Helion Energy on Friday announced two milestones for the company and commercial fusion sector: reaching a plasma temperature of 150 million degrees Celsius and being the first private venture to test its fusion device with a radioactive fuel called tritium.
The Everett, Wash.-based company is part of the global race to solve the physics and engineering challenge of harnessing fusion reactions to generate usable energy.
Though its technology has yet to reach that milestone, Helion last summer broke ground on a commercial power facility in Eastern Washington that aims to begin smashing atoms in 2028 — an ambitious goal that has many skeptics.
As construction on the plant proceeds, the company is continuing crucial tests at its headquarters on its seventh-generation device, Polaris, which achieved the new temperature and fuel benchmarks.
“We have a long history now of building fusion prototypes,” said David Kirtley, Helion’s CEO. “We’ve been able to show that we can progressively …. push the boundaries and get closer and closer to those power plants.”
The fusion industry’s challenge is creating plasmas that are much hotter than the sun, incredibly dense, and then sustaining them. The whole operation needs to be sufficiently energy efficient that excess power is created and captured.
While the sun and stars achieve fusion naturally, no one on Earth — in academia or industry — has reached that goal and some believe that goal is still many years away.
A magnetic approach to fusion
Helion aims to tame fusion using magneto-inertial, pulsed operation, field-reversed configuration devices. What that means is the system sends a pulse of energy into the fusion device where magnetic fields compress the plasma and fusion occurs. As the plasma pushes against the field, it creates a current that sends electricity back into the system.
The company has published little peer-reviewed research, but shared information about its recent progress with select experts.
“Seeing the data from the Polaris test campaign, including record-setting temperatures and gains from the fuel mix in their system, indicates strong progress. Our ability to get fusion on the grid requires approaches that enable rapid turnaround in design and testing, and these results reflect the growing capability of the U.S. fusion ecosystem,” Jean Paul Allain, associate director of Science for Fusion Energy Sciences in the Department of Energy, said in a statement.
Ryan McBride, a fusion expert and University of Michigan professor in nuclear engineering, electrical engineering and applied physics, also reviewed Helion’s diagnostic data.
McBride said in a statement it was “exciting to see evidence” of the two milestones and he looks forward “to seeing more progress.”
Kirtley said the team is preparing publications that describe the diagnostic tools used to verify the temperature record, which surpassed the company’s earlier peak of 100 million degrees Celsius.
The ultimate goal for the device is to hit 200 million degrees C, he said, adding “we’re not announcing that today. But given the results we’ve had so far, we’re very excited about and optimistic about reaching that milestone.”
Industry momentum builds
Helion is also highlighting its use of tritium in combination with deuterium as a fusion fuel. Both are forms of hydrogen, but deuterium is nonradioactive, so most companies run experiments with that isotope alone as it’s safer to handle and more abundant. Helion’s commercial fuel mix will be deuterium and helium-3, which requires higher plasma temperatures for fusion but is more efficient for electricity production.
Running tests with tritium provided insights into how the helium-3 could perform, Kirtley said, and allowed the company to demonstrate its ability to manage the fuel through its entire system.
The fusion industry itself keeps getting hotter as tech companies and others are increasingly desperate for new clean energy sources for data centers, transportation and industry. This week, fusion startup Inertia announced $450 million in new funding, while B.C.’s General Fusion last month announced plans to go public via a $1 billion SPAC.
For decades, cheap energy and flat electricity demand stifled fusion development, Kirtley said. That’s no longer the case.
“I’m really excited there’s such an excitement around fusion,” he said, “and it’s pushing us.”
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