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Helion’s fusion power purchase agreement with Microsoft

helionenergy.com

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Re: Helion’s fusion power purchase agreement with Microsoft

#101

Post by piloto_ciego »

deweller wrote: post #67
thepasswordis wrote: post #58

HN, what the heck has happened to you? What is with all of these cynical comments? Helion is an awesome company, their technology is real, and this is cool. >oh no this might not work! Do you guys not understand that you’re posting on the forum of a venture capital firm/startup accelerator?

8 years ago, HN was a place full of optimism and excitement. I've noticed a marked increase in cynicism in this place. Like most of the world, it suffers from extreme tribalism and group think. I miss the former positive HN. And the positive world. sigh

The cynicism is an op, or something - because I don’t have the evidence to say it’s definitively an “op” - as the kids say.

But legitimately, there is a strong cynical bubble in the zeitgeist now, and it’s dangerous.

There are a few things this cynicism says.

1. “People suck and are terrible.” 2. “People are stupid.” 3. “We can’t change anything.” 4. “Great calamity is going to happen and we are powerless to stop it.”

This is a lie. The world doesn’t suck, it’s much better than it used to be, people aren’t terrible - if people were more bad than good on average we’d still be hitting each other with clubs and going Conan on people. We aren’t stupid - it’s just that the stupid people are louder. And while the possibilities for great calamity exist, they are not guaranteed.

This may be more emergent than anything else, but trust your neighbors, treat people nicely, and you - yes individually each of you - need to start trying to make the world better.

Nobody is going to do it for us. I know what it’s like to feel bleak, trust me I do - but that’s just a call to action. It’s not “techno optimism” we need - it’s optimism, there are radical solutions that don’t use a single transistor.

Re: Helion’s fusion power purchase agreement with Microsoft

#102

Post by izend »

jnsaff2 wrote: post #50
Tenemo wrote: post #41

Real Engineering did a great video on this company and their approach, specifically: https://youtu.be/_bDXXWQxK38

Also a rebuttal to this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3vUPhsFoniw

Thanks great video describing the neutron production issues and the cross-section issues of their fuel choice.

Re: Helion’s fusion power purchase agreement with Microsoft

#103

Post by piloto_ciego »

rf15 wrote: post #95
deweller wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

8 years ago, HN was a place full of optimism and excitement. I've noticed a marked increase in cynicism in this place. Like most of the world, it suffers from extreme tribalism and group think. I miss the former positive HN. And the positive world. sigh

Maybe we just grew up? There is still plenty we are enthusiastic and positive about here, but discussion sure has become more nuanced.

Getting older is no excuse for cynicism.

Re: Helion’s fusion power purchase agreement with Microsoft

#104

Post by DennisP »

kredd wrote: post #93
thepasswordis wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that true? Seems like this summer I’m driving my Tesla to watch a Starship launch and using my starlink for internet access along the way. Meanwhile I’m using GitHub copilot to help me write code to uses some of openAIs products in my existing SaaS offering. There is a constant stream of waymos driving past my house (with nobody in them) and I’m playing Skyrim in VR. What technology are you talking about that didn…

The general attitude in my circles is none of those technologies have had any positive impact on our or our loved one’s lives. Don’t get me wrong, they’re all “cool and awesome”, but when you put it into perspective of “is life easier” or “has our happiness increased”, my answer would be a strong no. This general skepticism leads to younger generation to be more cynical, especially when things that have been promised…

Here's one with an impact: one of my relatives was diagnosed seven years ago with stage 4 melanoma, which a couple decades ago was a one-year death sentence. She got three doses of immunotherapy, her tumors shrank, and last year her oncologist said don't even bother coming in for scans anymore, you're fine.

