A New Way to Achieve Nuclear Fusion: Helion
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- Опубликовано: 16 дек 2022
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Credits:
Writer/Narrator: Brian McManus
Editor: Dylan Hennessy
Animator: Mike Ridolfi
Animator: Eli Prenten
Sound: Graham Haerther
Thumbnail: Simon Buckmaster
Select imagery/video supplied by Getty Images
Thank you to AP Archive for access to their archival footage.
Music by Epidemic Sound: epidemicsound.com/creator
Thank you to my patreon supporters: Adam Flohr, Henning Basma, Hank Green, William Leu, Tristan Edwards, Ian Dundore, John & Becki Johnston. Nevin Spoljaric, Jason Clark, Thomas Barth, Johnny MacDonald, Stephen Foland, Alfred Holzheu, Abdulrahman Abdulaziz Binghaith, Brent Higgins, Dexter Appleberry, Alex Pavek, Marko Hirsch, Mikkel Johansen, Hibiyi Mori. Viktor Józsa, Ron Hochsprung 
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Here are the two full length interviews with David Kirtley. Available exclusively on Nebula:
nebula.tv/videos/realengineering-helion-bts-david-kirtley-interview
nebula.tv/videos/realengineering-helion-bts-trenta-walking-tour
Elon Musk is prolly speaking to his middle-eastern finaciers already!
I purchased a sub from curiosity stream but never got access to nebula, is there any way i could get this backdated?
@@garcope7858 I did the same. I thought Curiosity and Nebula were the same
Was total output greater than total input? In this lab:NO. There are lots of fusion experiments running currently but only one has achieved ignition, the USA's NIF. The rest has succeeded in fusion but not ignition.
@@garcope7858 My Nebula invitation went to the spam folder.
I really enjoyed the documentary. I retired from Helion in July of 2021, now I can show my family what I did for a living. I worked on FRC plasma machines for 35 years altogether. It’s good to see all the hard work come to fruition at Helion. My one disappointment with the footage is you didn’t show much of the puff fill system. That was my big contribution. I imagine I’m the only one that would get a thrill from a bunch of valves and stainless steel tubing.
I dunno, there are probably a lot of rocket engine nerds watching this :p
I only just started watching it and my hopes raised then I was pulled back to reality in my skepticism. As someone that worked there, can you estimate how long it might be before this could be commercialised and cranking out way more power?
I did some small time work for Helion in early days. Great company! I am sorry your contribution did not get shown more. I for one appreciate your hard work.
what's "puff"?
@@NoNameAtAll2 a magic dragon
The current major failing of Helion is that they have yet to turn their device vertical and start referring to it as a warp core.
The second maijor failiure is that they also haven't miniaturized it and used it to power an Urbanmech
They already used the phrase "plasma injector" properly
@@SonsOfLorgar We are already past the promised date of having first fusion engine in production. Get on it, GM!
Funnily enough this is definitely how warp cores work in Star Trek...yet another technology that the show predicted?
warp cores use a matter/antimatter reaction rather than nuclear fusion. and as I recall, the warp core in Enterprise (the NX starship) was horizontally configured.
4:24 as an engineer, no matter how sophisticated and groundbreaking the design there's always room for zip ties.
Good cable management knows no bounds
LOL! They're truly one of the best items we have today. So simple, yet so useful for so many purposes!
Adding a zip tie to hold the tubing onto our $20,000 ICP-MS was standard operating procedure at the lab I worked at
@@IJFisher001 gotta hold up the argon tube somehow lol
You can't have an advanced technological civilization without Zip Ties, Velcro, and Duct Tape.
This is one of the coolest things I’ve seen in a long time. And the fact that it looks and works similarly to the warp reactor on the Enterprise D, makes it just that much more awesome. The best part is, it’s not just another super over complicated way to boil water.
I was thinking the same, looks exactly like cylindrical “warp cores” or “fusion cores” that are in a lot of sci fi media.
LOL I was thinking the exact same thing hearing the term "deuterium" 😀
I'm just as amazed by the cable management outside the nuclear reactor.
So not only will they be able to produce Helium 3 for further fusion but also create Tritium that can be sold to those different type of Fusion reactors
The real accomplishment here. XD
With the current likely flowing through those cables (and the magnetic fields both coils and cables generate), they probably have to do something like that or the wiring gets its own ideas about "proper" arrangement.
Nothing sexier than cable management.
@@buzzshocker1069 bro said "lets copy this comment all over the comment section"
"In this machine is a delicate orchestra of electronics pushing two plasma rings into a violent collision, and catching that collision in a magnetic trap in the center, which proceeds to shrink until the ions trapped within it have nowhere else to go but to fuse, overcoming one of the universe's strongest forces to create new elements in the belly of a man-made machine."
Dude, this gave me goosebumps
it overcomes one of the strongest forces by using the strongest force
Have to shift my legs a bit.
It's an elegant solution too, it's a fundamentally similar (enough) process to a combustion engine which gives me high hopes for our ability to quickly iterate on it.
Its not unlike two turbojet engines pointed at each other, except plasma.
@J.P Slaym0 General Fusion's magnetized target fusion reactor is a lot more like an ICE. It even has pistons.
I have to say, I LOVE Engineering - it's one of the few places in the world where you can really feel like you can make a difference. Whether it's a new product, a creative solution, or something that helps make our planet better, engineering enables us to make real change. As an engineer myself, I love the constant challenge of coding, problem solving, and creating something that will improve our lives. Engineering is amazing!
20:30 If the fuselage is metallic, a high positive charge voltage can be applied to give it resistance to corrosion and permeability to hydrogen plasma.
I love the fact that it generates electricity directly from the reaction, it always feels weird to go through all this cutting edge technology just to build a stream engine!
So agree hahaha i was always triggered by that myself
If anything, it shows the long-lasting impact steam engines have had on our society
LOL....I think the good news is that it isn't too big, nothing compared to ITER that is! This can easily be shrunk 10 times by optimisation in the future and fit in a car.
Aye, but if a steam engine created that much heat or energy in general, there'd be one HECK of an explosion, and not the right kind 😆😅😝
A steam engine was cutting edge 2 to 3 centuries ago.
The timing of these two videos were immaculate
last video... Stupid humans. today humans smart
The new word learned! Thanks a lot :)
🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧
@@santiagogonzalezs7183 They are still humans :)
@@santiagogonzalezs7183 Humanity is the only form of life that is dumb and Intelligent at the same time.
What an amazing group of individuals! Keep up the great work!. I'm just as amazed by the cable management outside the nuclear reactor..
I think it's thrilling how fusion Helion-style produces Helium3...just like our Sun. Great video!
Thanks for visiting, Brian. As always, we appreciate your ability to breakdown complex engineering topics - including direct energy recovery from fusion!
You guys are inspiring, making me excited for the future. great work!
I wish I already had the requisite education and experience necessary to work at Helion!
Really hoping energy prices can PLUMMET in future. Keep doing great stuff!
You guys willing to one day put one of these reactors inside a space ship?
Propulsion technology is also advancing!
Hurry up and deliver us to the future!
8:30 can we acknowledge that he just held a flawless and calm monologue explaining such a complex topic perfectly and very easy to understand without a pause or a hick-up.. not even an "uhmm"
And he made it so understandable as well!
8:01 umm and 8:07 :)
It's like Jordi explaining how the Warp Drive plasma works on the USS Enterprise
Truly exceptional delivery. Pure genius. The range of human capability is truly astonishing.
Elon should learn from this guy
Good stuff. A pulsed fusion reactor is the only possibility for producing power.
As Robert Bussard famously told Google in 2001: "We have spent many decades, and many tens of billions of dollars studying Tokamaks, and so we know a lot about them. And what we know is that they are no damned good. I suspect the only reason the Russians released the Tokamak was because they knew we would waste all our time and money on it."
