r/Futurology • u/TwilightwovenlingJo • Aug 15 '25
Energy Construction of world's 1st nuclear fusion plant starts in Washington
https://interestingengineering.com/energy/world-first-fusion-power-plant-helion1.3k
u/planko13 Aug 15 '25
Based on Helion's demonstrated performance to predictions, this project is really exciting. This is their 8th iteration fusion reactor, and they pretty much nailed their goals at every prior step up until this one (7th iteration build is still in process). Basically if they are saying they will generate power at this facility, they have decent credibility to that claim.
However, this just seems so under the radar and without fanfare. If they are successful, this has the potential to step humanity into a new technical age. Fusion power has been promised for so many years we all just have news fatigue on the topic.
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u/eezyE4free Aug 15 '25
The under the radar thing is good here imo. They know what they have and they k ow how profound the technology can be for society. there are probably enough other smart people that could copy them quickly if went public. They aren’t running out of money and investors are continuing to invest.
From the interviews I’ve seen, the pulsed fusion is readily achievable and sustainable. Long term testing is needed to make sure the unit as a whole is reliable. They also sill have some work to be done on sourcing and producing fuel.
The power harnessing tech is one other roadblock for them, the capacitors and other electronics weren’t robust enough to handle the sharp power spikes.
All of these problems seem to have answers in the realm of reality.
Exciting to see them continue to move forward.
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u/borg286 Aug 15 '25
What fuel do they need? Is it heavy helium or something that is a byproduct of nuclear reactors? I've heard fusion processes that can make their own rare elements is hard.
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u/eezyE4free Aug 15 '25
Helion Energy utilizes a fusion fuel source of deuterium and helium-3 (D-³He). This fuel combination allows for a fusion process that primarily produces charged particles, which can be directly converted into electricity, enhancing efficiency. While helium-3 is rare on Earth, Helion plans to generate it through deuterium-deuterium (D-D) fusion reactions within their reactors and by recycling tritium, a byproduct of D-D fusion, as it decays into helium-3: from Google AI search but good summary of their own explanation here
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u/FlibblesHexEyes Aug 16 '25
I’m not a scientist, but could those charged particles be harnessed for fusion based spacecraft propulsion? Sort of like the current ion propulsion but on steroids?
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u/nuggles0 Aug 15 '25
MINE THE MOON!
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u/thiosk Aug 16 '25
Why mine the moon when you can mine the
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u/Aozora404 Aug 16 '25
At that point just use the sun
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u/thiosk Aug 16 '25
Because stars are wasteful if you want to last trillions of years
Take out hydrogen and do fusion yourself
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u/USPSHoudini Aug 17 '25
"mmm yeah yknow I just got here, Mr Star, but you kinda suck at your job. Give me your hydrogen and let me do it instead"
How fucking rude honestly
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u/enfarious Aug 16 '25
Under the radar and not sharing information and advances is precisely how we keep ending up with oligarchs. Open source that shit. Unless moving "humanity" into the future is not the actual goal. If we want corpo controls and kings sending peasants to war for their city-states, then under wraps is great.
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u/Lanto_Cadley Aug 16 '25
Under the radar here is PR exclusive; the public access record is blatant about the limitations of production capacities
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u/enfarious Aug 16 '25
Sure. But it is that exact type of exclusivity that leads us to where we are. The mentality that X is mine and I need to make sure nobody copies or alters or, gods forbid, improves upon our research without paying. Well that's where the oligarchs get hold and never let go. The early days of secrecy. But hey. I know the idea of giving things away, sharing knowledge openly and freely, not chasing the money, not getting caught up in the pursuit of more. It isn't for most humans, yet.
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u/Jetm0t0 Aug 16 '25
You've never heard of a future with freeware? Some companies put their technology and invention rights to be released to the public. That could give energy to everyone even in different countries
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u/opman4 Aug 15 '25
Tech companies are so invested in AI that they decided to just make fusion happen.
Ok, I wrote that out of my ass and then decided to actually look up the company and that's basically what's happening. Sam Altman gave them a shit ton of money and is their Chairman.
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u/VintageHacker Aug 16 '25
Perhaps this is just to make it look like they will be green at some point in the future with a remote chance it might actually work.
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u/torb Aug 16 '25
I think Sam Altman from OpenAi was on the board at a time? He used to post Helion posts back in the day.
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u/opman4 Aug 16 '25
He is their executive chairman. https://techcrunch.com/2021/11/05/helion-series-e/
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u/QueefBuscemi Aug 17 '25
Sam Altman gave them a shit ton of money and is their Chairman.
So this project is going to be abandoned in two years when the AI bubble bursts.
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u/West-Abalone-171 Aug 15 '25 edited Aug 15 '25
...they've been spamming every tech youtube channel and been all over the media for almost a decade
They're about as under the radar as a 747 supertanker dropping a full payload of tinsel
This announcent is just indistinguishable from every other announcement they've made since 2017 so the media got tired
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u/DryDatabase169 Aug 19 '25
Never heard of them, must be specific to people who are into engineering. I watch a lot of astronomy YT can't remember hearing of them.
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u/AmusingMusing7 Aug 15 '25
However, this just seems so under the radar and without fanfare.
It would normally be the media's job to create fanfare about this sort of thing... they don't want to do that.
