Wedoany.com Report on Feb 15th, Helion, based in Washington, recently made significant progress in the field of fusion energy, becoming the first privately developed fusion energy device to demonstrate measurable deuterium-tritium fusion reactions. The company successfully increased plasma temperature to 150 million degrees Celsius, setting an industry record. These achievements mark a critical step for Helion in advancing commercial fusion energy and represent the first breakthrough in the private fusion industry.
David Kirtley, co-founder and CEO of Helion, stated: "We believe the most reliable path to achieving commercial fusion is to build, learn, and iterate as quickly as possible. We have built and operated seven prototypes, each time setting and surpassing more ambitious technical and engineering goals. The historic results from the deuterium-tritium testing campaign on Polaris validate our approach to developing high-power fusion and the excellence of our engineering."
Helion launched its seventh-generation Polaris prototype in late 2024. In January of this year, it became the first and currently only private fusion energy machine to use deuterium-tritium fuel, demonstrating the company's ability to operate and scale across multiple fuel types. Helion is also the first company to receive regulatory approval to own and use tritium for demonstrating fusion energy production. According to a press release, achieving thermonuclear fusion with deuterium-tritium fuel is a step in the Polaris test plan. The company will continue testing to reach the optimal temperature for deuterium-helium-3 fusion, the fuel Helion plans to use for commercial operations.
Dr. Alan Hoffman, an FRC plasma expert with over 40 years of experience in fusion device development, said: "After reviewing the latest results from the Polaris prototype operating on D-T, I am proud of the progress made in this field since the earliest FRC work at the University of Washington and Los Alamos National Laboratory. I continue to see technical scaling and Helion's plasma energy recovery enabling this technology to reach commercial scale." FRC research in the United States began at Los Alamos, continued at the private company Math Sciences North West, and under Dr. Hoffman's leadership, the Large S device was built at the University of Washington with funding from the U.S. Department of Energy.
With its latest technological achievements, Helion is setting the pace for the fusion industry, creating a pathway to produce low-cost, carbon-free electricity from fusion for commercial use. In July 2025, Helion began constructing its first commercial machine at the Orion site in Malaga, Washington, which will deliver fusion-generated electricity to the Microsoft grid.
