DYNA JOURNAL ENGINEERING

This fact, which was first announced at the end of last year by the National Ignition Facility (NIF) of the American Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (see https://www.revistadyna.com/noticias-de-ingenieria/fusion-nuclear-en-national-ignition-facility), although it could not be reproduced, is a basic step for all the projects that are being developed on this technology. In addition, HELION, and this is what has surprised the energy community the most, has made a commitment to MICROSOFT to supply it with 50 MW of power by 2028 or pay the corresponding penalties.
Contrary to the technology developed by the ITER project, based on the "tokamak" process, the one with the longest tradition in previous work on plasma creation and maintenance and fusion attempts, the HELION process, known as magnetic acceleration, has done so with two deuterium plasmas and a small proportion of helium3 in two chambers separated by about 12 m, which are launched by pulses towards the center, producing fusion by collision. A temperature of 100 million degrees has been reached in this fusion, and electrical generation is considered possible due to the magnetic field obtained in the expansion of the plasma, which induces a current directly in the equipment linked to the chamber.
The Tentra reactor, which is the one used for the first experiments and to reach these 100 million degrees centigrade, will be dismantled and, in its place, a larger one will be built, the Polaris, with which HELION intends to achieve its goal of positive fusion and electrical generation. Polaris will be the seventh prototype used by HELION and the first to produce electricity, although the next one, Antares, will be the truly commercial one.
The aforementioned National Ignition Facility process, which is based on the bombardment of capsules containing deuterium and tritium by very high-power lasers, is joined by a number of other companies that also aim to achieve positive fusion results long before ITER does. Also MIT with the startup Commonwealth Fusion Systems and its tokamak SPARC promises net generation by 2025 and electricity in 2030 or TAE Technologies with its Da Vinci accelerator also does so by 2030. All of them with lower power than ITER, but with generation dates earlier than those foreseen for the latter: who will be first in this exciting race?