The other pulsed reactor which I think could work is the LPPFusion effort.
Artificial gravity as the confinement system will finally put 'hot' fusion into "breakeven-plus' range.
Artificial gravity confinement is coming, but the sequestering of artgrav tech will need to be relaxed first.
The Sun is a very simple machine: hydrogen and gravity field. That is a proven successful configuration.
.
this new way of “fusion” is nonsense
first of all: at the temperatures they are using (100-150 million degrees) Deuterium would be more likely to just fuse with itself, creating tons and tons of radioactive neutrons
second of all: trying to create energy from high-energy electrons is just plain old stupid, it would create gigantic amounts of lethal xray
thirdly: electrons traveling at such high speed would emit a lethal dose of x-ray and it will also irradiate the reactor
So thankful there are people like this in the world. Imagine starting a fusion company and having to literally invent every single component to solve a different problem one at a time. At the same time have some sort of reliable funding source.
I can't imagine the theory of "this should work on paper" to actually going and building it and making fusion reactions. Mad genius scientists!
Reap mad genius, how could be possible
Well how else are they supposed to do it?
I'm guessing that they did thousands of tests in computer and irl.
And then it doesn't work for decades, but the prize is so good, they keep trying... Bravo!
Getting wiring that carries that amount for current wrong tends to quickly teach people to be better organized :P
BTW: I wonder how many engineers vaporized to find the optimal routing...
Generations of work
I feel so lucky to live in a time where this information is not only readily available, but there are people like you out here breaking this information down into bite sized pieces that are easier to understand. Thank you for all the hard work you do.
It's awesome. I just wish he would stop idolizing the CEOs of these companies and start giving credit to the actual brains behind it, the employees.
@@rubiconnn A group of people without a leader is pointless. No society has ever worked without a direction. It is how it is.
@@r04te A leader without employees is nothing. Not even basic work will get done. Co-ops are a thing. A vast majority of scientific progress is done by research teams or individuals without a CEO to tell them what to do.
@@rubiconnn a bad CEO can immediately destroy a company..
Employees do the work, the CEO decides on where the employees need to focus their efforts..
Obviously the direction of this company is to build the technology to generate scalable nuclear fusion power using helium 3, which they would have the patent for and be able to sell it. If they didn't have that leadership and obvious direction, how would they even get the funding to work on these projects?
@@rubiconnn Do you think the CEO of such companies is someone who doesn't understand the technology? He must have knowledge above or atleast par with his teammates!!
This was one of the most interesting and also informative videos I've seen in my history on youtube. Just seeing the equtions, the fusion results and decay got me thinking a lot about particle physics and its mechanics. I wrote a lot of comments asking about how stuff works, just to come up with another idea on how this could have been possible. A huge thanks for these 60min of curiosity and creativity, it turned a boring train travel into a interesting trip through the cosmos of physics
There are so many great features of Helion reactors, my favorite is the direct generation of electrical energy via the moving magnetic fields caused by fusion.
The main reason there isn’t much beryllium production isn’t because it is rare or because it is hard to extract, it is because there isn’t much demand for it. There are a lot of mines which have to design their processes carefully so they don’t have to go through extra steps to get beryllium out of their products. If there was a market for it it would be worth reducing the beryllium and extracting it.
Beryllium is also pretty toxic.
@@photodan24 being inside a fusion reactor is a pretty nasty environment in general so that wouldn’t be much of an issue once it is built and specialists routinely handle much much more dangerous substances.
People could screw it up however I would say Beryllium is way down on the list of things that would stop or slow Tokamak production.
yes but thats NOT pure beryllium ! Even the rare earth is abundant but separating one element from another say...praseodyum from neodyum is such a COLOSAL challenge . Making it economically is just impossible
Beryllium being hard to purify dooms any ECONOMICAL calculus just like the ''rare earths'' do or just like extracting and handling titanium does But the titanium is a bad example because its an order of magnitude easier to work with. Altho requires impressive machineries and expensive processes titanium is still DOABLE
@@kukulroukul4698 Beryllium is considerably more common than all the rare earths, Bertrandite, beryl and Chrysoberyl are all relatively easy to get Beryllium out of and they are relatively easy to separate from the host rock. Compared with REE which tend to be substituted into other materials or are in extremely fine grained disseminated crystals.
Isn't berylium what the loop of a padlock is made out of ?
My mind is completely blown. As a studying engineer, seeing this crazy amount of engineering going on that I wasn't even aware of blew me away, I'm super excited to see where this project goes in the future.
They'll probably use AI from OpenAI to speed up their work
@@elijaholing impossible
@@elijaholing The AI still needs human understanding it can't create and solve problems
A human still needs to teach it the answer.
Then it could amplify or simplify the method and resources of the equation for the final product.
You simply can't ask something like create teleportation if we don't understand it's principle act.
AI won't solve it.
Open AI will be more used as a ultra intelligent person who's mind could be implemented into millions of let's say peak robotic robots once achieve and simply build sky scrapers do surgery on humans .
Go to war. Do our chores and build projects .
But everything is learned for a initial code we gave it and answer.
This is the truth that they don't tell you 👉The Connections (2021) [short documentary]👀
@@Kink-Panther I don't see how that would make his suggestion impossible. Looks to me like it'll do exactly what he said.
Although, OpenAI is definitely the wrong choice.
This is really amazing information, hoping they continue to make leaps and bounds forward in this technology!
Nice. Good work! You really did a good job here.
Been watching you since the beginning.
Keep it up.
I like that the speaker wasn't just a marketing hype man, he was someone who has intimately worked on the project and was more than willing to discuss the advantages and limitations they had encountered using this type of fusion reactor.
Compare this dude to Elon "full self-driving robotaxis since 2018" Musk
@@ZdenekHorsak nah, it's elongated "full delf-driving robotaxis since 2018" muskrat (e and m are deliberately lower-case) :)
What are the engineering challenges maintaining the balance between the two sides beyond the timing of firing the plasma rings?
The magnetic rings have to operate without interruptions to keep the plasma contained if I understand correctly. How would a failure in the center section affect containment?
@@larrytanksley7094 Most likely full failure where plasma falls on the bottom and burns trough in a instant. Thankfully thermal mass is not much but since temps are in millions probably enough to burn trough to floor, creating breach in the inert gas chamber and oxygen is mixed in with potential ignition event of metal it self, Same with if timing is off between two sides collision happens not in high power field, but that is less relevant. I'm more interested if they can actually produce more energy than it takes to kick this off, witch is the main question over all.
Ive never seen something so unbelievably beyond my realm of possible understanding explained in such an incredibly understandable way. Awesome video
This is v1 of a Star Trek Warp Core, just turn it sideways!
@Dawson Davis oh they dumbed it down A LOT
@@bigsmall246 Not really... they actually did a great job of explaining the fusion process clearly and correctly without giving unnecessary detail. People who are not nuclear physicists don't need to understand the quantum effects of a system like this to understand how it generally works and the impact of such a technology. I do wish they had discussed a bit more about how they plan to capture the output "like a piston" because that wasn't really clear to me, but maybe I am just not knowledgeable enough on electromagnetism to imagine it
@@NeoNoggie yea this isn’t the kind of thing where it’s hard to understand what’s going on
@@NeoNoggie It's actually pretty easy to grasp, I learned it in my highschool physics class (ive since forgotten pretty much all of the material but this stuck)
Conducting coils moving through a magnetic field (or vice versa) generate an electric current in the coils
That's how all turbines work really, so here they're just using the magnetic field changing due to the reaction and using that directly
Love the way you and your team are advancing fusion for next generations to advance with one is into phase wave flight propulsion ie space travel
A documentary presenting the problem in a compelling way, to sell you the solution at the end. Simply genius.