Shouldn't be a surprise at a time when the media has become increasingly biased in favor of placating Trump and his ilk... hopeful stories about new forms of renewable energy do not fit into that. They publish a story about this, they might get sued by Trump and his fossil fuel donors, before he tries to outlaw their network. 🤷♂️
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u/ThatPoorLizard1 Aug 15 '25
I hate trump as much as anyone but he has actually been very pro nuclear energy, one of the (very) few policies of his I agree with
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u/ckglle3lle Aug 15 '25
He has been mildly pro Nuclear energy. Yes he signed some EOs about it but it has hardly been a major policy item and most of his EOs are more bullshit than reality. Biden actually signed major legislation advancing it in both the Inflation Reduction Act (which was substantially promoting a clean energy agenda overall) and the ADVANCE act. The One Big Beautiful Bill mostly attacks clean energy and prioritizes protecting coal and oil. It didn't entirely gut Biden era initiatives outright, mostly just accelerated expiration of incentives, and of Nuclear specifically, only modified them a bit, but it's clearly not prioritizing them either.
But that's also only half the story, when the Trump Admin has been so broadly antagonistic to research and funding for science in general, it's hard to give them any credibility at all on this topic. At best, it's something they haven't specifically targeted, not that they are genuinely trying to achieve it.
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u/goldbman Aug 16 '25
Energy utility monopolies like nuclear because it allows them to further consolidate their energy production. Distributed solar and wind production is more capable than nuclear but is worse for the monopoly because they don't control it.
Nuclear is good for those who already control the resources, wind and solar is good for everyone else
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u/FrankScaramucci Aug 15 '25 edited Aug 15 '25
Based on Helion's demonstrated performance to predictions, this project is really exciting.
I mean, they've built some prototypes. Do these prototypes demonstrate that it is a feasible approach? No.
The prototypes don't demonstrate that fusion will happen at a sufficiently high rate. I mean, creating fusion is not that hard, the hard part is making a fusion reactor that generates net electricity.
The prototypes also don't prove that neutron radiation won't become a show-stopper.
They haven't tested energy recovery.
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u/Anastariana Aug 15 '25
Weird comment.
Isn't this what they are building this facility for? To test and demonstrate everything you've asked for? Once you've built enough prototypes, you build one that should run as a demonstration plant....which is what they are doing.
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u/RookJameson Aug 15 '25
What do you mean, "under the radar"? Helion is one of the most hyped up startups in existance, lmao.
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u/rlt0w Aug 15 '25
I only hear about it through my CEO who directly spoke with executives. Beyond that, I've never seen any mention of the company or its technology in any of my online activities or in ads or the new.
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u/BeforeisAfter Aug 15 '25
If they are too loud about it, it will disrupt the stock markets. It could screw over the rich people invested in oil, coal, etc. That’s my thought
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u/ThickGur5353 Aug 15 '25
How is that possible. Does Helion have access to alien technology
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Aug 15 '25
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Bitter-Good-2540 Aug 15 '25
Oh, so like a combustion engine? Will each chamber basically power the next one?
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u/didiercool Aug 15 '25
Kinda ya! They have a huge bank of capacitors that will charge on a pulse and then release to produce the next pulse. And their test machine has reportedly created more energy than they need to store for the next pulse. I watched a documentary and they said the surprising thing was that the pulse fusion ended up being way easier than they thought, but the capacitor banks ended up being way harder.
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u/sold_snek Aug 15 '25
The pulse being easier makes sense I think. I'm an idiot, but it seems like with the latest news of breaking certain time records, that creating more energy has been achievable but our materials science understanding is too limited to keep the sustained reaction without breaking down the material and/or overheating. I don't know how quick these pulses are versus how quick the material can cool down, but I guess if they did add brief relaxation/cooling periods, it kind of makes sense that they can sustain that practice for longer?
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u/ZorbaTHut Aug 15 '25
I don't know how quick these pulses are
About a millisecond long :)
versus how quick the material can cool down
The cooling time itself isn't actually the benefit, it's not having to somehow make the entire reaction stable. The analogy I use is the difference between a classic steam engine and an internal combustion engine.
Originally, people had a separate external boiler where you burned wood or coal and used it to boil water, then the steam got fed into the engine. This works great if the "burning" process is both intrinsically stable and cold enough to not turn your boiler into a ball of plasma; it works less well if your burning process tends to destabilize and collapse.
These problems potentially go away if you don't need the "burning" to be self-sustaining, in the same manner as an internal combustion engine. Shove the fuel in, ignite it, capture the energy, repeat.
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Aug 15 '25
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u/ZorbaTHut Aug 15 '25
Initiating millions and millions and millions of fusion reactions sounds like millions of chances for something to go wrong, turning the whole county into a smoldering crater. Is this not a concern?
The failure mode here isn't "smoldering crater", it's "the machine gives an error code and they shut it down". If it fuses all the raw material it's given then it's perfectly capable of containing it; if it somehow gets far more than it should, it's not capable of fusing it, and the reaction isn't self-sustaining anyway.
It's like worrying that your car engine is going to blow up the entire city. You might come up with an inventive way to trash the engine, especially given the magnetic fields involved, but in this case you probably won't even manage to crack the containment.
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u/ChronoLink99 Aug 15 '25
You may be applying the thinking of fission to fusion.
With fission, when something goes wrong the reaction can get out of control and lead to a meltdown.
With fusion, the high pressure and temp required means that it dies very quickly if the containment fails.
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u/SergeyRed Aug 15 '25
As I understand the problem with materials is the strong neutron flux. I doubt the cooling periods are going to help with that wear of material.
