Sam Altman invests $400 million into this startup 🤯
It's not every day you get to hear about large investments from individuals into a company, but this particular startup has attracted investors such as Sam Altman CEO of Open AI, Reid Hoffman co-founder of LinkedIn, and Facebook Co-founder Dustin Moskovitz.
Helion Energy, a nuclear fusion startup, founded in 2013 by David Kirtley, George Votroubek, Chris Pihl, and John Slough aims to bring the world’s first nuclear fusion powerplant. It raised $375 million from Sam altman in its series-E funding round.
Nuclear Fission Vs Nuclear Fusion
So you probably have previously heard of nuclear power plants also maybe about the Chernobyl incident, before moving on let's quickly look at the difference between nuclear fission and nuclear fusion.
Nuclear Fission
Nuclear power plants today use nuclear fission to generate energy, which is the process of splitting uranium atoms to produce energy. During the nuclear fission process, neutron collides with uranium atoms causing them to split and release enormous amounts of energy in the form of heat and radiation.
Nuclear power plants use the steam produced by the heat, which is then used by a turbine generator to generate electricity. While this energy produces a very low amount of greenhouse gases, one of the major problems is that it produces radioactive wastes that are hard to dispose of.
Nuclear Fusion
Nuclear fusion is the process in which two light atomic nuclei combine to form a single heavier one while releasing massive amounts of energy. This is the same process used by the sun to generate light and heat.
One of the biggest advantages compared to Fission is that it doesn’t produce radioactive waste as by-products, plus, it releases more energy than fission. However, the energy required to initiate and maintain the fusion reaction is still very high and outweighs the energy output.
It was only in 2022 that researchers at the US National Ignition Facility were able to produce more energy than it consumed
Quick history on Nuclear Fusion
The first proposal for nuclear fusion came in 1915. It wasn’t until 1930 that Hans Bethe provided a detailed explanation of the fusion processes occurring in stars.
While fusion has been achieved in the operation of hydrogen bombs, the challenge lies in controlling and sustaining the reaction in order for it to be a useful energy source.
The Helion Energy way
The way Helion approaches it is to achieve it is through a method known as magneto-inertial fusion. This concept uses magnets to create and confine plasma, then compresses the plasma to fusion conditions.
Helion has already signed Microsoft as their first customer read more here
Nuclear Fusion is part of Sam Altman’s ambitious vision, at the top of his list are AI and Fusion, he is also a strong believer of universal basic income.
Hope you learned something new today, and, if this technology excites you, Helion has job openings that you can check out.
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