They’re using D-He3 fusion to make less neutrons, because they want to capture electricity directly from the plasma, but that’s harder than D-T fusion.
Plasma has MHD instabilities, which are also why solar flares happen. These are worse at higher power levels. Devices of the type Helion uses have been unable to manage conditions that produce much fusion, even D-T fusion, without instabilities getting bad.
Helion has said they rely on particle gyroradius in magnetic fields being comparable to plasma size for stability. But fusion requires many collisions, inevitably, so most particles would then escape before fusing.
I really want to read the takedown of Helion.
For starters, see this and this. To summarize:
They’re using D-He3 fusion to make less neutrons, because they want to capture electricity directly from the plasma, but that’s harder than D-T fusion.
Plasma has MHD instabilities, which are also why solar flares happen. These are worse at higher power levels. Devices of the type Helion uses have been unable to manage conditions that produce much fusion, even D-T fusion, without instabilities getting bad.
Helion has said they rely on particle gyroradius in magnetic fields being comparable to plasma size for stability. But fusion requires many collisions, inevitably, so most particles would then escape before fusing.
There is no solution for their approach.
Link is broken
fixed, thanks