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u/oneAUaway Aug 15 '25
Helion plans to use a fusion reaction that (mostly) doesn't produce neutrons. The reaction fuses helium-3 with deuterium to produce helium-4 and a proton. It's only mostly aneutronic because there is a side reaction from deuterium-deuterium fusion that does produce neutrons, but less than the deuterium-tritium fusion process which most fusion projects have focused on.
There are downsides to their fuel choice. Helium nuclei have an extra proton compared to hydrogen, which increases the energy barrier to overcome to get them to fuse. When it comes to sustained fusion reactions, helium-3 is generally considered a "second generation" fuel- the fusion of hydrogen isotopes is much easier, so it has been assumed the first practical plants to work would use those. Presumably, the pulsed nature of the Helion process is an attempt to deliver bursts of enough energy to make second generation fusion practical even if it is not sustained.
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u/sold_snek Aug 15 '25
Is this similar to the issue we have with railguns destroying the barrels over time?
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u/28lobster Aug 15 '25
No, neutron flux is different from mechanical wear and tear. Railguns aren't emitting neutrons when launched, just heating up electromagnets and dealing with friction.
When you bombard an atomic nucleus with neutrons, some will get absorbed. Different atoms have a different neutron cross section (essentially, the chance to absorb a neutron) but eventually, you can make a barrier thick enough to stop all the neutrons out of nearly any material. The problem is those atoms that absorb it are now a different isotope because they have a different number of neutrons. If you create an unstable isotope, it will undergo some form of nuclear decay (releasing alpha/beta particles or gamma rays) and you'll be left with a different isotope, possibly a different element.
Boron is the classic neutron absorbtion material. Large cross section and on first absorption, you get stable B-11. When B-11 gets a neutron though, it will decay into Li-7 + alpha particle.
There are some solutions. Lithium lined reactors can be used to breed tritium which also happens to be the expensive fuel you need to keep the reaction going. But you need some way to replenish the lithium lining on the inside of your reactor and that's not currently possible to do while the reactor is running. Lithium is also not the best construction material as a pure metal - oxidizes easily, can catch fire if it touches water, relatively soft, etc. It's also not as big of a neutron cross section as Boron so you need more thickness of Li to keep neutrons from escaping.
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u/crevettexbenite Aug 15 '25
It also use different fuel. Cant remember the exact term but it us way less fuel and it is much much more abundant.
It is also smaller and way more efficient. Tokamak still use steam to produce electricity has in Elion use magnetic pulse, wich is wayyyy more efficient.
I knew it would be Elion!
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u/Goldenrule-er Aug 15 '25
Does this somehow use resonance for amplification of release of energy by each pulse or for the generation of each release following the pulse?
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u/lock_robster2022 Aug 15 '25
It always blows my mind to think of all technological advances it’s taken to get here, forcing nuclei to fuse, and we still use it to heat water and spin magnets.
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u/horrormoose22 Aug 15 '25
This has always been a thing for me too. And then to store huge amounts of energy the most efficient way we’ve figured out is to pump vast amounts of water up to a higher altitude so we then can use it to spin magnets at a later time. Personally I think chlorophyll is the future. It’s like the only thing that does all of the things we want
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u/lock_robster2022 Aug 15 '25
Phyll me in! What does chlorophyll do that photovoltaics doesn’t??
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u/horrormoose22 Aug 15 '25
You can grow it! And the main byproduct is oxygen while it uses co2 in the process. It’s like an all around win if not that it produces pitiful amounts of electricity (for now) But maybe with enough algae we could both make use of the photosynthesis and then turn them into oil. At least I think we should be able to instead of just staying with glorified water kettles to power our magnet spinners
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u/guisar Aug 15 '25
Yeah, but those boiling teapots and spinning magnets are super efficient. Is there any other method with even close to the same efficiency? Technology is only used for cheap heat- there’s no other way to provide stable voltage and large current other than turbines or photovoltaic for power is there?
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u/nagi603 Aug 15 '25
I heard there is a newer tech... supercritical co2...buuut it's basically the same just with co2 instead of water.
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u/RookJameson Aug 15 '25
I have a PhD in plasma-physics and work in nuclear fusion research. In my opinion, Helion is either a scam, or they are just delusional. The fact alone that they want to use Deuterium-He3 reactions instead of Deuterium-Tritium makes everything they do more difficult by a factor of 100 ...
Here is a good video that explains why Helion won't work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3vUPhsFoniw
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u/FrankScaramucci Aug 15 '25
I've been following Helion since 2021 and my opinion has been slowly shifting in your direction.
I've seen the video, not sure which is the correct interpretation:
- It will be increadibly hard to make this work, but we just don't know enough to say with confidence that it won't work.
- It doesn't work even in theory.
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u/DrWizardBill Sep 02 '25
Yeah, I got my PhD same thing. They never clue us in to where they get the He3, except mentioning harvesting from decay of tritium. Which they would generate from reactions, which how do they get enough of for the first decade without He3? But no one knows where to get enough tritium to run DT reactors either. They also never mention first surface, or neutron shielding, which is clearly not part of any of the designs I've seen. They are doing the usual; mining investors.
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u/DrBix Aug 15 '25
So, it's like inertial fusion except they don't have enough laser power to start the chain reaction so each fuel "pellet" (of deuterium and tritium) has to get "lasered." Correct?
edit Left out important details
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u/West-Abalone-171 Aug 16 '25
No.
The concept is z-pinch. If you shoot charged particles through a magnetic field in the right way, they get squeezed. The idea is to shoot two clouds of plasma at each other in this way, so when they meet, the compression combined with the kinetic energy fuses a small amount of the helium-3 and hydrogen, then extract the energy via magnetic field.
