> With a dense high-energy plasma, you're dealing with a turbulent fluid where any imperfection in your magnetic confinement will likely dmaage the container.
This is true of Tokamak type designs based around continuous confinement, but perhaps less so with something like Helion's design which is based on magnetically firing plasma blobs at each other and achieving fusion through inertial confinement (cf NIF laser-based fusion), with repeated/pulsed operation rather rather than continuous confinement.
No doubt the containment vessel will still suffer damage, but I guess it's a matter of degree - is it still economically viable to operate or not, which I guess needs to be verified experimentally by scaling up and operating for a sufficiently long period of time. Presumably they at least believe the approach is viable or they'd not be pursuing it (and have an agreement in place with Microsoft to power one of their data centers with one of the early units).
There are serious theoretical objections to Helion approach so I am very sceptical to their approach. Stellarators on other hand do not have any known theoretical obstacles and avoid the problem of plasma instabilities.
What are the theoretical problems? Aren't they already achieving fusion with their test reactors, so what's the problem with scaling up and producing net energy?
OK, and hobby rocketists have nailed a SpaceX style landing too, but so what?
Have you seen the videos of Helion's reactor - hardly a basement project. Sam Altman (OpenAI) also has personally invested hundreds of millions of dollars into Helion, presumably after some due diligence!
And also an r/fusion post documenting prior claims:
> “The Helion Fusion Engine will enable profitable fusion energy in 2019,” - NBF 7/18/2014.
> “If our physics holds, we hope to reach that goal (net energy gain) in the next three years,” - D. Kirtley, CEO of Helion in the Wall Street Journal 2014.
> “Helion will demonstrate net energy gain within 24 months, and 50-MWe pilot plant by 2019,” - NBF 8/18/2015.
> “Helion will attain net energy output within a couple of years and commercial power in 6 years,” - Science News 1/27/2016.
> “Helion plans to reach breakeven energy generation in less than three years, nearly ten times faster than ITER,” - NBF 10/1/2018.
> Their newest claim on their website is: "We expect that Polaris will be able to demonstrate the production of a small amount of net electricity by 2024."
I'm sure all this came up in any due diligence as well. They are on Series E after all.
More than a decade of missed milestones is not the type of company that gets this many rounds of investment.
A lot of people really want fusion to happen, and happen sooner. I think that leads to people taking far higher risks with the capital. This sort of investment is always risky, but donating to a grander cause of technology advancement can be a reason for the investment, in addition to expected future value of the investment.
High-profile investors are not a signal that something will be successful, no matter how smart they may be in some other domain. Lots of people who should have known better invested in Theranos, too.
Helion's device is a toy. They have nothing that would let them scale past designs of the 70s and say a lot of very suspect things, like that they want to use worse fuel mixes and calling one of the oldest and simplest designs "new" and "unique".
This is simply wrong. They have a very clever combination of ideas that is truly new, so new that people are having a hard time understanding just how clever it is.
The IM video you posted, btw, is not to be taken seriously. It appears to be based solely on the Real Engineering video, not on Helion itself.
This is true of Tokamak type designs based around continuous confinement, but perhaps less so with something like Helion's design which is based on magnetically firing plasma blobs at each other and achieving fusion through inertial confinement (cf NIF laser-based fusion), with repeated/pulsed operation rather rather than continuous confinement.
No doubt the containment vessel will still suffer damage, but I guess it's a matter of degree - is it still economically viable to operate or not, which I guess needs to be verified experimentally by scaling up and operating for a sufficiently long period of time. Presumably they at least believe the approach is viable or they'd not be pursuing it (and have an agreement in place with Microsoft to power one of their data centers with one of the early units).