Helion Energy Partners With Nucor Steel for 500MW Nuclear Fusion Power Plant in 2030

Helion Energy, a nuclear fusion power company, and Nucor Corporation, the largest steel producer and recycler in North America, announced an agreement to develop a 500 MWe fusion power plant at a Nucor steel manufacturing facility in the United States. This collaboration is aimed at accelerating the future of clean energy in the industrial manufacturing …

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December 2022 Update of Helion Fusion Progress

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 …

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Shipping Container Sized Commercial Nuclear Fusion is Fully Funded and May Arrive 2027

Nuclear Fusion startup, Helion Energy, received $500 million in funding and has $1.7 billion in commitments. Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI and former president of Y Combinator, led the round. Co-founder of Facebook Dustin Moskovitz and Peter Thiel’s Mithril Capital, Capricorn Investment Group also invested. David Kirtley, Helion’s co-founder and CEO plans to build systems …

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Nuclear Fusion Startup Helion Energy Surpasses 100 Million Degrees Celsius

Helion Energy is the first private company to announce exceeding 100 million degrees Celsius in its sixth fusion generator prototype, Trenta. The Trenta prototype recently finished a 16-month testing campaign, completing almost 10,000 high-power pulses. Helion will be presenting these operational results at the 63rd Annual Meeting of the APS Division of Plasma Physics. Nextbigfuture …

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Helion Energy got funding for possible breakeven fusion device this year

Helion Energy has successfully raised $30 million raised in the past three years will be enough to get Helion through the debut of its 50-megwatt break-even nuclear fusion prototype. Helion’s commercial strategy is to build fusion reactors in Washington, with capacity of about 50 megawatts, and deploy them at industrial facilities. Helion Energy is building …

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Nuclear Fusion Company Helion Energy and Others Get ARPA-E Funding

ARPA-E has provided a combined $30 million in funding for nuclear projects Helion Energy – Staged Magnetic Compression of FRC Targets to Fusion Conditions received $3,971,264 in funding Helion Energy will investigate staged magnetic compression of field-reversed configuration (FRC) plasmas, building on past successes to develop a prototype that can attain higher temperatures and fuel …

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Nextbigfuture Interviewed Helion Energy CEO David Kirtley

Nextbigfuture interviewed Helion Energy CEO David Kirtley. An NSF, NASA, and DOD fellow, Dr. Kirtley has 13 years of experience in nuclear engineering, fusion, and aerospace and holds Nuclear and Aerospace Engineering degrees from the University of Michigan. He leads the MSNW propulsion research and development, serves as Helion’s CEO, and has raised and managed …

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Helion Energy now has a Helium 3 fuel cycle for its magneto-inertial fusion process

Helion Energy has an update on their project to achieve commercial nuclear fusion. Helion Energy uses Magneto-Inertial Fusion: By combining the stability of steady magnetic fusion and the heating of pulsed inertial fusion, a commercially practical system has been realized that is smaller and lower cost than existing programs. They want to create modular, distributed …

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Nuclear Fusion Summary – Prospects for breakthrough commercial reactors 2018-2025

Nuclear fusion is one of the main topics at Nextbigfuture. I have summarized the state of nuclear fusion research before. A notable summary was made three years ago in mid-2010. I believed at the time that there could be multiple successful nuclear fusion project vying for commercial markets by 2018. Progress appears to be going …

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Thorium reactor projects getting increased funding and effort

The UK Telegraph has an update on global projects to develop commercial Thorium molten salt reactors. China’s project has $350 million in funding and 140 Phds working on it. They will have 750 Phds by 2015. They are targeting for a 2 MWe reactor by 2020. Kirk Sorensen’s Flibe Energy is exploring a 250 MWe …

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