Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Umbran" data-source="post: 6420020" data-attributes="member: 177">Well, no.  I was more wondering if they'd have something new and exotic in mind.The typical way nuclear power is used is to heat water - you take the fast moving fission products, dump them into a large mass that stops them, and they deposit their kinetic energy as heat.  It is really just a heat engine with fission as a heat source.  And the efficiency of a heat engine rises as the difference in temperature between the hot and cold sides rises - so, you typically need lots of cold coolant to get them to work well.But, what if what they're talking about isn't a heat engine?   What if they have a way to extract the kinetic energy of the fusion products in a different way?  Then, you might not need nearly so much coolant...If, for example, they have a way to collimate the fusion products - basically, make a particle beam -  they're charged particles, and you could extract the kinetic energy through magnetic fields, directly into electricity!</blockquote>