I'd expect that they probably wouldn't focus on copying Orion exactly, since Orion is just the initial PoC and will only use a single 50 MW generator. Their Nucor plant is planned to have 10x higher capacity, which seems likely to be more in line with typical deployments outside of remote areas. Opex also seems like a non-issue to me, given that the machines will be automated, the fuel will be cheap, and they won't have the same safety-critical need for strict regulation and human oversight as fission plants.

My understanding is that exporting might not be a huge hurdle to get a green light for due to the low proliferation concerns, although I wouldn't be surprised if Helion itself had some reservations around that or blocked it on designing some sort of tamper-resistant enclosure for IP protection purposes.

But I also don't see a reason why the US couldn't be a highly lucrative market for Helion, particularly given the increasing demand from AI. Solar in China today benefits from major alignment of interests and political tailwinds. Similarly, fusion could cut through partisan divides and NIMBYism that have hamstrung power buildout in the US. The left will buy in for climate benefits, the right will buy in for energy independence, both will buy in for economics + practicality, and NIMBYs will buy in for lower electric bills with minimal risks or drawbacks. Whether or not directly publicly funded, there will at least be every incentive to collectively get out of private industry's way and allow mass fusion deployment with minimal regulatory burdens.

That said, I'm sure solar will continue to get cheaper, and iron-air batteries from companies like Form Energy seem to be an extremely promising solution for high-scale storage. I also like the idea of using Prometheus Fuels to repurpose existing fossil fuel plants as storage for renewables. But there are still theoretical limits on the efficiency of solar panels, and space usage and intermittency could make it less cost-efficient than fusion in many if not most cases. We can't really make an apples-to-apples comparison between a mature technology in active high-volume production and a speculative future technology, but the latter in this case does seem to me to have a higher ceiling on its potential value over the long run.