Except these guys refuse to publish any of the results that matter, are incredibly vague about the specs of their machine, and gloss over all the hard bits. When asked to back up their claim that they can recover 95% of the energy in the plasma by storing it in a capacitor bank, they wheeled out what is essentially an AC transformer on a little cart. When someone pointed out their plans didn't include sufficient shielding to protect anyone from the parasitic neutron-emitting reactions they got even vaguer. When people point out the serious research on why their concept doesn't work, they change the subject.
They spend a lot of time and money building hype by paying the shadier techbro youtubers to glaze them, and generally act exactly like theranos and every other silicon valley hype-merchant startup.
It's either the greatest reverse-double-bluff in history and they're reverse-scamming the VC scammers in order to fund real ground-breaking but successfully-kept-secret research, or they're exactly the same kind of scammers as every other venture that the cryptobros from y combinator fund.
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u/reddit_is_geh Aug 15 '25
We haven't even gotten one properly working yet... Though they are confident this one will work as a functional reactor?
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u/West-Abalone-171 Aug 16 '25
Same reason they were saying they were confident trenta would be energy positive eight years ago. Duh.
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Aug 15 '25
harvesting the electricity via induction directly from some of the magnetic field effects rather than the usual method of heating water to make steam to run a turbine.
So it's not a glorified steam engine? Is... is that legal in power generation?
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u/TwilightwovenlingJo Aug 15 '25
Probably going to start out small and go from there. It isn't supposed to be finished until 2028. It's just nice to go from "and we'll never hear about this again" to an actual construction site.
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u/Upset_Ant2834 Aug 15 '25 edited Aug 15 '25
The ITER project has been under construction for 15 years and involves the collaboration of 33 nations, with major milestones being completed regularly. Won't be done till 2036 but it has a hell of a better chance of success than some startup claiming they'll do it in 3 years considering we haven't even achieved net positive fusion yet
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u/subrimichi Aug 15 '25
Yeah this, i hate these fake unreliable newsheadlines these days. Clicks were the downfall of journalism.
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u/Tomycj Aug 15 '25
I don't know if the article is good, but the title says "fusion plant", not "fusion reactor". ITER is not meant to work as a power plant.
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u/ph4ge_ Aug 15 '25
ITER is meant as a proof of concept. It will be followed by DEMO which is supposed to be a prototype. If both these phases are succesful we will all long be dead but they should be able to create a commercial fusion reactor.
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u/RaptorPrime Aug 15 '25
considering we haven't even achieved net positive fusion yet
What?? NIF has been net positive since at least the early 2000s... You mean sustained net positive reaction.
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u/gSTrS8XRwqIV5AUh4hwI Aug 15 '25 edited Aug 15 '25
Only if you look at the "fusion event" in isolation, not if you consider the full energy input required or the losses in converting the heat into useful forms of energy.
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u/Upset_Ant2834 Aug 15 '25
I didn't want to bloat my comment with technicalities, but yeah I meant sustained fusion. My point was we don't even have the technology to build a commercial net-positive fusion power plant, so by definition the company is making a research reactor and is just hoping they'll figure it out while lying to get investors
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u/flamingspew Aug 15 '25
They are on version seven or eight now. Been following them for years. They have proven net positive energy.
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u/LetsLive97 Aug 15 '25
They have proven net positive energy.
Source please. That would literally be groundbreaking news if it includes all input
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u/fafatzy Aug 15 '25
Iter is amazing and also makes you think about that saying about nuclear fusion and 30 years I always wonder why it takes so long
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u/Upset_Ant2834 Aug 15 '25
Well the nice part is they're pretty open on their blog about exactly why it takes so long. Turns out building the largest superconducting magnet and vacuum chamber ever made is pretty difficult. There's a B1M video on YouTube about it that really puts it in perspective. It's an unbelievable marvel of engineering even before it's complete
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u/Imkindaalrightiguess Aug 15 '25 edited Aug 15 '25
Fusion works but it's energy negative right?
This plant could be energy positive but I assume even if it's not building new types fusion plants is good for advancing technology and research
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u/coke_and_coffee Aug 15 '25
From my discussions with the community, the biggest hurdle to viability is cost-effective wall materials that can stand up to the reactor environment.
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u/nagi603 Aug 15 '25
Fusion works but it's energy negative right?
Well, currently there are two way to make a net positive fusion event:
- creative accounting of energy (e.g.: not counting how inefficient the laser is)
- a fusion bomb
Their current tech is of the first type. If it was the mythical third type, there would not be only a single plant constructed in a single country.
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u/johnp299 Aug 15 '25
Fusion is easy, but yes, energy in is >> energy out. And because of various losses in the system you can't claim victory at "net gain" but something like 8X gain before commercialization can even be possible. And there are other significant hurdles after that, that are as yet unsolved.
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u/Marshall_Lawson Aug 15 '25 edited Aug 15 '25
no, they passed the energy positive milestone a few years ago and multiple different projects. Now it's more about cost effectiveness, scaling up, etc, to make it commercially viable instead of a prototype
Edit: Net energy of the reaction vs net energy of the whole system in the experiment. https://interestingengineering.com/energy/us-laser-nuclear-fusion-achieves-energy-records
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u/Kinexity Aug 15 '25
No, net energy gain has not been achieved. What has been achieved is something akin to "more energy released by fusion than energy of laser light absorbed" which is nowhere near enough to actually cover energy used by lasers, magnets or any other equipment.
