First they're openly lying about how they get energy out. Only a tiny fraction will come out via their EM coupling, the rest has to be recycled via a heat engine at massive loss even to keep it running. They tell you this indirectly in their press releases but then go on to say that the EM coupling solves the problem.
Then there is only enough potential He3 prpduction worldwide to provide 10% of primary energy for about a minute per year. The overwhelming majority of this of this is a gas mining byproduct. Lunar mining might be possible, but the sheer volume of equipment needed means it's just really complicated and inefficient methane or oil power.
p + B fusion might not be pure scifi, but noone has demonstrated any compelling evidence.
If any of the options have a real application my money is on the general fusion concept purely because it separates the stuff that has to stay the same shape from the stuff that can melt anything by a blanket of liquid metal. I can't think of what that application might be (maybe surface area limited applications like boats? Seems like it's a massive proliferation risk distributing easy neutron sources though).
So solve the problem of fusion producing neutrons which wreck everything by producing neutrons which wreck everything?
> Explain how you know they are lying about energy recycling?
They brag directly in their promotional videos about recovering the 'remaining' thermal energy in their plasma via a heat exchanger back into their magnets.
The second you run your energy through a heat engine twice, you've lost. The entire concept can never be commercialized.
That's even if you haven't built a multi billion dollar boondoggle that will fall apart in ten years due to neutron embrittlement.
DD neutrons are much less damaging, as they produce far less helium by (n,alpha) reactions than DT neutrons. The D3He reaction produces no neutrons at all.
The reactor is cylindrical rather than toroidal, and doesn't need to breed tritium, so one could imagine this neutron absorbing shielding being something that could easily be slid out and replaced, if needed.
No, they are not recovering remaining thermal energy "by a heat exchanger". They are allowing the plasma to expand against a magnetic field, doing work, which is collected as electrical energy. I've been told they reported 95% efficiency at recovering the energy of compression by this means.
After doing some reading I was definitely wrong about expanding and cooling implying thermalising. And they do seem to be doing real engineering around problems you'd only think about if you had something that worked.
I'm still not convinced it's viable (largely because they are acting exactly like scammers for some reason -- perhaps peer pressure?), but I cannot find evidence of the same deal breakers as DT or fission.
I went through a similar process with them, thinking it didn't work for a reason, then finding out the "reason" was the product of my own misunderstanding.
