How This Fusion Reactor Will Make Electricity by 2024
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Publicado 2022-09-10
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• • Helion Energy Polaris: Electromagnets... Deeper dive into Helion's materials, methods, and fusion approach. (unlisted bonus content)
•Organizations all across the world are racing to achieve a fusion power breakthrough. Many critics say nuclear fusion is impossible, but Helion Energy believes they’ve cracked the code…
If you could design the perfect energy source, it would have an inexhaustible supply of fuel, be environmentally friendly, not take up much space, and have a high degree of safety.
The fuels considered for fusion power have traditionally all been isotopes of hydrogen, but there are better fusion reactions using elements like helium-3. Nuclear Fusion 3.0
What is nuclear fusion? Nuclear fusion explained: an experimental form of power generation that harnesses the energy released when two atoms combine.
How does nuclear fusion work? Every atom is composed of a nucleus and one or more electrons. The nucleus is made up of protons, and neutrons. A fusion reactor heats fusion fuels into plasma and fuses light elements into heavier elements.
What is plasma? If you heat atoms to high enough temperatures, they lose their electrons, forming a hot cloud of charged particles called a plasma.
What about nuclear fusion in the sun? In the core of the sun, gravity produces high pressures, compressing elements to high densities and temperatures. Perfectly extreme conditions for hydrogen to fuse into helium.
There are three key groups of fusion approaches, Magnetic fusion (ITER, Tokamak, Stellarator) Inertial confinement fusion (National Ignition Facility, Indirect drive, direct drive, lasers) and Magneto inertial fusion (Helion).
For fusion power to make commercial electricity for the power grid you need to achieve breakeven, and then net electricity gain to create a viable fusion power plant. That is real world electricity. The triple product is the key figure of merit for fusion.
Some critical components of a fusion generator are electromagnets, capacitors, first wall, and the divertor.
When does Helion expect to begin producing electricity from nuclear fusion, and how much will nuclear fusion power cost? Fusion power is projected to be one of the cheapest sources of clean zero carbon energy and electricity.
To accomplish commercial fusion power, Helion approaches production in a way that’s reminiscent of Elon Musk’s strategy for Tesla. Turning fusion power into a real world technology is going to be a long road, but people said the same thing about SpaceX. Despite the challenges, harnessing the power of the stars and offering mankind unlimited clean energy is a goal worth striving for.
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•Electric Future® has no commercial relationship with Helion Energy. Helion Energy did not solicit, endorse, or approve original commentary made by Electric Future. helionenergy.com/
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•www.tesla.com/
•melscience.com/
•Alexander Svan - SpaceX Animation
•Alex Landress - Penn State Breazeale Reactor
•Music: LEMMiNO Aloft - • LEMMiNO - Aloft (BGM) - CC BY-SA 4.0
Todos los comentarios (21)
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I've been an engineer on one of the biggest laser driven inertial confinement fusion reactors for a couple decades now and I'll be blunt, the vast majority of fusion hype videos on the internet, or anywhere really, are hot garbage not at all worth my time. This video really impressed me though, both in its accuracy and detail, and its relative thoroughness in examination of the RFC scheme for magnetically confined fusion. The sources and citations are quality 👌. Compliments do not come easily or frequently from me, but this video does deserve them. I will subscribe in hopes that the current rigorous heavy science focus isn't lost over time in favor more lazy clickbait trash as I've seen so many other channels unfortunately fall prey to.
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It's 2024. Where is my free electricity????
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2024 has come. so?
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It's 2024, I'm still waiting... Practical fusion and a commercial fusion electrical generation plant is always 30-50 years away.
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I'm almost completely but not quite cynical when it comes to fusion that I invariably ban channels talking about fusion especially ones that invoke the words 'breakthrough' and 'milestone.' Those channels immediately get the 'Do not recommend' treatment. This channel was almost one of those but after fast forwarding through the first 3 or 4 mins I'm glad I watched. I was expecting sensational platitudes, lies, damn lies, outrageously ambitious timelines, clickbait etc; however none were forthcoming. How refreshing! My reward? Facts, a potential solution to the helium 3 problem and a plain admission that "turning fusion power into a cost effective real world technology is going to be a long road." Interesting. It was a good vid this one.
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“The potential is enormous” Love the wordplay.
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It's 2024, no fusion power
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Based on my knowledge, I don’t actually think we are gonna end up with fusion power on a huge scale any time soon, but there is still hope. Look at our progress with tech in the last 20 years, that’s a short time to go from such low tech to a future we couldn’t imagine long ago. I may not know much about technology and engineering, but I sure do love learning about it!
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Love that Helton plans to generate electricity without boiling water to make steam to turn turbines. I’m rooting for Helion. I even love how they’re solving the helium 3 issue.
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Helion’s design is a first in more ways than one. Besides fusion itself, the most interesting aspect is that unlike all other fossil fuel and nuclear electricity-generating schemes, it doesn’t work by heating up water into steam which then turns a turbine to generate electricity. Instead electricity is created directly by manipulating the plasma’s magnetic field to drive a current through wires. That’s amazing. It’s way past time humanity moved beyond steam-powered turbines.
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This is very sound approach for various reasons. Small scale, pulsed heat generation and electricy generation via plasma and not via steam or hot gas, relatively simple to modify and optimise. Hats off !!!!
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Great video!! I liked that you took one company and then expanded on the issue! Focused and precise!✌🏻
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Finally… a fusion video that actually explains how they intend to get power out of the fusion reaction. Thank you!
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There are several innovations here. The reaction is unique for the fusion industry (but difficult to hit temperature); the conversion method is unique (though Lockheed explored this approach). The use of fused silica in a fusion reactor is innovative. We have only seen a few teams use glass inside their reactors; Sam Cohen's team at Princeton is one example. Glass is an electrical insulator; which reduces conduction losses out of the plasma. Almost all fusion reactor vacuum chambers have to be made using metal walls because of vacuum conditions; but the issue is that the metal conducts the plasma away; leading to large losses of energy.
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Love the intro: "Hey, are you the guy building fusion reactors?"
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pretty cool. watched quite a few videos on the topic generally, but on this startup specifically and it explained what they're doing pretty well. :sip: thanks
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I work for a company that builds the capacitors that help them achieve this! It's pretty cool
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So let me get this right... to create a fusion reactor, you basically created two coil gun plasma throwers and aimed them at each other? Awesome!
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Thank you for this video, kind regards. Question can you make from old plastic, plasma to made fusion possible ?
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I applaud the efforts to simplify this here, although I missed hearing the narration note that deuterium is actually an isotope (with doubled nuclei) aka “heavy hydrogen”. Many labels are flawed but at least that’s familiar to us in the last century.