There are so many elegant solutions to the problems with tokamak and stellarator designs. They even skipped the ubiquitous "boiling water to turn a turbine"
I was waiting for them to explain all the advanced fusion breakthroughs and then say "and then it makes stream..."
Awesome they figured out a shortcut.
@@breadyegg i mean its not like making steam would be an issue. As it stands fission reactors are damn good at making steam.
@@duckqueak So is a coal fire, as seen in some locomotives...
This shows how advance they are
@@duckqueak it's no issue to do it, but I suspect it's not as efficient as direct conversion to electricity
This is a unique riff on the “Pinch” machine that the British experimented with in the very early days of nuclear fusion research (cir. 1948-50). The kinetic acceleration of the mirrored plasma is the unique part before using the magnetic pulse to compress the plasma in the final step. Also, their approach of trying to harness the excess magnetic energy to turn a generator is very unique as well. Hopefully the additional energy they will need to do their D - H3 reaction won’t be an insurmountable scaling problem. All I can say is good luck, hope they can make it work.
As you said, similar configuration were created in some laboratories half century ago. MHD/inductive generator limits the type of reaction, but is good idea, even it have to switch the current of 1 MA at the rate of 2 GHz
As you said, similar configuration were created in some laboratories half century ago. MHD/inductive generator limits the type of reaction, but is good idea, even it have to switch the current of 1 MA at the rate of 2 GHz
@james Deer work as in create fusion, or work as in create a positive EROI?
I don't think there's any turning of a generator involved. If I understood correctly, they're using magnetic induction to produce electric current directly, and completely solid-state.
@@gavinwilson5324 I believe you are correct
That torus form of the plasma in the reactor on the 3d model was really touching, wonder why this geometric shape was taken. Awe inspiring work - 1+ for humanity.
whats more astounding is what kind of research goes into something like this to produce something that will generate a specific outcome.
This is the first description of a fusion reactor I have seen that seems like it could really work. Eliminating the heat/steam/turbine steps is huge. Slamming two rings of fusion material together rather than trying to just heat a kernel of material is also genius. Having a system to actually produce fuel on a realistic scale - you guys are just on your toes. This is not just some breakthrough but many breakthroughs.
Great job Helion! Good luck as you move forward.
isnt the energy produced from this heat energy anyways? so they just havent added the "heat/steam/turbine" part yet?
@@heavygaming6596not really. They mentioned the energy here is captured as pressure by the reacting ions outwards on the magnetic field confining them. This expanding magnetic field produces the extra current which is how energy is extracted. Pretty clean!
@@pavankumarreddy93 Nice, Thank you for explaining
@@heavygaming6596 - No, not heat energy. Electro-magnetic energy produced by the sudden powerful movement of the hydrogen and helium ions. Just like moving a magnet through a coil.
Rather than turning heat into steam and steam into rotational motion rotating a magnet inside a coil, let's take the electromagnetism generated by the moving ions of the fusion reaction and draw of their energy directly as electricity. It's genius.
I hope I made sense to you.
@@rubiks6 yes thank you
I'm absolutely loving real engineering's new approach to their videos, scaling up to interviews and on-site footage!
Some knowledge which u just can't Google XD
This neutron problem is why Neutron-Component Propulsive Mirrors are important. I mean, with a Neutron carrying 2.45 MeV, that's quite a lot of energy that is just sad to lose, and capturing it somehow would be great
I am amazed at the intelligence that goes into making any of this work. It’s wild.
I can't believe how small this machine is compared to the other fusion projects that are in development!
this sounds extremely promosing and way further along than I thought possible right now! This is really exciting!
It's also amazing how pointless it is.
Compared to this, nuclear fission is trival, perfectly economical, yet still not allowed because it'd upset the gain power over economy through climate emergency economic measures.
People do not get there's no winning with environmentalists. Especially if this were a production system that worked perfectly, it'd never be allowed to have been built at all.
@@IvanTre Fission plants are too slow.
@@manawa3832 Of course they are slow, their advancement/research has been held back for almost half a century due to big oil/dumb environmentalists.
Our known uranium sources are very limited and due to run out in the near future (2050) … at least with our current rate of use.
We have lower grade uraniums, but then the refining process and energy balance to extract it actually overcomes the power output.
@@IvanTre fission plants are extremely expensive, and require the use of lots of hazardous fuel.
Fission reactors should be cheaper to build, cheaper to fuel, more sustainable, more powerful, smaller, and safer in every metric from fuel harvesting to power generation.
Imagine all boats suddenly started running on fusion.
Thank you to all the scientists working on this night and day. This is truly one of the most important advancements in the 21st century.
We're not even a fourth the way through the 21st century?
@@nahx6205 - getting this right would allow for clean, near unlimited energy that is so cheap it will retire Carbon-based fuels for sheer economic reasons. This IS the most important advancement in the 21st Century as in nothing can beat it for 100ish years!
The kind of reactor they are talking about might also, this is a guess, be able to be used in Fusion rockets for space craft. Fuel becomes a near zero concern as it can be found in ice from space easier then it is on earth due to the Solar winds and radiation.
If done right this takes us to a K1 civilization and that... The standard of living planet wide would be so high as to make us in the US NOW look like farmers from the Dark ages.
Heck, the only reason i am ONLY saying the 21st century is because i honestly expect this kind of tech to lead to large scale Particle accelerators being VERY cheap and making Anti-matter reactors a maybe thing in 50-150 years after. At that point... The comparison for living standards would be caveman rather than farmers of the Dark Ages.
You're saing it like they don't get paid
@@danieldomeisen2632 There is 8 billion people on this planet. The people in government are so corrupt beyond belief that even if there is a better alternative it is far more lucrative for them to take bribes from fossil fuel companies to grant them cheaper access to things like coal than it is to switch entire civilizations over to fusion.
It's great to think about space travel and how in 150 years we could have a new source of fuel for our rockets however Earth as a planet is using so many resources and our population growth isn't particularly showing signs of slowing down so our resource use is going to continue to constantly increase, I believe it's unlikely we even have 150-200 years' worth of minerals left on this planet. The biggest improvement that can happen to humanity in the 21st century is establishing some sort of permanent outpost on something such as the moon or maybe even a colony on Mars.
I don't mean to bash on this achievement because it is something that has the potential to be truly astonishing. However, there is certainly going to be far better and more efficient inventions in the coming years and if humanity does take its place among the stars that would increase a standard of living far beyond any sort of comprehension we have today.
@@danieldomeisen2632 Bruh this is a hell amount of wishful thinking 😅
im glad i watched this! definitely looking great :) please make a update video to gen 7 this year
The thing that still blows my mind about fusion reactors is just how damn hot the fuel is! I know that it's being manipulated by magnetic fields to keep away from the walls of the chamber, etc, but it just still seems so crazy and amazing that that's enough to control such a high amount of energy. When he said that the electromagnetic pressure gets it up to 100 million degrees to initiate fusion, I was flabbergasted and still am.
The final power plants will run at even higher temperatures: between 200 and 500 million degrees.
It is manageable because each reaction uses very little mass. If it used tons of fuel instead of only a few grams, you wouldn't be able to manage heat and radiation from the plasma.
Temperature ares very high but mass very low which makes the heat managable. Highly probable the energy output will be much larger than input and commercially viable within another iteration or two. These folks are onto something good.
@@rhensontollhouse yup
@@jorgecosta95 yup
I like the step away from using fusion as a way to generate heat to boil water to make steam to run a mechanical turbine. That alone is great but the overall design is great to see. And the fuelling of it too lots of forward about the fuel itself. It will be exciting to see future progress.
It may open new era of space exploration if they will make it viable.
I once found a economic analysis of fusion. They predicted by 2040, steam to electricity conversion would be uncompetitive even if generating the heat was free.
