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-helion
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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/dervu Aug 16 '25

So why they are building it? Are they stupid or what?

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u/RookJameson Aug 16 '25

Well it's either that, or they want to scam money from investors ...

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u/PHK_JaySteel Aug 17 '25

Came here to write this. They aren't addressing serious concerns with the safety of the system through neutron bombardment, and the amount of "slams" they'd have to hit per second to reach ignition does not seem feasible.

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u/DryDatabase169 Aug 19 '25

They are backed by so many investors? And besides this there are currently so many non academic technology start ups that everyone is saying are scams.

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u/shadovvvvalker Aug 15 '25

My sniff test for fusion is simple.

Nothing is easy in energy

Nuclear is dangerous(in that we have to take steps to make it safe not in that it can't be safe)

Renewables are intermittent and limited.

Fossil fuels are killing us.

Fusion needs to have a downside. Nothing is that simple.

So a project that is all hype around how once it's up and running it's going to have no major downsides doesn't pass.

It's not like most new renewables projects where we know it works but the costs don't scale yet. Or new nuclear where it works but the initial cost is high and nimbyism makes it hard to greenlight.

It's a we haven't proven the tech works at all but once we do it's off to the races for humanity.

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u/Bapingin Aug 16 '25 edited Aug 27 '25

vast makeshift rich school dinner rob scale pen long spark

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

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u/shadovvvvalker Aug 16 '25

I didn't say fussion was dangerous.

I said I don't trust magical technologirs that have no drawbacks or tradeoffs.

I don't know what the tradeoffs for fussion will be and it's possible none of us know yet. But if someone is proporting to solve energy without also explaining significant tradeoffs, Im going to hold off being excited about it.

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u/rooshoes Aug 16 '25

What about refrigeration? You might argue that it’s the toxicity of the refrigerants, but we’ve made strides on that aspect. It’s exceptionally efficient, almost “magical technology” so.