Senior Nuclear Materials Engineer

Director of Communications Jessie Barton says Helion will host a Community Event at 5:30 p.m. Tuesday, March 11 at Mission View Elementary School.

The latest update to the GeekWire 200 reveals which companies are growing quickly and making moves up our list of top-ranked Pacific Northwest tech startups.Sales software company Highspot (No. 1) retains the top spot on the GeekWire 200 after reaching the pinnacle last quarter.But there’s a new No. 2, with Helion jumping six spots thanks to a massive $425 million funding round announced last month. The Everett, Wash.-based fusion company is backed by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and has a deal with Microsoft as it chases the “Holy Grail” of clean energy.Other companies rising in the top 10 include:Health data startup Truveta (No. 7), which just raised $320 million.Developer testing platform Statsig (No. 9), which had an “epic Q4,” according to its CEO.(No

ITER, The Way To Nuclear FusionITER, an acronym for International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, also standing for “The Way” in Latin, is the world’s largest effort toward mastering nuclear fusion-based energy generation.ITER is funded and run by seven parties: the European Union (27 countries), China, India, Japan, Russia, South Korea, and the United States. It also has cooperation agreements with Australia, Canada, Kazakhstan and Thailand.The UK used to be part of the program when it was in the EU and discontinued its participation in 2023.In theory, ITER could be the prototype and experimental demonstrator for commercial fusion, opening mankind to virtually unlimited cheap energy.This would make tasks like greening deserts, fighting CO2 emissions, or becoming a space-faring civilization almost trivial.So, while it might take a while to bear fruit, the potential is so colossal that it might be remembered as one of the most important megaprojects ever created.Nuclear FusionUnlimited PowerNuclear fusion is different from classical nuclear energy (fission) in that it uses very light elements. Instead of splitting heavy atoms like uranium, it merges together very light atoms, generally hydrogen.This theoretically makes nuclear fusion a source of unlimited power, as hydrogen is the most common form of matter in the Universe.This process produces massive amounts of energy, resulting in 3-10x more energy than nuclear fission and the energy source powering the stars.One gram of deuterium-tritium fuel mixture in the process of nuclear fusion is equivalent to 11 tonnes of coal. Someone’s entire lifetime energy consumption could be covered by little more than a bottle of fuel held in their hand.Advantages of Nuclear FusionNot only does nuclear fusion provide a lot of energy, but it has a few key benefits that no other power source can claim:Deuterium is so abundant in the Earth’s oceans and surface waters that it is essentially unlimited and equally accessible to every nation on Earth.The nuclear reaction produces no radioactive waste, only chemically harmless helium. No CO2 or other environmentally harmful products are created by the reaction either.As it produces no enriched uranium, plutonium, or other radioactive materials, nuclear fusion does not carry a risk of nuclear proliferation (nuclear weapon-grade material). This would make the adoption of nuclear fusion a neutral technology without the restrictions imposed on fission nuclear technology.No risk of meltdown or out-of-control chain reaction