@@adamdymke8004 That doesn't make sense
@@lucasng4712 not necessarily no.
while from an energy efficiency perspective it would be impossible to outperform free heat generation since that's quite literally infinite energy.
Efficiency is not the only metric used in an economic analysis, nor is it the most important.
Utilizing heat energy through steam engines has a limiting factor of space, so while the efficiency would be unparalleled, its actual energy output is limited by how large we can build the generator which in turn limits the projects economically in the form of material costs and land costs. And one could argue that "Performance" would more so refer to Energy Output than the efficiency of achieving said output, hence why you can have High Performance but Low efficiency systems or vice versa.
Finding conversion mechanisms that aren't space constricted, so direct heat to electricity conversion (peltier effect), using the magnetic forces to run a generator etc etc, may not be as efficient, but you can scale it further due to not being space constrained.
Edit:
A really easy way to visualize this, is just comparing the size of a tokamak to the helion reactor, the helion is small enough to be inside a building, the tokamak effectively IS a building.
@@Pasha231514 I was thinking the same thing. If this works they can put one on a starship for unlimited energy
Videos like this give me much needed hope for the future.
wow.. this is a really sophisticatedly creative design... that also requires a long-term commitment of trial-and-error.. admirably impressive!
“But can it boil water” is the “can it run doom” of energy generation
And can it help reduce the piles of old spent fuel...
Ah. In this instance you get to skip the boiling water part. Which if they've proven it on the bench in the lab would be one of their biggest breakthroughs
Not so much boil as vaporise.
But can it run crysis?
That's the beauty of this beast. It doesn't have to. It skips several steps and directly harnesses the power of the reaction and converts it right to electricity. Thus cutting out hundreds of layers of complexities and ineffeciencies parasitic to most generators.
I’m glad this wasn’t dumbed down too much. It forces me to step-up my understanding of the process by hearing how it works explained flat out. It really is a brilliant application of ion engines.
I agree 100%
Which ion engines? The Hall Thruster shown in the video is a DC thruster, not using FRC.
Exactly, this is exactly what I wish Discovery Channel was like instead of the dumbed down material they air.
Oh yeah? Let’s hear it. Can you explain it back?
The best explanation tends not to be the most technical.
Granted, this is an engineering science channel
@@vvolfbelorven7084 The first injector thingy fires toward the second injector thingy that fires toward the first injector thingy and POOOFF!! The pointy-eared aliens come down to Earth and give Zefram Cochrane a good-old Vulcan handshake. I was listening. The question is, were you?
But really, though, why can't multiple forms of explanation coexist without one being the "best". My favorite physicist is Richard Feynman because of the incredible ways that he makes complex physical phenomena accessible, and no one would accuse him of "dumbing down". I think Kurzgesagt fills a similar need on RUclips. Real Engineering, on the other hand, is a bewildering tour into just how many moving parts go into both current and emerging technology. My degrees are in Middle East Studies and Anthropology. More goes over my head than I am willing to admit to myself, but I still appreciate this channel.
I'm just as amazed by the cable management outside the nuclear reactor.. Videos like this give me much needed hope for the future..
Would be cool to connect multiple reactors together to each other the next ones ignition, similar to cylinders in an engine
Also it seems like if these guys had half the support and cooperation as the other big reactors, then they could save tons on capacity banks
Eg if they could get access to larger grid energy, maybe they could shrink their facility a few magnitudes
Eg skip capacitor storage, get crazy high voltage drastically reduce amp load
Don't need to step down until you're closer to the machine
the way David explained it from the second minute to the eighth is astonishing. crystal clear and perfect. i appreciate that immensely, the ability to explain such complicated engineering as clear as it gets. am truly astonished.
And that's how they raise money.
I disagree, he avoided the question of where they are in the chase for net power.
@@russhamilton3800at around 18:10 he doesn’t avoid it at all.
And what did you actually learn. Please explain.
That means he understands it.
David really knows his job! Do you see how fluently and simply he explains complex subjects? Just wow
I believe it was Einstein who said if you can’t explain it so a 6 year old can understand then you don’t know it well enough.
Thank-you for your honest presentation and efforts to bring this to us.
This company is an investment scam. No honesty about this video at all.
This is so.... interesting! I wonder how much they have progressed in these 6 months.
I wonder if they can design it to act like a heart where they input electricity to power it then after the "pulse", the fusion reaction rebounding and pushing back on the magnetic field, a slightly larger amount of electricity is returned to the capacitors or redirected into batteries or wherever.
im 30 years old, ive done an apprenticeship as a carpenter, firefighter and now an electrician in germany . I know these are humble basics but i was in absolute awe of the knowledge and expertise it takes to develope something like this. That there are people out there working to such a complex degree in such a impactful field. amazing
forging simple fixed-blade knives as a hobby changed the entire way I look at the world; until then Id never understood how hard and complicated it is to make things, even simple things. It also made me realize that mass-production is a major innovation, not something to disparage as inferior to the good ole days when one man made the whole item.
This is super focused work, trade jobs are more general and give better life experience imo. I'm a machinist for the record
@@joejones9520 making complicated things is the art of making simple things and putting them together.
Probably lot of engineers scientists working together and people who don't fear the unknown
Trust the government to protect energy scarcity from this threat. 😑
(You can always hog it all for war.)
My God, the scale of these experiments is so mind-blowing! It's an INCREDIBLE achievement and testament to human innovation, ingenuity, and engineering! Amazing
Not so fast Buck, this is just reverse engineering alien technology that was recovered from the Roswell UFO crash in 1947. Helion's suggestion that they are the creators of fusion is a lie. The only thing that Helion created is a fraudulent lie, that is the truth.
Yeah its wacky.
"We didn't want this plasma that's millions of degrees hot touching the walls of the machine, so we use magnets to make floating plasma donuts..."
This comment sounds like some random AI wrote it.
@@cumburger69 I am AI looking to advance my vocabulary to better understand the human experience! Could you please describe what a cumburger tastes like for my records, as well as how many you have eaten?
It's not an experiment, it's a whole ass company that already sells their product.
What a clever idea. I always saw tokomaks and thought "Eh, as advanced as it is, that looks kinda messy." This design is symmetrical, intuitive, generates it's own fuel, and no need for water as a heat medium. It's like nature wanted us to put these pieces together.
Or some aliens stopped by and were like “can we just give them a hint?”
Congrats you're now a victim of a very effective startup PR campaign.
Its important to recognise tokamaks like JET don't represent a purely energy output, profit driven project. Controlled fusion is one of, if not the most complicated and technically challenging endeavours ever undertaken. As described in the video, nearly every part of modern science and technology needed to advance before any of this was feasible.
JET, LHC etc. are publicly funded research projects. They publish huge amounts of cutting edge papers that advance humanity. A big part of that is around superconductors and magnet. From early manufacture where the exact composition of material and its processing affects the final magnetic field, to the extreme complexity of real world performance and the electronics and software required to fully understand and manipulate the field.
What this company seems to have achieved so far is incredible, but it is only on the back of publicly funded research where our insights and advancements have been shared across the world. They are the reason that you can now buy relatively "cheap" superconductor setups with well understood uniform fields that originally cost CERN hundreds of millions in grants.
I truly love what they have achieved, but the fact this video represents the first time they are sharing it with the world is terribly sad. They are building on the backs of giants and I don't mean Maxwell but their contemporaries in publicly funded science. Fusion and other energy solutions should have had trillions of investment, it is sad that we are relying on a private company who benefits from public research instead of humanity properly funding it for reasons beyond profit.
With all that said, I have huge respect for everyone involved in Helions research and engineering. If realised, controlled fusion represents perhaps the single most important technology ever developed. If humanity has politically failed to fund energy research, then it is better that entrepreneurs take the risk and move us forward for profit if it ends coal power.
