I'd like to know more. How do you actually harness the energy produced by temperatures that high? Is the end goal to figure out how to sustain the reaction at lower temperatures or do we actually have ways to generate electricity from those temperatures without losing most of it to waste?

[–] DarkThoughts@fedia.io 5 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Same as with almost any other reactor: Steam running through turbines. The high temperatures are important to sustain the fusion process. The goal is that it practically self sustains itself while we just continue to feed it with hydrogen.

[–] Quadhammer@lemmy.world -2 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Why not magnets

[–] Yankee_Self_Loader@lemmy.world 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

How do those work?

[–] TheWoozy@lemmy.world 1 points 7 months ago

Nobody knows

[–] Gabu@lemmy.world 1 points 7 months ago

There are fusion reactor designs (most hypothetical, but some physical) which use magnetic interactions to capture the energy as electricity. The issue is that it's orders of magnitude more complex to do, even if it increases efficiency.

[–] raspberriesareyummy@lemmy.world 4 points 7 months ago

I think the current designs would all use radiation heat, which means infrared etc light hitting the reactor walls and a coolant (water) running through them to generate steam, and then it's the good old turbine to electricity process... Light emitted from a plasma that hot isn't that hot itself / wouldn't heat reactor walls to the same temps.

[–] RubberElectrons@lemmy.world 4 points 7 months ago

Steam turbines aren't the only way, certain fuel cycles permit direct energy conversion: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_energy_conversion

[–] GBU_28@lemm.ee 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Whey do you mean? Everything is just stream!

[–] Tja@programming.dev 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Wind, solar, hydro...

[–] ramble81@lemm.ee 1 points 7 months ago

It’s all to spin a turbine ultimately. With the exception of solar…