Helion’s Post

Governor Inslee’s recent visit to our HQ in Everett, WA, emphasizes the critical importance of our work in advancing clean, carbon-free electricity produced from fusion. His support and leadership are invaluable as we strive to build the world’s first power plant in Washington state. Read more about Governor Inslee’s visit here: https://lnkd.in/gnQHD479

More quartz! Shown here is the beginning of a Polaris vacuum vessel being removed from its spinning mold; these large tubes are made with fused silica (quartz). Next up, this tube will be machined to create a final vacuum vessel. Each end of Polaris will have a large tube, and our team is making several tubes now to down-select for the highest performance. #quartz #hardtech 

For the last 18 months, we’ve been building up our capacitor manufacturing capabilities, producing capacitors for circuit and plasma testing. Now, we’re on to a full production run for Polaris. We’re manufacturing 12µF capacitors to be installed and run on Polaris this year. Each of these in-house capacitors is built by our technicians before undergoing rigorous high-voltage pulsed power testing.

We’re manufacturing vacuum vessels in-house for both of Polaris’ formation sections.  These vacuum vessels are made of fused silica (quartz). We make these in-house by powering three graphite electrodes inside a spinning mold filled with silica sand. While the sand spins in the mold, the electrodes heat the inner layer of sand, melting it into place to form a quartz tube.  Shown here is an early test, running at 20% of the full power used during the tube manufacturing process.  

Polaris formation section delivered to Ursa: ✅ The first of Polaris’ two formation sections have been delivered to its new home in Ursa. By building sections of Polaris in our Antares facility, and “shipping” them down to Ursa, our team is gaining valuable insight on what assembly and installation will look like in our commercial systems. #missionpolaris #fusion #hardtech 

We have 25 open roles for Technicians at Helion! Apply using the links in the comments. #hiring #cleanenergy