Helion Hosts Community Meeting for Fusion Power Plant in Malaga

Around 300 people attended Helion's Community Input Meeting Tuesday night at Mission View Elementary School.

Helion designed the meeting to overview their plans and answer questions related to the world's first fusion power plant to be placed on Chelan PUD owned land in Malaga.

CEO of Helion David Kirtley says a project like this requires a few things: First, you need relatively flat land, which this 80-acre parcel has, a public utility district interested in low cost power, interconnections, substations, and a community excited to embrace the future.

"A community that is excited, that has a history of pioneering clean electricity," Kirtley said. "This community is one of those communities."

The immediate goal for Helion is to satisfy their power purchasing agreement with Microsoft. In 2025, Helion says they will use less than one megawatt for construction of the facility and no more than five megawats beyond 2029 of PUD power.

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In the mean time, Chelan PUD General Manager Kirk Hudson says there is no indication power rates will increase while Helion sets up their facility.

There is no indication PUD customers will utlize Helion energy. However, Hudson hopes the power Helion provides to data centers will lighten the amount of energy the PUD supplies to those local centers. In turn, this will help the PUD keep rates low for customers.

"This is actually potentially helping in that regard," Hudson said. "That's our interest here is trying to find a way to protect what's most important to you is that low-cost reliable hydropower for the community, so that's how we're looking at this opportunity and this does potentially solve a big problem if they're successful on large loads and how to power them."

Community Development Director Deanna Walter says this plant, along with the construction of data centers in the same area, has the potential to lower the tax levy to residents within the districts around Malaga.

"The county and those taxing districts will benefit from the new construction," Walter said. "Then your levy rates should theoretically go down if all other things remain the same, so this is a source of revenue, not on the land portion... but the value is not in the land. The value is in the structures and the personal property, and that's what's going to drive rates down."

Kirtley says fusion is not to be confused with nuclear fission, which has been the cause of enviornmental headaches such as Washington's Hanford plant and Chernobyl.

Fusion involves ionizing hydrogen and helium to form fuel and compress it at a temperature exceeding 100 million degrees - creating fusion. More pressure, more energy, means more electricity. Kirtley says Helion has seven separate prototypes they have used from public and private funding to demonstrate their ability to create fusion energy. The seventh is called Polaris which started initial operations in December 2024, but it is not designed to deliver electricity to the grid.

The process uses deuterium, or heavy water, creating a very rare element called Helium3 which is a light-weight version of helium about half the time. Deuterium fuses and becomes Helium3, and it also creates tritium, which is radioactive with a half-life around 12 years, which is considered a short half life.

Once tritium degrades, it turns back into Helium3. Helion says the Washington Department of Health oversees the amount of neutrons this process creates.

"In nuclear power you have uranium sitting in the core and you have years of fuel sitting in the core," Kirtley said. "For fusion, we build our fuels here.. we use a material called deuterium."

Kirtley along with experts explained they will be utilizing a closed loop cooling system to operate their plant, which means the plant uses a well-like system and does not require water from the Columbia River, nor will it cycle used water back to the river.

Helion also says the process creates little to no air pollution.

If permits are approved, Helion will break ground this summer with electricity generated in 2028.