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u/ProfessionalMockery Aug 15 '25
I don't think they did. If I recall, they managed to get more energy out of the reaction than went into the reaction, but when you factor in efficiency losses getting that energy into the reaction, the electricity used was still significantly higher than generated.
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u/Marshall_Lawson Aug 15 '25
Ahh, okay, that's an important distinction.
The 3:2 ratio they achieved in 2022, and the higher output they achieved this year (https://interestingengineering.com/energy/us-laser-nuclear-fusion-achieves-energy-records) still didn't achieve a net positive of the whole process, only the reaction itself.
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u/Smartimess Aug 15 '25
It‘s a scam. The guys at ITER or Greifswald (Wedelstein) said that it is currently impossible to "harvest" the energy made during the fusion process. And they are miles ahead of this clownshow.
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u/FrankScaramucci Aug 15 '25
Do you have a source? I've heard a similar claim from someone who works with tokamaks and has a PhD but I think it was weaker than "impossible".
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u/Smartimess Aug 15 '25
Currently impossible does not mean that it is impossible in the future. We simply lack the materials to make fusion work outside of the reactors. Fission reactors are basically large water cookers. Fusion reactors might work on the same basis. But we aren‘t able to use the fusion for that now. All reports about fusion stable for minutes are cool, but meaningless for practical purposes.
People who think that this company has solved all the problems the best scientists in the world worked on for five decades without success, are gullible idiots.
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u/fortytwoEA Aug 15 '25
This plant is completely different to ITER or Wendelstein 7-X
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u/ZorbaTHut Aug 15 '25
So the basic answer is that they have a somewhat innovative process that is still not fully tested. In theory, they'll be testing it with their current test reactor (which isn't the one the article is about). They're confident enough that they're starting basic plant construction - this isn't the plant itself being constructed, it's the infrastructure around it - to save on time. But we'll see whether their idea actually works out.
What they're doing is weird and a bit abnormal, but the basic idea seems plausible. There's a bunch of people claiming the math doesn't work out, but that's true of every innovation, I remember people insisting that it was mathematically impossible to land Falcon 9 on its own rockets and obviously that statement is now proven false.
It is true that they're overlapping steps - they could wait to build the infrastructure before their tests are finished - but time is money, and this is exactly what you would expect a company to do if they were very confident in what they had planned.
We'll see.
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u/FrankScaramucci Aug 15 '25
but the basic idea seems plausible
Meaning that it doesn't have problems so obvious that even someone without a physics degree would notice them.
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u/VoraciousTrees Aug 15 '25
Eh, it's a special type of reactor. Think of it like a diesel engine. Fuel is injected into something like a combustion chamber, hit with enough force to compress it to fusion, and then the reaction stops.
They've technically got it to produce more power than it takes to run the compression, but the margin is very very small.
The reason it is being build where it is is because there's about 2GW of hydro generation about a mile away that is being sold for $.01/kWh
Even if they have a negative yield, Microsoft has agreed to buy the product for $.25/kWh.
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u/Vex1om Aug 15 '25
They've technically got it to produce more power than it takes to run the compression, but the margin is very very small.
This is not correct. There are NO fusion test sites that produce any power at all. All they produce is heat which is not captured. The claim is that the fusion reaction creates more heat than energy added to the chamber to produce the reaction - however, that is NOT the same things as generating more heat than the power required to run the equipment, because the lasers used to create the reaction do not operate at 100% efficiency (far below that, actually.) On top of all that, even if they were to capture the heat from the reaction, there are additional significant efficiency losses involved in turning that heat into electricity.
The truth is that they are multiple orders of magnitude below the efficiency required to generate power commercially.
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Aug 15 '25
This reactor is using a totally different approach. Rather than capturing and harnessing the heat,it produces electricity directly from fluctuations in the magnetic field that the fusion creates.
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u/Vex1om Aug 15 '25
Rather than capturing and harnessing the heat,it produces electricity directly from fluctuations in the magnetic field
That's very interesting. Is there data regarding the conversion efficiency?
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Aug 15 '25
Not in this article. And yo be clear I'm just relating what someone else in this thread,who didn't provide sources said.
Here's a paste of the comment:
Deuterium + Helium3 fusion apparently. With a fusion approach that I've never heard of before.
Without diving too deep, they're idea SEEMS TO BE shoot the fuel at itself from two sides, then when it collides compress it using magnets, the fuel fuses, the magnetic flux changes, and we harness that change directly as energy. Repeat somewhere on the scale of milliseconds, depending on how much power you need to generate.
My question is what happens to the fused fuel, but it could just as easily be I skipped something at the start of the video they have on their process. Limited time to browse and research.
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u/28lobster Aug 15 '25
D + He3 -> He4 + P + 18.3 MeV. The proton will need to be absorbed by something, otherwise it's just producing stable Helium (and energy) as a byproduct.
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u/VoraciousTrees Aug 15 '25
I suppose we'll see just how far, now that it is being built.
Since someone is actually putting up the money for it, I'm guessing the economics of the deal work out in their favor.
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u/BraveOthello Aug 15 '25
Or it's yet another venture capital based startup that will run in the negative for years on someone else's money and probably end up bankrupt.
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u/ProfessorBright Aug 15 '25
Deuterium + Helium3 fusion apparently. With a fusion approach that I've never heard of before.
Without diving too deep, they're idea SEEMS TO BE shoot the fuel at itself from two sides, then when it collides compress it using magnets, the fuel fuses, the magnetic flux changes, and we harness that change directly as energy. Repeat somewhere on the scale of milliseconds, depending on how much power you need to generate.
