Helion Energy

Helion is creating the world’s first fusion power plant, enabling a future with unlimited clean electricity powered by deuterium. Mithril and the founders of Helion believe that fusion isn’t a physics problem, but an engineering problem to be solved by building, testing, and iterating fusion systems and subsystems. Built with early and sustained support from Mithril, Helion is the first and only private fusion project to reach fusion-relevant plasma conditions of 9+ keV Ions (100 M°C), demonstrate energy recovery with 95% efficiency, exhibit compression fields of greater than 10 Tesla, and sustain plasmas with lifetimes greater than 1ms.

Helion does three major things differently from other fusion approaches: 1.) Utilize a pulsed fusion system. This helps overcome the hardest physics challenges, keeps the Helion fusion device smaller than other approaches, and allows power output to be adjusted based on need. 2.) Directly recover electricity. Just like regenerative braking in an electric car, Helion’s system is built to recover all unused and new electromagnetic energy efficiently. Other fusion systems heat water to create steam to turn a turbine which loses a lot of energy in the process. 3.) Use deuterium and helium-3 (D-³He) as fuel. Helium-3 is a cleaner, higher octane fuel. This helps keep Helion’s system small and efficient. The Helion design also contemplates a complete self-supplied helium-3 fuel cycle. Helion’s plasma accelerator produces helium-3, a rare helium isotope that is used in quantum computing and critical medical imaging, which Helion uses alongside deuterium as fuel.