Re: Helion’s fusion power purchase agreement with Microsoft

#105

Post by nindalf »

nforgerit wrote: post #94
thepasswordis wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that true? Seems like this summer I’m driving my Tesla to watch a Starship launch and using my starlink for internet access along the way. Meanwhile I’m using GitHub copilot to help me write code to uses some of openAIs products in my existing SaaS offering. There is a constant stream of waymos driving past my house (with nobody in them) and I’m playing Skyrim in VR. What technology are you talking about that didn…

Well what's the fraction of success stories compared to the promises given? And: The success stories you're mentioning would have been there (even earlier in many cases) if they'd be consistently developed over time. Tesla did not invent the e-car nor did SpaceX have the idea to go to space. Maybe it's just people being fed up with glossy techbro marketing whilst being fired because of "past overhiring"?

Too often I've seen people inventing things in a lab being denigrated for not commercialising and scaling their invention. That's the top comment on any battery announcement by a research group.

> Tesla did not invent the e-car nor did SpaceX have the idea to go to space.

You're doing the opposite, taking credit away from people who've actually succeeded at scale. I don't like Twitter guy at all, but even I can give credit to Tesla and SpaceX for becoming commercially successful with fundamentally new ideas (electric cars, reusable rockets). That's a massive achievement.

Even Helion, the company this thread is about - they'd be nothing if they didn't actually operate a commercial power plant outputting 50MW at some point. If they fail despite trying everything and someone else does it years later are you going to be on that thread saying "yeah, commercialising fusion is no big deal, Helion had a prototype going years ago"? No you wouldn't, because it's actually a massive deal if someone could do that.

Re: Helion’s fusion power purchase agreement with Microsoft

#106

Post by DennisP »

XorNot wrote: post #39
HDThoreaun wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Electricity is a commodity. How could they possibly have a working product that they can’t sell? Just hook it up to the grid and there you go.

Nuclear fission works right now but is frequently too expensive per megawatt-hour to build. There's no real reason fusion couldn't end up the same way.

That's true for fusion in general, but all the aneutronic designs look especially cheap to build, Helion's included.

Re: Helion’s fusion power purchase agreement with Microsoft

#107

Post by DennisP »

pfdietz wrote: post #85
XorNot wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nuclear fission works right now but is frequently too expensive per megawatt-hour to build. There's no real reason fusion couldn't end up the same way.

And realize this also depends on how much the competition costs. If renewables and storage continue to get cheaper, fusion that "works" in an economic sense could transition back to "doesn't work". It's the fate of most technologies to fail this way, so it shouldn't be surprising (or a source of dishonor) if the same thing happens to fusion. That doesn't mean money spent developing fusion is necessarily wasted; the s…

Bear in mind that Helion's reactor is 50MW, about the size of three large wind turbines. If it works they'll be mass-producing them in factories and shipping them by rail, and they'll have a declining cost curve just like anything else.

Re: Helion’s fusion power purchase agreement with Microsoft

#108

Post by femto113 »

pfdietz wrote: post #72
rashkov wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this is needlessly cynical, no?

It is very needlessly cynical. Helion has a number of very clever ideas, integrated in a way that has impressed me over the years. I would not dismiss them out of hand.

If they are really only 5 years from producing sellable power they are already capable of a science demo that would render this sort of vapid publicity stunt pointless. I’ve set a reminder to check back in 5 years, if the cynicism was genuinely needless I’ll apologize.

Re: Helion’s fusion power purchase agreement with Microsoft

#109

Post by gpm »

chasil wrote: post #100
DennisP wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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...

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".

Re: Helion’s fusion power purchase agreement with Microsoft

#110

Post by aww_dang »

thepasswordis wrote: post #58

HN, what the heck has happened to you? What is with all of these cynical comments? Helion is an awesome company, their technology is real, and this is cool. >oh no this might not work! Do you guys not understand that you’re posting on the forum of a venture capital firm/startup accelerator?

Why is the tech real this time? Why is it an awesome company?

Give us some substance. Dismissing critics as cynics doesn't tell me anything as a layman. A good exchange between a booster and a debunker adds something to the discussion.

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