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Helion Energy Will Provide Microsoft With Fusion Power Starting in 2028

upstart [soylentnews.org] writes:

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Helion Energy will provide Microsoft with fusion power starting in 2028 [techcrunch.com]:

Helion [helionenergy.com], the clean energy company with its eye firmly on the fusion prize, announced a couple of years ago that it had secured $2.2 billion of funding [techcrunch.com] to help it develop cleaner, safer energy at a commercial scale in November 2021. Today, it is starting to reap the fruits of its labor, announcing an agreement to provide Microsoft with electricity from its first fusion power plant, with Constellation serving as the power marketer and managing the transmission for the project.

Fusion has been the energy goal for over 60 years, as it produces next to no waste or radioactivity while processing and is far less risky than fission. But achieving the same process that occurs in stars has proved mighty difficult to contain, with it taking more energy to keep the reaction under control than it can generate. Progress has been slow and steady, with the potential rewards keeping companies such as Helion focused on the reaction. Helion has been working on its fusion technology for over a decade. To date, it has built six working prototypes and it expects its seventh prototype to demonstrate the ability to produce energy in 2024.

With this in mind, Helion’s plant is expected to be online by 2028 and has a power generation target of 50MW, or greater, with a one-year ramp-up period. While that might seem a long way into the future still, it’s significantly sooner than the projections had suggested.

“This collaboration represents a significant milestone for Helion and the fusion industry as a whole,” said David Kirtley, CEO at Helion, in a statement to TechCrunch. “We are grateful for the support of a visionary company like Microsoft. We still have a lot of work to do, but we are confident in our ability to deliver the world’s first fusion power facility.”

The possibility that an almost limitless source of energy without carbon emissions or toxic waste is now a step closer to reality is both hugely exciting and important for the planet.

“We are optimistic that fusion energy can be an important technology to help the world transition to clean energy,” said Brad Smith, vice chair and president at Microsoft. “Helion’s announcement supports our own long-term clean energy goals and will advance the market to establish a new, efficient method for bringing more clean energy to the grid, faster.”

“Constellation is committed to innovation and supporting next-generation clean energy technologies to combat the climate crisis, and fusion would be a game-changer,” said Jim McHugh, chief commercial officer at Constellation. “Combined with our hourly carbon-free energy matching solution, Helion and Microsoft are helping to build a future where carbon-free energy is the standard.”

There are some rather hopeful stars burning on the energy horizon, it would seem.

This Startup Says its First Fusion Plant is Five Years Away. Experts Doubt It.

upstart [soylentnews.org] writes:

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This startup says its first fusion plant is five years away. Experts doubt it. [technologyreview.com]:

Plasma and pulses

While the fission reactions that power traditional nuclear power plants split atoms apart, fusion works by forcing them together, under extremely high  temperatures, to overcome the usual repulsive forces of atoms in close proximity. That produces a new atom minus a little bit of mass, the loss of which generates a whole lot of energy.

Most other labs and startups rely on powerful lasers or doughnut-shaped machines surrounded by powerful magnets, known as tokamaks, to create the conditions in which a sustained series of fusion reactions can occur—a condition known as ignition. But Helion is developing what it calls a “pulsed non-ignition fusion system,” which only requires fusion to take place for short periods.

The company’s device is a six–by-40-foot barbell-shaped “plasma accelerator.” It uses powerful magnets to heat a gas mixture to the point that the atoms break apart, creating rings of an ultra-hot state of matter known as plasma on either end of the device.

The magnets then propel those rings at each other at a million miles per hour, and further compress them in the middle of the device, which creates those temperatures of more than 100 million ˚C, the company says. That triggers fusion reactions, in which nuclei collide, protons and neutrons combine, various particles are released, and energy is produced.

Other fusion approaches would require an additional step to convert that energy into electricity, through conventional methods like warming water or other working fluids into a gas that turns a turbine. But Kirtley says Helion’s process can recover electricity directly.

As the plasma continues to heat and expand, its own magnetic fields push against those created by the magnets surrounding the device. That drives a flow of charged particles, otherwise known as an electric current, through the adjacent electromagnetic coils. And that, in turn, recharges an energy storage device known as a capacitor, which powers up the magnets, readying them to deliver the next pulse.

To work as a power plant, Helion’s device will need to produce energy on top of what’s required for the pulses. That additional energy would be then converted into alternating current and routed onto the grid.

The planned commercial generator wouldn’t need to be physically larger than Helion’s latest prototype, but it will require additional systems for cooling, electricity connections, and other purposes, Kirtley says.

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