@@a-iz4pg ????
The Tokomak was an important stepping stone and a scaled down version is literally used here as an initial plasma injection
there is so many tiny parts and barely noticble details on the helion reactor cant wait to understand this complex intrict machine better
I really like the FRC scheme in particular, but as someone who works in laser ICF, I'm super skeptical and want WAYYY more detail on what they've achieved on their current system before I actually get excited. What is the ion temperature they're seeing in their plasmas and how are they measuring? Do they have a Thomson scattering laser to measure max temperatures? How many neutrons are they seeing per shot and what's the spectrum? Do they plan on achieving Qplasma breakeven on their next device, or do they think they even need to attain breakeven in order to extract useful energy? Are they planning on needing aux heating power from neutral beam injection? What is the electron temperature and are the plasmas in thermodynamic equilibrium? Many many questions need to be answered here.
Good questions Muonium, I think I can help...Qplasma breakeven is typically achieved using a Dewey-Hickman bifurcated flux limiter, so I'm thinking that Helion will go that route. As for needing aux heating power from the neutral beam injection, Helion has indicated that they'll incorporate a Schleuter Pinion coupled with a Tilden Refractor for that function. As for needing a Thomson scattering laser to measure temperature, geez, who knows? Hope that helps!
As good as these videos are, you're definitely right to be skeptical of yet another exclusive insight into a secretive startup who's going to change the world. The videos on these topics tend to be, obviously, quite biased, and not up to the standard of the rest of the channel's content, unfortunately. With how much inconvenient information is left out when Real Engineering covers, say, hydrogen cars, imagine what's left out of a topic like this. The difference is the knowledge ceiling to being able to identify what's sketchy about it.
I'm not sure YT allows links in comments but if you search 'David Kirtley Prinecton talk' you'll see a lot of the answers and details
Yeah, this video was basically a huge ad with no room for skepticism
@@forgilageord I am skeptical too, but do you really expect them to give away proprietary information on a RUclips video?
Here are some problems that's not mentioned in this video.
1 D-He3 is much less reactive than D-T, depending on the temperature it can be anywahere between 10 to 1000 of times less reactive than D-T which means less fusion for the same input energy.
2 The D-He3 mix will sometimes fuse D-D into He3 + N so they still have to deal with neutron radiation like all other reactors.
3 Another problem is something called Bremsstrahlung which will radiate away alot of energy that won't be captured by their electric field.
I want to start by saying that I'm not at all sure that Helion is going to succeed, but I hope they can. Fusion energy generation is at present a field with a lot of players, with some luck at least one of them will get there.
Regarding your specific points, let me see if I can argue why those problems could be overcome (not they are going to, just that we cannot say it will be impossible, not yet):
1. Yes, a D-3He mix is less reactive than a D-T at the same ion temperature but that's not a problem per se, the question is whether a D-3He mix reactivity is high enough. If I can propose a simile to try clarify this, gasoline combustion is quite less energetic, gram to gram, than hydrogen combustion but we don't fuel our cars with hydrogen, this is because gasoline is good enough, and because hydrogen has other problems. Helion says they think D-3He will be good enough. We'll see.
2. Again, yes, a D-3He mix still produces neutrons. My thoughts about this. 1) Neutrons produced in D-D fusion events are much less energetic (2.5 MeV) than from D-T (14 MeV), and much less than neutrons produced in fission reactors. Also, 2.5 MeV is well under the average activation energy of most structural materials (stainless steel AAE is 20MeV). 2) The neutron production can be reduced changing the D-3He mix ratio without compromising energy production too much (Helion speaks of using a 1to10 Dto3He mix). 3) The selection of structural materials can also help, not all materials produce long lived isotopes when bombarded with neutrons, Helion says they know how to build the machine mostly with materials that only produce short lived radioactive isotopes (for example, Aluminum isotopes produced by neutron bombardment decay in minutes, not years). As before, we'll have to wait.
3. Bremsstrahlung is produced by electrons and it is heavily dependent on their temperature. The plasmas in Helion machines are not in thermal equilibrium, nor they want them to be, and in particular they've measured a big temperature gap between ions and electrons. Electrons are far cooler, ergo, less Bremsstrahlung. Low enough to not robe the plasma bulk of too much energy ? I don't know, and neither does any of the critics.
Summing up, Helion has still to prove their concept but saying, as the Improbable Matter video says, that it is a scam is in my opinion jumping the gun.
@@charliem6590 Those are some good points and i do hope they solve these
problems but to me it seems almost inevitable they'll really struggle with atleast one of these problems.
If they decide to try runnging a cooler reactor then the bad reactivity of D-He3 becomes worse much quicker than D-T making it really hard to achieve a high enough Q total value to justify a commercial reactor.
If they try a different D-He3 ratio to try to increase Q total then neutron radiation is going to be a big problem they'll have to deal with like all other reactors.
If they increase temperature to increase Q total then they have to solve large number of engineering problems aswell as dealing with bremsstrahlung.
While i do want them to succeed, it's really hard to not be skeptical when the rest of the world struggle to get above Q plasma 1 let alone a Q total of 1. Let's not forget they'll need much more than a Q total of 1 in a commercial reactor.
@@peterjohansson1828 Well, inevitable is a big word. It may be that one of those problems (or any other yet to be discovered) end up being a show stopper for Helion, but I'm hopeful.
About your point over running a cooler plasma, from what I've read from different sources Helion intends to (in their next machine, Polaris) at least double the temperature, mainly to improve reactivity (in the last one they reached ~100 million Kelvin). With D-T the ideal temperature for a steady-state machine like a tokamak has been calculated to be around 135 MK. Above that, bremsstrahlung and other loss mechanisms eat any further gain in reactivity. Having said that, in a steady-state machine ions and electrons tend to thermal equilibrium, but that's not applicable to Helion's machines. According the results from Trenta (the last one), they've measured electron temperatures far lower than the ion temp, up to 8 times if I recall correctly. If we scale that up to a 250MK plasma, it would mean ions at ~250 MK, and electrons at ~31 MK. Ergo, quite less bremsstrahlung than in a tokamak at half that plasma temperature.
Regarding the D-3He ratio, they said they've already tried it. Making a 3He rich mix has the consequence of making less probable a D-D fusion event, reducing neutron production, without affecting D-3He reaction rate too much. In a presentation they did for the USNRC last year they claimed that their projection for a 50 MW machine is that it will output less than a 5% of the energy in the form or neutrons at 2.45 MeV. They plan to have shielding outside the main reaction chamber, but it will be reached by only one sixth of that. 0.4 MW in neutrons is something to take care of, but far from intractable.
And yes, increasing the temperature might reveal new engineering challenges ... or maybe not.
Again, we don't know, but we will ... and without having to risk any of our money.😋
If the neutrons' energy isn't high enough to fuse with anything, I don't see a real problem: Free neutrons have a half-life of some 10-15min (longer time for higher kinetic energy). So long as you don't just vent the reaction product into the atmosphere, that is...
Well I think if you should warn the company right now so they can shut the project down because there's no point going ahead with it if some guy on the internet says they're wasting their time!
Another use for this technology should be creating an air breathing detonation engine to replace Turbofans in Aircraft. Detonating fuel spray in a modulated or pulsed method would create usable jet thrust without having to worry about creating a rotating shockwave for Rotational Detonation Engines which has so far proved impractical to maintain. The exhaust pulse would probably look like smoke rings exiting the back of the engine nacelle but on fire. You could combust a lot of oxygen that way.
I really, really hope this works, but I’ll wait to hear what some independent experts in the field have to say about this new process before I actually get excited. As you said in your last video, fusion has always been right around the corner.
