There’s news out of Washington’s most mysterious fusion company this week.
Helion, a well-capitalized startup aiming by 2028 to bring a commercial fusion plant online and start selling power to Microsoft, announced that it has leased a plot of land from Chelan County, WA, and broken ground on its 50 MW Orion facility.
- The company is backed by OpenAI’s Sam Altman and has raised more than $1B to date, with a reported valuation of $5.4B as of January, per GeekWire.
- Orion is Helion’s plan for a magneto-inertial fusion machine that will put electrons on the grid.
“Today is an important day—not just for Helion, but for the entire fusion industry—as we unleash a new era of energy independence and industrial renewal,” said Helion cofounder and CEO David Kirtley in a release. “Since we founded the company, we have been completely focused on preparing fusion technology for commercialization and getting electrons on the grid. Starting site work brings us one step closer to that vision.”
Helion’s approach: Helion is pursuing a type of magneto-inertial fusion, which blends the two most common fusion categories: magnetic and inertial.
- It’s a linear pulsed-power device, where the company plans to create plasmas at two ends, then use powerful magnets to accelerate them into a compression chamber where they’ll collide.
- The fuel of choice for this machine is a combination of deuterium and helium-3.
- Helion expects to directly capture electricity from the ensuing fusion reaction via a current rather than a turbine.
The race for first: Helion’s timeline is, to put it lightly, aggressive. The company is looking to build its plant, connect to the grid, and have power flowing within three years.
Commonwealth Fusion Systems is the other best-capitalized fusion company and arguably the furthest along in achieving ignition and building a commercial fusion plant. CFS plans to have its non-commercial SPARC machine producing plasma next year and bring its first ARC commercial plant online in the early 2030s.
Buddied up: Helion’s timeline is driven by its partnership with Microsoft, which signed a power-purchase agreement with the fusion company in 2023. The Washington site would have close access to the transmission infrastructure needed to connect with Microsoft data centers.
Lead Reporter of Ignition
