Helion Energy

Helion Energy is headquartered in Redmond, Washington and was founded in 2013 by David Kirtley, George Votroubek, Chris Pihl, and John Slough.

Helion’s fusion approach is involves generating and compressing a FRC (Field Reversed Configuration) plasma. This approach falls into the broad category of MIF (Magneto Intertial Fusion).

Helion has raised money from private investment firms and the US Department of Energy's ARPA-E program.

Helion’s strategy is to engineer a smaller and cost effective fusion power plant with the goal of commercialization as soon as possible. Helion is pursuing the deuterium helium-3 fusion reaction because it generates mostly charged particles that allow for the direct conversion to electricity and reduces the amount of neutron activation in the surrounding materials. However, this reaction requires much higher ion temperatures than the the deuterium - tritium reaction which most fusion concepts pursue.