this is the fuel. In that, in a fusion generator, you are continuously feeding in this hydrogen, these deuterium fuels. And at any one time in a Helion fusion system, and most fusion systems, you have one second of fuel in that system. And so what that means is if you stop putting fuel into that system, fusion just stops. But what it also means is that if something really catastrophic happened and, for whatever reason, you have all that fuel that's not in the system. And
variety of means, physical means, those particles. You push them together. The most common is called laser inertial fusion. We call the technique that Helion uses magneto inertial fusion, because it does a little bit of both.
- So high level, what are the different ways to build a nuclear fusion power plant? Can you explain what a tokamak is, what a stellarator is, and what's the linear approach that Helion is using? - So there are a number of ways to do fusion. And fundamentally, in all fusion approaches, you're trying to do the same fundamental physical
variety of means, physical means, those particles. You push them together. The most common is called laser inertial fusion. systems? And then what does Helion do?
fusion, those hydrogens combine into heliums, and later stage stars can then burn those heliums and they can fuse those together to form even heavier elements and carbons. And those carbons can fuse together and form heavier elements. And that whole stellar process is something that inspires us at Helion to think about what are fusion fuels, not just the simplest ones, but more advanced fusion fuels that we see in stars throughout the - Okay, so there's a million things I want to say. First, zooming out to the biggest possible
As a hospital, the patient dose for the particle accelerator, and then the shielding. And we talked all about the shielding and the operators, which is very similar for a Helion system. We said, "No, no patients at all. No one's inside this thing. Our goal is to generate electricity one day." This was a lot of years ago.
- The following is a conversation with David Kirtley, a nuclear engineer, expert on nuclear fusion, and the CEO of Helion Energy, a company working on building nuclear fusion reactors and have made incredible progress in a short period of time that make it seem possible, like we could actually get there
powers the Sun and the stars. The result is that it's clean fuel from water, no long-lived radioactive waste, inherently safe because a fusion reactor can't melt down. If something goes wrong, the reactor simply stops. And there's no carbon emissions. On a more technical side, Helion uses a different approach to fusion than has traditionally been done. Most fusion efforts have used tokamaks, which are these giant donut-shaped magnetic containment chambers. Helion uses pulsed magnetoinertial
something goes wrong, the reactor simply stops. And there's no carbon emissions. On a more technical side, Helion uses a different approach to fusion than has traditionally been done. Most fusion efforts have used tokamaks, which are these giant donut-shaped magnetic containment chambers. Helion uses pulsed magnetoinertial fusion. David gets into the super technical physics and engineering details in this episode, which was fun and fascinating. I think it's important to
And Part 30 is how hospitals are regulated, particle accelerators, other types of irradiators where as they're operating, you have very high energy particles, ionizing radiation, and you have to protect operators from it. And you have to shield them, and so we build concrete shields. And if you came and visited Helion , you would see plastic, Plastic, borated polyethylene and concrete shielding, To protect operators and equipment from the fusion reactions while they're happening. But again, you turn them off, and those fusion reactions