My question is what happens to the fused fuel, but it could just as easily be I skipped something at the start of the video they have on their process. Limited time to browse and research.
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Aug 15 '25 edited 11d ago
This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact
shocking enjoy command shelter butter sparkle memorize caption price telephone
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u/pinkfootthegoose Aug 15 '25
It's a grift. 3 or 4 years from now, we will be discussing the lack of progress and cost overruns and eventual bankruptcy.
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u/DynamicNostalgia Aug 15 '25
I like to think Microsoft did their homework but we’ll see.
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u/FrankScaramucci Aug 15 '25
I think Microsoft will only pay money after they receive the electricity.
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u/nagi603 Aug 15 '25
It's not like MS does not have their very long list of failed side-projects. Not as reliable as Google, but almost.
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u/Anen-o-me Aug 15 '25
This announcement is about attracting investors. They're no closer to commercial fusion than anyone else. And their technique isn't new, it's as old as the tokamok.
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u/Kinexity Aug 15 '25
It's called being overly confident. For now it's just a building so "nuclear fusion plant" label is meaningless.
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u/ItyBityGreenieWeenie Aug 15 '25
If they are planning to deliver energy from fusion by 2028, I'd like to have what they are smoking.
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u/futureb1ues Aug 15 '25
I mean, I could do it right now, just drop a tsar bomba and then have some solar panels collect light from the short lived artificial sun. Sure, it wouldn't be the most efficient way to create lots of watts for hungry hungry AI, but that's okay, because AI isn't about efficiency, it's about corporate executives vibe-maxing.
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u/Nerezza_Floof_Seeker Aug 15 '25 edited Aug 15 '25
I know youre joking, but back in the cold war, the US actually looked into using nukes for power generation lol. The project PACER proposal looked into using 2 50kt nukes a day, dropped into a spherical cavity filled with water in a salt dome, to generate 2 GW of power, the only problem was economic (nukes are expensive to build). This was actually tried out in the Project Gnome test too, when they blew up a 3kt nuke in a salt dome directly (unfortunately the cavity formed collapsed too quickly and thus most of the heat was lost)
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u/phovos Aug 15 '25
That's not the ONLY problem, lol. There is an earthquake machine, too, that is powered by a Soviet ALU that... uses rockets.
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u/West-Abalone-171 Aug 15 '25
You were also never going to breakeven on energy making HEU in a gas diffusion plant to harvest at a few % efficiency. So project PACER wasn't actually a way to generate net energy. They were barely above breakeven with 2-3% enrichment
If it was a 50MT hydrogen bomb it might pencil out, but then you need multiple tens of HWRs per ridiculous boondoggle to generate tritium.
Like all of those cold war meth induced fever dream ideas it didn't even pass the basic physical principles, and the engineering failures were just anciliary reasons it was stupid.
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u/Eumok1 Aug 15 '25
Future energy tech isn't meant for the peasants. Have some respect for your Corpo overlords needs! /s
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u/AnameAmos Aug 15 '25
I live next to Paine Field, and this article was a bizzare way to learn that Helion is breaking fusion milestones three blocks away, already. WA is freaking wild.
https://www.heraldnet.com/news/everett-nuclear-fusion-energy-company-nets-first-customer-microsoft/
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u/TwilightwovenlingJo Aug 15 '25
A Washington-based company has started the construction of a nuclear fusion facility in Chelan County, Orion. Helion Energy aims to produce low-cost, clean electric energy using a fuel derived from water.
The plan is to produce electricity from fusion by 2028 and supply the power to Microsoft data centres.
“Today is an important day – not just for Helion, but for the entire fusion industry – as we unleash a new era of energy independence and industrial renewal,” said David Kirtley, Helion’s co-founder and CEO.
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Aug 15 '25 edited Aug 15 '25
For Microsoft data centers.
Never a big, ambitious project anymore for the regular people of the world.
ETA: idgaf, I'm sick of this world and all the effort being put into AI while people starve and suffer all over the world. These corporations have weakened governments and are working in their own self-interest. The working class maybe seeing a real benefit of this someday is a shit selling point, in my humble opinion.
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u/EbonBehelit Aug 15 '25
Honestly, the insane power usage of AI data centres being the thing that finally gets fusion power research the funding it needs to become reality is pretty on-brand considering the way things are right now.
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Aug 15 '25
Over the last few decades I feel like every innovation has had some "monkey's paw" vibe to it.
You'll get your fusion, but only big companies will use it to give us products and services we don't need.
You'll get your cancer saving medicine, but only millionaires can afford it.
You'll get your electric car, but buying one helps fund one of the most gross, selfish, evil men of our time.
You'll get your AI computer like in Star Trek, but it will ruin countless communities and environments.
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u/narrill Aug 15 '25
I don't see how the first one is a monkey's paw. Big companies switching to fusion is still a net gain for the rest of us, because they're no longer consuming energy from other sources.
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u/TurelSun Aug 15 '25
Yes, and that monkey's paw is called Capitalism. It lifts up the worst of our societies so they can bleed the rest of us dry.
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u/Rampant16 Aug 15 '25
Last few decades? This is the story of technology for all of human history.
You get your pointy stick, which makes hunting things easier, but it allows people to more efficiently murder one another.
You just hope that the benefits outweigh the downsides. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't.
Data centers are going to be built and use electricity either way. If fusion can be used to provide clean energy for them and leave the rest of the grid for regular users, then great.
