Construction of world’s 1st nuclear fusion plant starts in Washington
https://interestingengineering.com/energy/world-first-fusion-power-plant-helion
Construction of world’s 1st nuclear fusion plant starts in Washington
https://interestingengineering.com/energy/world-first-fusion-power-plant-helion
17 Comments
A Washington-based company has started the construction of a nuclear fusion facility in Chelan County, Orion. Helion Energy aims to produce low-cost, clean electric energy using a fuel derived from water.
The plan is to produce electricity from fusion by 2028 and supply the power to Microsoft data centres.
“Today is an important day – not just for Helion, but for the entire fusion industry – as we unleash a new era of energy independence and industrial renewal,” said David Kirtley, Helion’s co-founder and CEO.
How is that possible. Does Helion have access to alien technology
No way we’ve been keeping up with what would be necessary for this. I’m not surprised data centers are the motivation though. Very curious about what the actual parameters of the deal are, specifically what happens in the event of a delay, and who gets paid out….
Chelan, great… just down wind from the old Hanford nuclear reactor built in the 50s and has leaking kegs of radioactive sludge leaching into the soil of the Tri-cities.
If they are planning to deliver energy from fusion by 2028, I’d like to have what they are smoking.
Based on Helion’s demonstrated performance to predictions, this project is really exciting. This is their 8th iteration fusion reactor, and they pretty much nailed their goals at every prior step up until this one (7th iteration build is still in process). Basically if they are saying they will generate power at this facility, they have decent credibility to that claim.
However, this just seems so under the radar and without fanfare. If they are successful, this has the potential to step humanity into a new technical age. Fusion power has been promised for so many years we all just have news fatigue on the topic.
China has MULTIPLE fusion reactors under construction. China’s reactors will also be multiple times larger than this Microsoft one.
This is the dumbest article ever. Just delete it. Absolute rubbish, all of it
Solar will probably be responsible for the majority of the worlds energy production by the time this money pit is built.
I live next to Paine Field, and this article was a bizzare way to learn that Helion is breaking fusion milestones three blocks away, already. WA is freaking wild.
https://www.heraldnet.com/news/everett-nuclear-fusion-energy-company-nets-first-customer-microsoft/
It’s wild that according to the science, no one has completely cracked fusion yet, but people managing to get money out of investors for this.
I’m pretty sure some of those projects are scams. I’l not saying this one is… But 2028? Hum………………
Just gonna leave this here….
The startup backed by OpenAI’s Sam Altman and SoftBank’s venture capital arm aims to produce clean energy.
Helion Energy
But it ain’t the first? You have the ITER in France, whilst technically still refered to as an experiment its purpose is to prove the viability of Fusion power at scale, it’s huge.
To refer to this start-up as the worlds 1st fusion plant is misleading. And demonstrably false.
Exciting times, cycled fusion as a gateway to sustained fusion. Good luck to the team!
[A great explainer video of how the reactor works. ](https://youtu.be/_bDXXWQxK38?si=qUGJGqdb3SsUhoHE)
Why are we not just building thorium reactors? It’s proven tech and much better in every way over uranium based — to include no by-products that can be made into nuclear bombs.
Please remove this post as the pop up ads are phishy and bring you to suspicious websites. Not sure how this was overlooked, but it’s certainly not a good site in general.
Ugh