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Nuclear fusion reactor in South Korea runs at 100 million degrees C for a record-breaking 48 seconds
(www.livescience.com)
this post was submitted on 06 Apr 2024
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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?
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.
Why not magnets
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.
How do those work?
Nobody knows
Steam turbines aren't the only way, certain fuel cycles permit direct energy conversion: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_energy_conversion
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.
Whey do you mean? Everything is just stream!
Wind, solar, hydro...
It’s all to spin a turbine ultimately. With the exception of solar…