Helion, or Helion Energy, is a startup founded in Everett, Washington in 2013. The startup specialises in fusion technology and it made the extraordinary claim that it can commercialise the process that powers the sun, which will lead to cheaper energy and might make fossil fuel almost obsolete.
While some doubt this claim, including nuclear scientists, Helion has already raised $570 million in venture capital, being backed by investors such as Open AI’s CEO Sam Altman and Peter Thiel, the founder of PayPal, the online payment service used for everything from bill payments to PayPal bookies.
In this article, we will tell you more about the goal of Helion Energy and how the company means to realise it in the near future.
Helion’s Goal
Nowadays, people are becoming more and more concerned about the use of fossil fuels which harm humans, animals and the environment as a whole. Some turn to promoting renewable, or green, energy, but others are criticising its capabilities and instead hail the efficiency of nuclear power. That’s where Helion comes aboard.
Helion proposed its idea of a new fusion reactor that could create entirely clean energy. Let’s briefly explain how the proposed fusion reactor is supposed to work by defining the process of fusion and comparing it to the widely used process of fission.
Nuclear energy is produced through fission, a process in which a heavy element, usually uranium-235, is split by bombarding its nucleus with neutrons. Additional neutrons are also released and they create a chain reaction. Fission thus releases a massive amount of energy.
Fusion works the opposite way; two nuclei of lighter elements, such as deuterium and tritium (isotopes of hydrogen), are fused together to form a single heavier nucleus. The sun and other stars are powered through fusion energy as a result of nuclear fusion reactions.
However, the process of fusion requires a lot of energy (the atoms are heated in preparation for the reaction) and although energy is released as a result of the fusion, this method is less efficient than nuclear fusion as the energy required for it can be more than the energy released from it.
Helion Criticism
This is why Helion critics are doubtful about the claims of the startup. On one hand, they don’t see a reason why fusion should be used when fission is already practically implemented in nuclear reactors, and by default, produces much more energy than it uses.
On another hand, they doubt that the company can come up with a functional fusion reactor that produces more energy than it uses.
There has been only one fusion “net energy gain” reaction so far achieved by a research group from the Lawrence Livermore’s National Ignition Facility in 2022. They created a fusion reaction, through the use of lasers, that released more energy than it used.
However, they didn’t take into account the total energy necessary to power the lasers themselves and they have not yet successfully repeated the experiment.
Others also note that the reactor might not be feasible insofar that it might not be possible to connect it to the power grid and make it produce consistent energy.
Additionally, the process of fusion is very expensive, so even if Helion manages to overcome all obstacles and create a fusion reactor that provides a consistent flow of energy, the price tag might be too high for commercial use.
Fission, or nuclear, reactors on the other hand provide the most affordable energy and countries like France rely heavily on them (65-70% of France’s electricity is nuclear).
Backing Helion
Although nuclear energy has proven time and time again that it’s the most cost-efficient type of energy, it has many opponents. Fossil fuel and green energy proponents alike speak of the risks associated with nuclear energy; they include mining risks, waste management risks, and mishandling risks that could lead to mass-scale accidents like those in Chernobyl and Fukushima.
Truth is that nuclear energy has really bad rep and many people and companies don’t want to be associated with it which leads to the emergence of startups like Helion that propose a clean alternative to it.
Helion is not the only fusion startup, but it’s perhaps the best known one and it has already accumulated more than half a billion in venture capital. It received backing from PayPal’s Peter Thiel, Open AI’s Sam Altman, Facebook’s Dustin Moskovitz and LinkedIn’s Reid Hoffman.
Many proponents of Helion use their fundraising success to argue that Helion is a viable company. While that’s impressive, let us not forget that Theranos, the now-infamous health technology company, raised billions and received backing from some of the most powerful and wealthy investors.
We want to stay positive as affordable fusion energy would resolve many problems that fossil fuel and nuclear face, but we believe it might take a while before that happens.
Still, Helion is optimistic. It revealed in 2021 that its sixth prototype called Trenta managed to reach temperature of more than 100 million ˚C which would make it viable for commercial use. Helion set a clear goal for itself – produce the first viable fusion reactor by 2028. We hope that by that time, we can update you with the good news.