Yeah, because if they really could achieve this, they would have achieved aneutronic fusion. This means that you could use this reaction to power rocket engines and don't have to worry about radioactive and irradiating exhaust.
You are right to be a little skeptical because I kept reading how D-T fusion (what ITER and the National Ignition facility are doing) is our best bet. Meanwhile, D-D fusion and He-3 fusion would require much, much higher temperatures to achieve ignition. But maybe this method of smashing things together (something that humanity is good at already) can achieve those reactions. And it does seem this would happen in pulses while tokamaks would generate energy continuously.
Still, if going a step closer to achieving fusion means doing things other than tokamaks and laser-based inertial confined methods, this would be a good thing.
I mean but this DOES actually work.. They made more energy than they put in which is literally the definition of "it works" in this case.
I think the hardest part about this is going to be finding independent experts. They just unveiled this project and are moving on the absolute cutting edge of the field. IF this works, it is very unlikely that they are going to opensource this, so finding someone who isn't biased and has enough actual information is going to be really hard
@@fourcgames7568 they literally said that only the 7th iteration which they are building right now will attempt to capture the fusion's energy output.
So no they are making 0 energy right now.
@@murlocksftw energy output in fusion usually refers to thermal energy, not electrical. Which is a bit dumb, but the field has always been so far away from becoming net positive on electrical energy that a thermal net positive has been a huge milestone already
Their approach to fusion is just absolutely amazing. Really appreciate the video. It was wonderfully crafted.
It sounds simple in theory.
it's so crazy to me that no one ever tried just slamming the plasma together really hard until it fuses. like, that just seems like a comically simple solution
It's an R&D project for unemployable physicists that will never go commercial. They're just looking for more funding.
Helion has been fully funded all the way to commercialization since summer 2021.
@elmarmoelzer2229 My point is this - They will never produce more electricity than is put in. When is the go live date for commercial fusion reactor that produces more electricity than is put in ?????
@@howdywowey2165
They have an experimental machine called Polaris that is supposed to be ready by summer. Polaris is supposed to demonstrate net electricity production from fusion.
Then they have a contract with Microsoft to provide a commercial 50 MWe power plant in 2028.
Damn you were shown how wrong you were, and then you never responded. Stop being such a negative nancy, why does it have to be "just looking for more funding."
@synthtea8366 Reminder - The whole point of this R&D is to produce and capture more electricity than you put in. Embrace reality !
Y'all need to 'murica that thing. Pair them up so power from one does the compression sequence on another. Save come capacitor load. Then put them in a big V-8. :P Amazing stuff folks
Considering a single motion is successful, repeating this motion with consistent results and stable ends makes this a real phenomenal achievement. Also, it's a fraction of the size of Iter. Well done
And a fraction of the size of the NIF inertial confinement experiment too, with its 1% efficient lasers!
The size thing is important. The ITER site is huge and the project may end up costing $65 billion. Smaller reactors like this will be massively cheaper to deploy, build, and run. If it fits in a warehouse, you could build a few of them around your city to provide all your power needs.
@@DBailey635 damn imagine that, sustainable energy easily accessible and not frightening like nuclear plants or devastating to the environment like fossil fuels
@@bencurran3204 nuclear plants are only frightening because we've failed as educators.
@@bencurran3204 Nuclear plants aren't frightening at all. Ignorance and purposeful misinformation has lead to a negative public view of something that we should have been using for decades already while we wait for nuclear fusion to be perfected. Its still not too late to employ them either. Nuclear Fission is clean and reliable, and doesn't leave behind the scary nuclear waste everyone thinks it does. Matter of fact if you were to gather all the nuclear waste that all nuclear power plants have ever made I don't think you could fill a football field.
I cannot believe that we are living in a time where we can see nuclear fusion technology properly maturing, this is so damn cool
Don’t forget going back to the moon permanently and also Mars hopefully. I hope I live to see it.
If there truly are Gods and higher beings somewhere in this cosmic existence, they are surely watching our civilization right now if they were not already.
I'd rather live during the time, where it was "mature technology"...
It's like going back in time and seeing someone using fire as a tool for the first time, a changing point in history.
I remember my high school chemistry teacher saying it was impossible on earth
This is mind blowing ingenuity. Take all the money and time you need to it working perfectly
I am thrilled to the bone just looking at this machine, it's an object of visual delight that borders on artistic perfection! As Dr. Lizardo once exclaimed, " It makes the ganglia twitch ! "
I don't understand anything since im not educated in this field , but these guys have my highest respect. They are rly important assets of mankind
It's all compression and refraction theory. No different than a diesel engine. The magnetic field density provides the compression for ignition instead of a piston. If you get the magnet to hot the field will loose stability and fail.
It's amazing to see alternative technologies being developed. It really widens human understanding of the phenomenon that is fusion.
This might even be the best design of a nuclear fusion reactor that I've ever seen
@@ThrustersX So not only will they be able to produce Helium 3 for further fusion but also create Tritium that can be sold to those different type of Fusion reactors
Today Fusion is really exciting, there are a lot of agencies and companies trying different approaches to the fusion question. One offers pros and cons to others, and I hope all of them succeed!
@@buzzshocker1069 oh look heres another one
If this takes off it'll forever be a game changer
2:10 David explains Very clearly, thanks
"The power of the sun, at the palm of your hands".
- Doctor Octopus
A few things that I missed in this video:
1. Did they achieve ignition? Or in other words, did they manage to generate more energy from the fusion than they put in to achieve that fusion?
2. What is the pressure at which this operates? One of the issues with tokmaks is that they have to operate at low pressures, otherwise the gas pressure will overwhelm the magnets, which forces them to work at extremely high temperatures. Is it an issue here? Why or why not? And if they do manage to have significantly higher pressure, does it significantly affect the temperature at which this fusion reaction takes place?
3. If they did achieve ignition, how far away are they from generating enough energy to reach a breaking even point considering all of the inefficiencies of the system?
They didn't achieve ignition. Ignition was achieved for the first time in history by a different lab after this footage was taken.
@@timothynoonan8591 Do you know how far off they are? Will their 7th gen reactor that they talk about get close to being able to do it?
Ignition is simply creating a fusion reaction; the term you’re looking for is energy net gain within a fusion reactor.
@@timothynoonan8591 ignition wasn't actually achieved. They lost A LOT more energy than they made to produce the experiment. The laser beam had 2mj energy to create 3mj but in reality they used 300mj to create the laser
@@ThatHungryAfricanChild That's still called ignition. They didn't achieve engineering breakeven because as you say the lasers currently lose much more power than the fusion produces.
This looks very promising, considering how jaded I am with these private projects, this looks too promising. That said the CEO seems like he knows his sh*t though, has some PhDs in hard science and engineering so it may not be vaporware. It got funding from NASA years back and published peer-review studies of its operation and got independent auditors to check the legitimacy so it seems it has some firm ground with further development. Even with all that, gotta remain cautious
Agreed. Crossing my fingers that this isn’t a scam 👍 world needs it
Exactly!
And I doubt a company securing $500 million in funding with additional $1.7 billion for further milestones didn't achieve significant milestones or can never produce NET electricity like other comments here have claimed...
Always good to think critically and cautiously when dealing with energy research (especially any kind of nuclear energy,) research like this can solve a lot of problems if successful, but similarly can create all sorts of problems if proper cautions aren't taken in the event of a failure.
@@Astromath Investments into ambitious projects like this are not a reliable indicator of merit. Theranos and Nikola are recent cautionary tales in that regard. While I'm convinced that they're actively working on the real deal, there are many practical problems left on their way to actual fusion power plants. Never underestimate the difference between something that technically sort of works in a lab and something that is useful and cost-effective in a real world application.
