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Helion Trenta: A Nuclear Fusion Reactor Unlike Anything You've Seen Before

If we told you a team of nuclear engineers just completed a fusion reactor that could blow everything else into last week, would you believe us? It's not like we're dealing with an energy source powerful enough to "save" humanity or anything. Oh, wait, that's exactly what's happening.
Helion Trenta 9 photos
Photo: Helion Energy
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Say hello to Helion Energy and their all-new, never-before-seen Trenta series nuclear fusion reactor. Until December 2022, this technology was purported to be one of the American private sector's most closely guarded secrets. That was until the Real Engineering YouTube channel was granted unparalleled access inside Helion's Everet, Washington, main facility.

Founded less than a decade ago in 2013, Helion Energy's already staked its claim as one of the most important private alternative energy companies in the Western Hemisphere. The company faced scrutiny over the years, with the famous retired nuclear researcher Daniel Jassby describing Helion's Deuterium and Helium-3 fusion experiments as "voodoo fusion" in 2019.

Only three years later, the technology which goes into every nut and bolt of Helion's Trenta nuclear reactor could still be called voodoo magic by the average outsider. Make no mistake; it's all real. A small armchair physics lesson is needed to understand how and why Helion's Trenta reactor is so spectacular.

Most of us are familiar with fission and fusion, the two forms by which radioactive atoms release their energy. Nuclear fission or atom splitting, is a much more well-understood and established science. American scientists at Los Alamos Laboratories in New Mexico had built a fully working fission-powered thermal rocket as far back as the late 1960s called NERVA. We've been building nuclear fission bombs and missiles for even longer.

Helion Trenta
Photo: Helion Enerfy
Fission is the only nuclear reaction that's native here on Earth; all one needs to do is dig up some Uranium or Plutonium to see it in action. However, we can't recommend doing so lest you wind up with any number of "interesting" radiation-induced diseases. Nuclear fusion, on the other hand, is another beast entirely.

Though scientists have long been able to sustain nuclear fusion for minuscule periods, these reactions always involve inputting far more power than the output. For nuclear fusion to be viable, engineers had to reach what's known as scientific breakeven. A point where the level of power generated by a contained fusion reaction equals, or better yet, exceeds the amount of power used to form it.

Scientific breakeven was achieved for the first time on December 5th, 2022, at the National Ignition Facility in Livermore, California. Achieving a breakeven factor of 1.5 and smashing the U.K.-based JET Laboratory's previous record of 0.67 achieved in 1997. If you can believe it, Helion's founder David Kirtley is certain his sixth-gen Trenta reactor has the potential to do even better.

The way the Trenta reactor generates nuclear fusion is nothing short of groundbreaking. One that works in a much different principal than JET Labs or even the National Ignition Facility. Whereas the JET Lab's Tokamak-style reactor forms a single ring of highly energized plasma, Helion's Trenta forms two masses of superheated, radioactive plasma at either end of the reactor.

Helion Trenta
Photo: Helion Enerfy
The reaction is held stable by banks of extremely powerful electromagnets housed in what David Kirtley calls the machine's "formation section." In which, room-temperature, pressurized helium-3 and deuterium gas are injected into this formation chamber in a fraction of a second. Two such formation sections sit at either end of the reactor.

In the case of Trenta, the fuel in question consists of Helium-3 and Deuterium. As opposed to Helium-3 and Tritium used in the JET Tokamak reactor. From there, powerful electromagnetic pulses are sent in a torrent in the same space inside a vacuum as the surrounding fuel. The effects of these pules strip electrons from the atoms of the fuel, creating that oh-so iconic field of glowing plasma iconic to the field of nuclear fusion.

Traditional nuclear fusion factories, like our Sun, for instance, use their immense gravity to keep things in check. Without the benefit of enough gravity to keep the Solar System together, the same powerful electromagnetic pressure pulses that form the plasma, in the first place, also keep the two separate plasma rings from touching or even melting the surrounding chamber.

Through a series of compression sections, radioactive plasma rings at either end of the reactor speed towards each other at ever-increasing velocities. By the time the two rings meet in the center, temperatures exceed 10,000,000 degrees Fahrenheit. At the point of collision, the star-like temperatures and pressures join the immense kinetic energy from both plasma rings traveling in excess of one million mph (1,609,344 kph, 300 km per second).

Helion Trenta
Photo: Helion Enerfy
It all comes together to create conditions unlike anything seen natively in our solar system outside the Sun. Conditions that are perfect for highly energetic nuclear fusion. The level of heat involved in the reaction is in the hundreds of millions of degrees. The fusion process creates novel atoms of Helium-4 with an extra Hydrogen atom, along with an abundance of containable thermal energy captured via fiber-optic cables. Let's compare this to Tokamak reactors that use large water jackets heated by a fusion-generated plasma core. By comparison, Trenta makes more traditional forms of fusion seem as mundane as your average fission reactor using the same operating principles.

Without boiling water and without a turbine or drive shaft of any kind, the electromagnetic field around Trenta's fusion reaction essentially does all the work itself to the tune of much higher efficiencies. To say the practical applications for Helion's Trenta-based reactors and all its future descendants are almost limitless wouldn't be hyperbole. Be it in large-scale electrical supply duty for the world's major cities or even the next generation of nuclear-powered space rockets. Could it rid us of the menace of foreign oil?

Well, in theory, yes. In practice, nobody has the slightest clue. Though scientific breakeven is now at hand, what's less abundantly clear is whether Helion will achieve what's known as economic breakeven. Like scientific breakeven, economic breakeven occurs when the capital gains from selling fusion-derived energy to the masses exceed the enormous costs of supporting its vast infrastructure requirements.

It's important to remember that gravitating budget-conscious global politicians to the cause of nuclear energy advancements is just as important as the reactors themselves. This phenomenon might be the last standing hurdle between humanity and basically limitless nuclear fusion energy.

Helion Trenta
Photo: Helion Enerfy
Many thanks to the Real Engineering YouTube channel for showing the world what might be the coolest technological development in any field of the entire year. Check out their video below if you want to learn more.




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