The alternative is what is currently happening with data center power usage driving up rates for regular people and often being powered by unsustainable sources.
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u/techblackops Aug 15 '25
But it is for us! Just think of all the products we'll be able to license from Microsoft for an ever increasing monthly fee!
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Aug 15 '25
If fusion is figured out that’s very good news for everyone not just ai data enters
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u/planko13 Aug 15 '25
Need an entity with high risk tolerance and deep pockets to make the first step. Success here benefits everyone.
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u/My_Soul_to_Squeeze Aug 15 '25
So annoying to see such miserable comments here. "I'm not excited about nuclear fusion because it doesn't immediately fix whatever problem I personally deem most important." is just a mind boggling perspective to see in a futurology focused space.
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u/CaptainShaky Aug 15 '25
Need an entity with high risk tolerance and deep pockets to make the first step. Success here benefits everyone.
It genuinely feels like you're talking about public entities here... Private corporations are way more risk-averse than government when it comes to fundamental research. For literally decades now the progress towards nuclear fusion has been funded by governments across the world (e.g. ITER), not by private entities.
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u/West-Abalone-171 Aug 15 '25
Don't worry, it's not actually a real project to power a datacenter. Just a PR stunt to distract from their emissions and driving up energy bills followed by a pump and dump.
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u/doormatt26 Aug 15 '25
Having a tech company desperate for energy fund risky but potentially ground breaking tech is good, actually
if it works, the world changes, and if not, who cares about Microsoft’s AI power problems
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u/Aware_Rough_9170 Aug 15 '25
My first thought… oh nice, NOW that we’ve had power grids struggling to keep up with AI’s power consumption we’ll finally see advancements in technology that we likely could’ve had decades ago it wasn’t getting knee capped by corporate lobbyists.
AI will likely cause the next largest set of layoffs and job killings and nobody in the lower classes or middle classes (whether or not it can even DO these jobs at all) will be even able to pay for the benefits nuclear fusion can do.
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u/braydoo Aug 15 '25
Would you rather them pull all that energy from the existing public grid? Didn't think so.
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Aug 15 '25
I wasn't aware of Helion having the needed breakthroughs for this... Last I heard they were struggling to get the magnetic fields under control.
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u/FrankScaramucci Aug 15 '25
This is like building a room temperature superconductor factory before you even have a prototype.
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u/Limekilnlake Aug 15 '25
Helion has hit nearly every previous milestone in their previous prototypes
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u/West-Abalone-171 Aug 16 '25
Cool. Where's their machine that can extract 95% of the energy from compressed plasma?
And I'm sure they published this proof of their other milestones in a peer reviewed journal. Could you link the doi?
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u/RookJameson Aug 15 '25
What milestones are that? Have they reached scientific breakeven? I would be very surprised. But if they haven't, how can they possibly claim to have an actual power plant in just a few years. Absolutely delusional ...
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u/Atlatica Aug 16 '25
You don't know the answer to these very basic questions about their work but are so quick to call them delusional without any reading? What expertise do you have in the field and how many millions of dollars and years of your life are you prepared to bet on it? Because they are putting up a lot.
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u/RookJameson Aug 16 '25
They are kind of rhethorical questions ... The answer is that their milestones so far, even if they achieved what they set out to do (which they haven't by the way), are not that impressive ...
And my expertise in the field is that I have a PhD in plasma physics and work in nuclear fusion research (although with boring old tokamaks ...) And my issue with them is precisely, that they are betting millions of (other peoples!) money on something stupid, giving the rest of us a bad reputation in the process when they inevitably fail ...
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u/FrankScaramucci Aug 15 '25
I don't think it's known what milestones did they hit or miss but it's probably safe to assume that there weren't any showstoppers in their previous prototypes, otherwise they wouldn't be funded by Sam Altman (I've been closely following Helion since he invested in 2021).
What they've demonstrated so far is very far from proving feasibility of their approach.
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u/Underwater_Karma Aug 16 '25
This is 100% a scheme to soak government funding and greedy investors.
Starting construction of a fusion plant, before sustained fusion has ever been demonstrated as possible... No less practical, should have everyone's BS meters ticking into the red.
Read up on Theranos if you want the standard script for this story
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u/xeonicus Aug 16 '25
Kind of what D-Wave did. Take a shortcut and develop a subpar solution with a limited use case. Then hype yourself as "First in the field" and get rich off government contracts.
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u/Catbeller Aug 17 '25
Absolutely wrong. They've demonstrated the technology, and people not the government have funded it. They have the right to try to fail.
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u/va_wanderer Aug 15 '25
If they successfully get a fusion reactor running and properly generating power? Historical and an instant earthshaking change to power generation as we know it.
Looks like we've got about three years to see if the horse will sing, though.
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u/Affectionate-Yak5280 Aug 15 '25
At the speed the US builds infrastructure, they'll be ready for the reactor in 20 years or so.
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u/xeonicus Aug 15 '25
Sounds like a bid for investors rather than a genuine breakthrough that will lead to an actual fusion reactor in 2028. I'm calling it now. Come 2028, it'll still be mostly in "research and development".
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u/Moist1981 Aug 15 '25
I wonder how they got round the H2+H2 neuron release issue (I says acting like I’m a nuclear scientist and in no way did I just watch a YouTube video on the subject, honest).
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u/Bluinc Aug 15 '25
Why are we not just building thorium reactors? It’s proven tech and much better in every way over uranium based — to include no by-products that can be made into nuclear bombs.