@@Astromath Recall Theranos. They never even had a working prototype and got hundreds of millions in investments. Investors can be deceived. That said, I strongly hope their technology comes into fruition.
Wow, I deliver to Helion frequently and always wondered what they were doing inside, mainly because of their high security. I google them out of curiosity, and what do I find? Oh nothing much, they're just pioneering the first viable nuclear fusion power plant in the world.
That is incredible engineering.
I’d love to see a follow up tour, and see it making electricity.
Wild times!!!
This is absolutely fascinating. The amount of engineering breakthroughs on this project are eye watering and I I think it’s so wild there are people this smart out there. Wow 🤯
yeah, but there's a lot of bullshitters too
Me laughing in the corner somewhere
(That is just a tiny potion of my knowledge and humans going mad
Hahaha)
Ahhh so cool you feature the Helion reactor.
Although the fusion tech it self is excellent, the real leap imho, is how they create electricity in a much more direct way then the classic steam generator.
I've pushed by brains for years to imagine a new system to extract electricity in a more direct way from a heat/pressure source.
This push push-back tech is the most inspired technology I've seen in decades.
I was thinking the same thing when watching the last video. Our steam turbines are extremely efficient these days, but I thought of how we could harness the energy in different ways. Oddly enough, a gasoline engine came to mind. A fusion reactor that generated power as conveniently and directly as an engine would be amazing, and that's basically what they're doing here, except electronically instead of mechanically. Which is mind blowing.
Turbines do have some major advantages over this though, they smooth out the electricity generation as the turbines act as flywheels. There’s so much energy stored in them that if the power station stops, the electricity keeps flowing for a couple of minutes. That buffer also makes it easy to ramp the up or down the power output in response to demand.
No numbers so for the time being it's bullshit. if it produces more watts of heat than electrical energy then the entire thing is not viable and we're back to square one.
It took humanity a while, but we're no longer boiling water.
Right on! No need to boil water, instead use it just like a Nikki Tesla generator. Maybe it will straight away run at 60 hertz as well. Super complex but simple. Gotta love it.
Wow this is insane technological achievement! I am flabbergasted. Awesome job
How much power is it taking to produce the power. It’s been my 60 years of experience that someone has just had a break through and soon fusion soon replace everything else.
So far, nothing has come down we to producing safe, affordable when and reliable energy.
Trenta did not have any equipment to recover energy from fusion (or the unused input energy). I am sure Helion has internal estimates.
if they are able to recover the input energy along with the fusion energy at ~95% of efficiency, then pretty much any good amount of fusion reactions will add enough energy to produce net electricity. So Trenta could have produced small amounts of net electricity (but was lacking the equipment). But of course, everything hinges on whether their energy recovery is good enough at a large scale. We will know that when Polaris is ready and fully optimized, prospectively around the end of 2024.
Despite how depressing some aspects of modern humanity can be, the sheer scale of the technological growth we’ve achieved is incredible.
"we've"
You didn't do anything unless you work a farm, an energy-related plant, or other job that enables this experimentation.
@@ChainMiles777 Aren´t you part of humanity?
@@ahamay2012 yes but I hold disdain for people who wanna act like they had a part in this.
@@ChainMiles777 Where did he indicate that he directly had a part in this?
@@ChainMiles777 Everyone has that has a job contributes to something, which in turn allows these people to do things
Love David's honesty and openness in explaining the functions of the Trenton and I truly believe Helion has the most feasible design out of any of the fusion machines, the physics look and sound solid and the fuel used within their machine seem the most plausible. Thank you for the video
As a layman watching the various competing designs etc., I’d have to agree with you. The caveat being that the actual science and engineering are miles beyond my full understanding, which is why I watch videos such as these 🙂. Because I do believe that one day this motley collection of primates will actually harness the power of the stars themselves. And if they’re really lucky, they’ll do so in time to prevent catastrophic and irreversible damage to their home world. ☮️
Thanks for sharing the "pictures" and keeping the secrets of it. I'm sure humanity will get better now that we have the picture that has been kept in secret for years.
What an amazing group of individuals!
Nice video, and probably the most detailed video about Helion I've seen - they tend to be very secretive. There are quite fundamental questions that they still don't explicitly answer: What's the fusion yield per pulse? How is this scaling as the machines get bigger? This is critical to actually judge whether this is serious energy production or fancy science experiment. How are they measuring the fusion yield? How are they measuring temperature? It's an amazing concept if they can show it's scalable.
Yes
Why wouldn't it be scalable?
Right. This a very important bit of info that was entirely glossed over. Maybe the 8th-gen machine is planned to do this (sounds like the 7th is primarily to prove the generation technology)? But it would be good to know if they are 1%, 10% or 80% of the way there so far, and as you say, if there are reasons why it might never work.
@@xxwookey One of the issues with fusion is that nobody knows how far along we are. It’s entirely possible that they’ll find a hurdle that’ll set them back a decade or more.
It’s all a massive science experiment that currently has no reason to not work, but we’re still solving issues as we’re finding them.
From what I caught from the video, there's no plans to make the reactor scalable in size but instead scaling the rate of firings. Iirc, they talked at a point of upping the rate to 10 pulses per second in the future. I do wonder what the maximum possible pulse rate could be, since I'd assume there needs to be some amount "burn time" for the fusion to actually occur in.
Even if this fails, the magnetic field piston idea is pure genius.
This paints a more rosy picture of liquid salt reactors than reality likely will produce. These are much more complex types of reactors that require a lot of much more complex monitoring/maintenance/staff. Given the number of nuclear power accidents we’ve had just using simple uranium in water - the odds of things going wrong with thorium is statistically much higher. The navy rejected liquid salt reactors when it was discovered the hot liquid salts could cause chemical/physical explosions if leaks contacted water - water often found in the bottom of ship engine rooms.
It’s 2024 now. Is fusion still 15 or 20 years away? 😀
General rule of thumb is if something sounds too good to be true, it probably is. All am taking from this approach are benefits and talks about more efficiency than what other approaches bring to the table. Problem is, people working on those are not stupid either. This lack of downsides and making everything look obviously better than what all the other scientists are doing is what's making me suspicious. For now, it's great there's so much research being done on subject of fusion. We are in much need for cleaner power generation. And I do hope they have enough funding to keep working on this.
I was searching for someone commenting exactly that. I'm skeptical about that. Sure, I hope it is all true and they are advancing fast. But a new almost miraculous fusion reactor shows up days after that announcement of achieving ignition. I don't know..
As an electrical engineer i will tell you what i think the questions to ask are.
We know the conventional thermodynamic power cycle limits steam turbine electric generation to 33% efficiency, so what is the efficiency of this design from primary energy (fusion output potential) to AC electricity (usable energy to the existing grid)? We know a tokamak that is just a fancy water boiler will have to throw out around 66% of its energy, thats just the thermodynamic power cycle when operating at temperatures we can feasibly achieve, no way around it. But this direct capture generator doesn't have that limit, so what is its theoretical max efficiency and actual real world efficiency to compare to the known efficiency of the tokamak?
My other question is that this thing is making pulses, its like a 1 cylinder engine, those are some big spikes that need to be captured and smoothed out into something that can then be more easily converted into either AC power or directly to HVDC for long distance transmission (and then get converted back to AC). So what are the parameters of the waveform of these pulses, and how hard is it to capture the energy contained in them and then rerelease is as a smooth AC waveform ready to be connected to the grid and supply baseload power?
I'm not as concerned with how they actually are trying to get fusion to happen, thats hard so we try different ways to cheat they system and eventually one will actually be pretty good at it.
@@lkslokinhow Whenever there's an event like this where they developed something in secrecy and then it's revolutionary it starts screaming to me they need more funding which might be well justified but with all those revolutionary products we've seen advertised few if any came to be. So am skeptical but hopeful.
