Helion

Helion raises $425M Series F fundraise to scale commercialized fusion power, bringing Helion’s valuation to $5.425B post-money. Read more:?https://lnkd.in/gvzBBwyj

Polaris’ 50 MJ capacitor bank. Our energy bank is comprised of thousands of pulsed power units that each contain capacitors, diagnostics, safety mechanisms, advanced semiconductors, and more – everything that’s needed to monitor the electrical health of Helion’s fusion machines. These units are rigorously built as they move through the assembly line, tested at Polaris’ operating voltages, and sent here to Ursa, for final integration.

Meet Miguel, Fusion Technician at Helion! Miguel combines his passion for physics with a desire to protect our planet. In his work, Miguel qualifies circuit boards that control our fusion machines and helps solve critical challenges on our path to scaling fusion power. #electronics #manufacturing #physics?

We’re hiring a Senior People Operations Generalist to help build a workplace where employees thrive and drive our mission forward.?

Fusion energy is the last frontier in energy innovation, and it is essential to achieving energy dominance. Helion is building it right here, in the U.S., starting with our first power plant for?Microsoft by 2028. For the U.S. to win the race to fusion deployment, we need to focus on three key areas: establishing fusion as a national security priority, building a resilient supply chain for fusion, and creating bold regulatory pathways for the rapid scaling of fusion. That's what I emphasized in this Special Competitive Studies Project - SCSP report on Scaling Fusion Energy. I've spoken about this before - to have clean, carbon-free energy, deployable at scale, it must be mass manufacturable at scale. We've already learned this lesson the hard way: when we don’t build the full support ecosystem for our innovations, we get left behind. The U.S. pioneered solar and battery breakthroughs only to watch China dominate the manufacturing. Companies in China are openly replicating our fusion machine designs, and they have the full resources of the state backing them. Many key components for fusion experiments, like power semiconductors, capacitors, high-quality metals, and materials for magnets are supplied by China already. To keep the U.S. competitive and retain our national security, we need to use all the tools at our disposal to the fullest extent - we need to be bold. Let's declare the rapid commercialization of fusion energy a national security priority, unlocking and focusing the power of the U.S. government to secure our leadership.

We now have more than 2 grams (20,000 Ci) of tritium onsite in Ursa, enabling D-T operations in Polaris. Polaris will operate with three fuel mixtures – D-D, D-T, and D-He-3 – each with distinct testing benefits. As Polaris progresses through testing, tritium will play a vital role in understanding the machine’s performance and reliability. To receive this amount of tritium is no small feat. Our Radiation Safety and Fuel Cycle teams worked extensively to ensure safe and efficient handling on the way to secure storage in Polaris’ fuel processing lab.

This simulation builds on the work presented in our APS DPP 2024 presentation, showing a similar 3D simulation case to the 2D axisymmetric simulation presented. There are some notable differences in the translation and merging phases of the simulation, exhibiting global stability after the FRCs merge and compress. The FRC has a confinement lifetime sufficient to be compressed to thermonuclear conditions. We continue to develop and integrate additional physics packages to account for all relevant energy loss and heating mechanisms. This progress boosts our confidence as we scale our world-class simulation capability at Helion. Watch the original presentation:?https://lnkd.in/gHNzBwbu

The beginnings of precision manufacturing at Helion’s machine shop #manufacturing #machining #hardware

Our pulsed approach to fusion naturally lends itself to the direct recovery of electricity. It lowers risk, enables efficient operations, and poses tractable physics problems that are amenable to engineering solutions. These advantages combine to propel us on the path to abundant, sustainable, carbon-free energy as quickly as possible. Read more about using a pulsed FRC approach to fusion here:?https://lnkd.in/gnMFiuFy

Thanks, Sam, for stopping by to talk with the team!