project Polaris was in development in 2021, with completion expected in 2024. The device was expected to increase the pulse rate from one pulse every 10 minutes to one pulse per second for short periods. This prototype is the first of its kind to be able to heat fusion plasma up to temperatures greater than 100 million degrees C. Polaris is 25% larger than Trenta to ensure that ions do not damage the vessel walls.

Helion’s plan with Polaris is to try demonstrate net electricity from fusion. They plan to demonstrate helium-3 production through deuterium-deuterium fusion.

The plan with Polaris is to pulse at a higher repetition rate during continuous operations.

8th prototype Antares
As of January 2022, an eighth prototype, Antares, is in the design stage.

Helium-3 is an ultra-rare isotope of helium that is difficult to find on Earth used in quantum computing and critical medical imaging. Helion produces helium-3 by fusing deuterium in its plasma accelerator utilizing a patented high-efficiency closed-fuel cycle. Scientists have even discussed going to the Moon to mine helium-3 where it can be found in much higher abundance. Helion’s new process means we can produce helium-3 on Earth.

Helion’s cost of electricity production is projected to be $0.01 per kWh without assuming any economies of scale from mass production, carbon credits, or government incentives.

Nextbigfuture has interviewed Helion executives a few years ago and has reported on Helion plans before. Helion and all other nuclear fusion companies have missed target dates in the past. The only fusion companies that have not missed target dates are those that are too new.

All current nuclear fusion projects are less capable than the first EBR-1 fission reactor from 1951. However, technological and scientific breakthroughs can happen. Breakthroughs often do not happen. Nuclear fusion projects might succeed or might not. Many normal large projects fail. Multi-billion dollar skyscrapers and building projects that fail not because of difficult science. Big companies and big projects can fail and they can be late and miss deadlines. The SLS rocket is an example of a project going massively over budget and behind schedule.

December 2022 Update on Helion Energy Science

Helion Fusion CEO, David Kirtley, presented an update on the work as of December, 2022.

They are working on their seventh-generation prototype system and they have had over 10,000 shots with the sixth-generation system. They create and form plasmas and accelerate two plasmas to merge at supersonic speeds. They do not inject beams and operate in pulse mode. they do not hold the plasma for long times like the tokamak approaches.

The VC-funded seventh prototype should generate electricity. They have $500 million in funding and commitments of another $2 billion if the seventh prototype achieves its technical goals.

6th system is working at about 10 kEV (10 thousand electron volts). Over 10,000 shots.
7th system will work at 20 kEV. Want to have it operating by the end of 2023.
8th or 9th systems to get to the ideal operating levels of 100 kEV.

It is taking about 2-4 years to make and start operating each new prototype.

They have computational models of their science work and computationally modeled the scaling of the system.

Nextbigfuture has monitored all nuclear fusion programs and advanced nuclear fission systems. Helion Fusion is one of the programs that is the most promising based upon my comprehensive analysis.

The Operation of Helion Fusion Summarized

Scaling and Science Foundation

17 thoughts on “Helion Energy Commits to Fusion Energy Delivery to Microsoft in 2028”

  1. Fusion is a pipe dream, a scam promoted by academics to suck up government funded research grant money .

    • [I see. How many academics are involved? What’s a value of basic/foundamental research work/results? (Thx)]

    • Google “Retrospective of the ARPA-E ALPHA fusion program” for a report that states,”Even with the aggressive experimental goals, the team was able to conduct over 900 FRC compression shots, and the team observed DD fusion neutrons.” So more than none at least, on an older prototype in 2018.

      • with having ~319MWh for each g of Deuterium gas (~0.005-0.006m³, ~273K) from ideal reaction?

        • Thanks for correction, one g of Deuterium gas (ideally) is more towards ~100MWh, what’s ~0.5% efficiency on general mass to energy conversion (?) and capacitors sharing ~10MJ for pulses.
          (natural U235 contains ~25MWh/g on 100% fission conversion, what’s ~0.045MWh(electricity output)/g on a LWR ?)

    • Venti did 10^11 D-D neutrons/pulse. Trenta obviously did a lot more. My guess is at least an order of magnitude, likely more than that.

  3. Then you haven’t been following the very concrete developments of Helion and Zap Energy, never mind the several startups targeting q > 1 timelines just a bit behind theirs.

  4. 2028 is tomorrow for grid interconnected generators.

    The Hill story claims it is a binding PPA. If Helion can’t provide the power, they have to buy it off the market for Microsoft.

    Green power at ~$50/MWh 24×7 x 50 MW adds up pretty quickly. $20M per year if they miss their in-service date.

  5. World’s energy market is worth trillions US dollars. If you can find a way to get cheap, clean electricity and ramp it up fast you get massive boost in GPD, less environmental damages and health-pollution related issues, everything is cheaper to manufacture,….

    Considering the potential benefits, savings and total market worth money invested into that tech should be higher.

    Lockheed Martin had promising claims, but now they are quiet. I recall he said, that the magnets are the main issue they can’t make smaller reactor. Now we have such magnets if I am correct, won’t they build it? LM has a patent for fusion powered fighters and bombers:)

  6. Depending on the details of the agreement with Microsoft, they could potentially run a fusion reactor at below engineering breakeven, and just launder fossil fuel energy into ‘fusion’ energy. Not unlike the way corn based ethanol is just laundering the fossil fuel energy used to produce the fertilizer and run the farm.

    They might even be able to produce a genuine profit doing that, given the value of the He3 they’d be producing as a byproduct, that stuff is insanely expensive. And they’d still be getting back good engineering data for the design of the next generation reactor.

    So the risk level isn’t quite as high as you might think.

    I still think, though, that fusion doesn’t make much economic sense relative to fission. And if it ever does prove feasible, the Greens will undoubtedly try to kill it off, since their ultimate goal is that we not have energy.

    • Yes – that’s probably what will happen.
      It will work until the fusion facility breaks down, which will of course happen.

      This is a gamble. They will probably be able to attract a lot more capital by showing business deals like this and maybe they believe there is a chance to reach technological escape velocity by going on the offensive.

      • This is not about fund raising, though. Helion is already fully funded all the way to commercialization. This is about using Microsoft’s leverage for accelerating things like permits, reviews and all that stuff that is outside of Helion’s control.

    • they have had 6 prototypes and are working on the next two. Getting the agreement helps to validate their work and can firm up even more funding

    • They are preparing for the future. I think that after Trenta’s last campaign and the Polaris formation section tests (I her both went really well), they have enough confidence that this will work as expected. Is there a risk of it failing? Sure. B
      ut they will know for 100% sure around the end of next year if they can produce net electricity and what it takes to scale it up to 50 MW.

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