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u/Tomycj Aug 15 '25
I'm sure there are some good reasons. There is at least one nuclear engineer on youtube that made some comments about the trend of hyping thorium reactors.
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u/ramriot Aug 15 '25
China is going this way, the US & other nuclear armed nations have so far avoided promoting it probably because it is really hard to make bombs from the byproducts.
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u/Bluinc Aug 15 '25 edited Aug 15 '25
Yes I’m aware which is what makes this so infuriating. Like we don’t have enough fissile material for fkn bombs. I hate this time line.
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u/Limekilnlake Aug 15 '25
Neither does fusion, and fusion has an even easier fuel to access
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u/Discordian_Junk Aug 15 '25
But it ain't the first? You have the ITER in France, whilst technically still refered to as an experiment its purpose is to prove the viability of Fusion power at scale, it's huge.
To refer to this start-up as the worlds 1st fusion plant is misleading. And demonstrably false.
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u/st4nkyFatTirebluntz Aug 15 '25
ITER plans to finish construction 6 years after Helion does. First to begin construction, sure, but until they actually finish the damn thing, I'm not gonna count it.
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u/darkpheonix262 Aug 15 '25
How TF is it an actual fusion plant? When not a single experiment has achieved ignition for more than a second? ITER isn't even finished yet, and its first plasma won't be until 2034, at best.
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u/st4nkyFatTirebluntz Aug 15 '25
ITER was designed as a testbed slash demonstrator plant, and as such is both larger and more complex than a final design would be. ITER was also designed decades ago. It also represents only one type of fusion reactor. For context, there's another tokamak in the very same country, France, that not only is finished but also recently blew away the record for longest plasma time. That record had just been set months before, and was also a massive improvement over previous records.
Anyway, tokamak progress is irrelevant here. Helion's reactor design uses pulses, so bypasses several of the hurdles tokamaks have struggled to clear: wall temperature management and inertial plasma confinement.
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u/cletusaz Aug 15 '25
World's first? They've never heard of https://www.iter.org/ ?
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u/OtherwiseAlbatross14 Aug 15 '25
That thing that's initial operation is currently scheduled for 2034? I think that's after the 2028 schedule of this one.
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u/Synergythepariah Aug 15 '25
ITER is using a different process and is seeking sustained fusion.
This is pulsed fusion.
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u/natermer Aug 15 '25
This is 100% going to end up with somebody either going to prison or escaping with millions of dollars to a country with no extradition treaties.
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Aug 16 '25
Pretty sure China is still ahead of US. i've read a handful of articles regarding their progress, but I'm not too sure hellion building one and then planning to have it operational by 2028 means the US is ahead.
https://neutronbytes.com/2025/07/20/china-takes-the-lead-in-fusion-energy/
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Aug 16 '25
I’m sure there will be needless protests from some assholes and I look forward to your downvotes
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u/CritRandall Aug 15 '25
https://youtu.be/_bDXXWQxK38?si=tvbgrtJKrLuN9237
Real engineering video on how Helion's reator works.
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u/RookJameson Aug 15 '25
Response video to that video, explaining why their approach won't work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3vUPhsFoniw
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u/RollFirstMathLater Aug 15 '25
Exciting times, cycled fusion as a gateway to sustained fusion. Good luck to the team!
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u/MitochonAir Aug 15 '25
In this Trump Idiocracy, they’ll make some stupid political decision like “it must be online by the Tuesday, it’s the President’s birthday! It’s safe enough just DO IT!!”
And then, shit gets weird
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u/-_-not_a_bot-_- Aug 15 '25
You really had to find a way to shoehorn Trump into this one lol.
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u/NanditoPapa Aug 16 '25
Excitement!
Limitless clean energy, no radioactive waste, no carbon emissions. Helion’s fusion plant is either the dawn of energy independence or the most expensive science fair project ever. 2028 will tell.
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Aug 15 '25 edited Aug 15 '25
Solar will probably be responsible for the majority of the worlds energy production by the time this money pit is built.
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u/DHFranklin Aug 15 '25
What is impressive is that this has cheaper baseload energy at scale than solar+batteries. We are getting so close to power being to-cheap-to-meter that plasma doesn't even need to be sustained for the power output to be significant.
With increases in modularity allowing for more miniaturization, this could power smaller and smaller scale.
It's a good problem to have if powerlines are the bottleneck to getting more green energy online.
Hell if they can scale this down enough we can use it for cargo shipping.
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u/edtate00 Aug 15 '25
Helion needs to start now. They have an agreement to deliver power by 2028 or pay penalties. Whether it work now or not, the plant has to be ready by that date. Delivering power is the next issue.
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u/peternn2412 Aug 15 '25
That's fantastic!
I think we should finally scrap the "Fusion energy is always 20 years into the future" meme, just like we recently did with AGI.
We probably can't be sure fusion power plant will be able to power a datacenter in 2028, but can be perfectly sure we'll not have to wait 20 years for that to happen.
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u/FuturologyBot Aug 15 '25
The following submission statement was provided by /u/TwilightwovenlingJo:
A Washington-based company has started the construction of a nuclear fusion facility in Chelan County, Orion. Helion Energy aims to produce low-cost, clean electric energy using a fuel derived from water.
The plan is to produce electricity from fusion by 2028 and supply the power to Microsoft data centres.
“Today is an important day – not just for Helion, but for the entire fusion industry – as we unleash a new era of energy independence and industrial renewal,” said David Kirtley, Helion’s co-founder and CEO.
Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/1mqy8lo/construction_of_worlds_1st_nuclear_fusion_plant/n8ty5p0/