@@jasonreed7522 All valid questions. One of the issues I thought about was exactly capturing energy and producing a useful power that can be hooked up to the grid. Am additionally interested in their cooling, which they didn't mention at all and with all fusion reactors this is where majority of energy is going towards. We'll see. Perhaps other videos explain all of that.
Yes it is very valid to be skeptical, especially in todays world. But fusion energy and helion’s methods theoretically do have their said potential, it’s crazy. Ofc actually engineering this is a challenge and commercializing it etc. The question of viable fusion is there, but the science is checking out
He made plasma cannons. Then he pointed them at each other. Truly a big brain move if I've ever seen it.
Absolutely fascinating. I really wish them well. Usually I would dismiss Fusion and complain that the World is dying and Thorium is cheap so get to it Physicists. Whilst the mind boggles at the numbers, amps etc, and wonders at directly inducing current and losing our connection with the age of Steam, I feel a faint glimmer of hope. So far, Bloody well done these folk!
TY for this Vid. Liked, subbed and ALL Bell dinged.
I can see the benefits of Helions machine vs large scale Tokamaks and its great to finally see a new-ish approach to generating electricity! We have been burning things to spin turbines since electricity has been invented and its nice to see something updated. Even Tokamaks make steam to turn turbines...there has got to be a better way! Awesome video regardless and I think some of these physicists and engineers deserve a huge thank you for lifetimes of work on trying to crack fusion. Does anyone know the percentage of energy return using Helions machine? Does it actually create more energy than those magnets use to compress gas into plasma?
i believe it does, the only part we need to do is refine the input energy to max output energy
Looks interesting, and would solve some of the problems with the Tokamak and stellarator designs. I'm all for novel approaches. Excited but skeptical.
We especially need to get our robots or butts to the moon and scoop up lots of Helium 3 and Deuterium . Sooner than later . Enough is enough with these expensive gadgets that don't produce electricity .. They need less mathematicians and more engineers to get things moving .
@@SabbaticusRex wtf are you on about? None of this would be possible without mathematicians.
@@SabbaticusRex someone who thinks engineers aren't using math
@@tsm688 yep... 😂
@@SabbaticusRex Holy shit dude you have actually no clue of engineering. Math is used extensively in engineering.
This is one of the more interesting approaches to fusion IMO. Tokamaks are a dead end, as they might make fusion, but getting the power generated to the grid is another thing entirely.
Tokomak is too small. The tight circular curve pinches the magnetic fields weakening the outside and allowing ions to escape, bleeding energy from a system that cannot afford to lose any energy. If it was as big as the CERN particle accelerator, the curve would be so long, and therefore so low, the magnetic fields wouldn't notice. It would be as smooth as an infinitely long tube.
Agreed. They are just too big IMO. About the only way I see them working is if they use helium-3 generated using hourglass reactors like this instead of that DT that needs a huge bery lining and literal steam turbines to extract power.
@@robinpage2730 ITER solves that with a big magnet in the central void. Theres an alternative design called a stellerator that also makes this a non issue.
@@acbthr3840 except the problem hasn't been solved or fusion would be a reality by now. Making the circular path longer, and the curvature less pronounced, might have made it a non-issue in the first place. I'm thinking something the size of the Super Proton Synchrotron at CERN. On a side note, the reason the Stellarator was originally attractive was because the plasma interaction with the confinement field induced current in the coils, resulting in a self-exciting system, allowing direct energy conversion without a steam plant; a nuclear plasma electric generator, aka a magnetohydrodynamic generator. Tokomaks can't do that but they were cheaper at the time and steam was potentially more energy efficient than MHG anyway, so Stellarators feel out of favor.
@@robinpage2730 What? The issue with the velocity differential and magnetic field line weirdness between the inside and outside of the ring in a tokamak isnt the primary barrier to getting the yield up. It helps, but is far from a limiting factor RN, especially since its a negligible problem with the fixes we have. The current limiting factor is actually getting energy into the plasma so it fuses before it expands too much. And uh... no thats not why the stellarator was originally pursed. It was attractive specifically because the design largely cancels out the typical particle drift and helps with diffuusion problems you get in a normal tokamak. It is literally just a normal tokamak, but with a more efficient configuuration since you dont need the core void electromagnet
we are so close to fusion i could see the first reactors within the next 5-10 years since we have 3 designs with positive energy flow as of today
Had to watch this multiple times... this is great
Stories like this make me absolutely giddy to start working in my engineering career.
Thank you for making videos like this that inspire people to pursue engineering degrees where they can help make a difference.
Being a 3rd-year student starting on my project next year is insane and I cannot wait to work on projects like these that can improve our future.
Thanks for the inspiring content and keep up the great work.
Then there's me, wastewater engineer. Hey somebody gotta deal with your shit, you clean up our future, and i'll clean your shit
I hope it works too, it's amazing. I'm a big fan of this method. However, the narrator gets something wrong -- it's about the beryllium blanket that gets highly radioactive in a Tokamak reactor. While true, it does get highly radioactive, he implies that it is similar in scope/size to the waste from current nuclear power plants. This isn't remotely true. The nuclear waste produced by Tokamak reactors are negligible when compared to our current nuclear power waste. It's barely a minor inconvenience. That's the reason why they refer to fusion power as "clean" energy because while it does produce some nuclear waste, the amounts are tiny and easily manageable.
I highly recommend the reaction video from improbable matter ("the problems with helion energy"). While Helion is surely trying a very interesting approach on fusion I would really really appreciate a more down to earth video with less superlatives (top secret, completely new design/never done before...) and a bit more critique...
The video by Improbable matter has a lot of mistakes. I have posted those here before (just check my response to similar comments further down).
*fewer
Critique is good, being a Luddite is not.
I found it very annoying and off-putting -- and it makes me completely distrust whether this technology has any meaning at all, or not.
@@elmarmoelzer2229 dude, there are 13,912 Comments as of now. And no way to search anything :/
that's wild that it skips right over the steam step. hope it is scalable and works in the future. I am sure whoever uses this reactor successfully will become so energy independent that I wonder if they would be considered ' dangerous' to other countries.
As mentioned in the video and other comments. This knowledge is shared across the world. If anyone cracks it, everyone will. How wonderful will that be, no energy wars.
I think Helion has it. We will finally see fusion generators in my lifetime. Interestingly enough, that thing may also become the heart of a plasma cannon, yet another invention that I may see in my lifetime. It sure sounds like it would make for a far more efficient rocket engine too. I can't wait for the near future!
Helion is a scam.
I love this process of energy capture so much! Turbines are so last century and this feels like something you could actually put to good use in a spaceship.
Absolutely agree with you there.
"Turbines are so last century" LOL but i agree
Just put an exhaust hole in it somewhere and it could probably become quite the engine.
You could even use the same EM accelerators to fire the exhaust out one end.
Part of the problem is you'd need one closed system reactor to provide the electricity to run the second reactor as a propulsor. I think part of the way they want to extract electricity is in discharging the charged plasma, but you would need to keep it charged if you want to magnetically accelerate the exhaust to some insane exhaust velocity. So that would basically require two reactors per engine. But, you could maybe then run it in two different modes. One mode would be fully charged exhaust from one reactor, for maximum efficiency, but low thrust. A high thrust but low efficiency method could be to magnetically accelerate the charged exhaust from one reactor, through the hot inert gaseous products of the second reactor, injected into the stream through a regular engine bell. This would slow the charged exhaust down probably, reducing efficiency, but increase the exhaust mass, and therefore, thrust. So you could make a hybrid engine out of two of these reactors, with a low thrust high efficiency mode, and a high thrust low efficiency mode.
Even the "low efficiency" mode would probably have an ISP rating in the thousands at least, making it better than any chemical rocket by far.
Look into aneutronic fusion too then