[DennisP]

Their sixth reactor achieved 100M degree temps, ran for 16 months under vacuum, did thousands of fusion shots, and demonstrated D-He3 fusion.

Their seventh will start up in 2024, and is supposed to demonstrate net electricity from D-He3.

Their eighth is supposed to be the commercial reactor. If they don't achieve that, they will have to pay penalties to Microsoft.

[zardo]

> Their sixth reactor achieved 100M degree temps, ran for 16 months under vacuum, did thousands of fusion shots, and demonstrated D-He3 fusion.

I don't have anything near the expertise to evaluate Helions approach, but I know enough about fusion to say that just because you have a design that can achieve fusion conditions does not mean the approach could even theoretically lead to a power plant. e.g. electrostatic fusors

[DennisP]

True, but FRCs like Helion uses are thought to be workable.

[chasil]

Divorced from both cynicism and hype, how does this compare to the recent advance in hohlraum laser fusion?

https://www.llnl.gov/news/lawrence-livermore-national-labora...

[gpm]

It's a completely different approach to fusion.

Lasers are really inefficient (poor at transforming electrical energy into light energy). They got more energy out than they put into the pellet, but nowhere near as much energy as they put into the lasers. Which means that turning that experiment into commercial fusion is... "not straightforward".

[DennisP]

NIF's lasers are only 1% efficient but they date back to the 1990s. Equivalent modern lasers are over 20% efficient. If they had modern lasers they'd have produced fusion power of about 20% of the input power.

They seem to scale well, too. In their big shot they increased the laser power by 8% and output went up 230%.

That said, compared to Helion it'd still be a lot harder to make a practical reactor with NIF's approach.

[pfdietz]

It's much more promising than the laser approach, IMO.