Every damn power plant is a glorified steam engine

One of the fusion startups says they can use the plasma B field directly. Basically making the plasma the rotor in an electric generator to induce current in a wire.

Reminds me of one of my favorite photos, a steam engine being delivered by steam engine!

I wonder if nuclear would get more traction If it was pitched as enhanced steam power instead

Reading the comments, it would seem most everyone here thinks that the usefulness of the steam is done when it gets used to turn a turbine at high pressure.

The steam can be used for much more than once. In the 1800's and early 1900s when steam ran trains and ships, they built double and triple expansion engines that took the energy of the steam two and three times before it was done. It doesn't need to be one and done. And when the energy is done being harvested for power generation, it can used for other things. Engineers today aren't dumber than the ones in the 1800s.

I can remember a small rural Minnesota town that had their own coal fired electric plant. (Built back before the REA was a thing). They took the left over steam from power generation and then piped it to around 200 homes in the town and heated them with the leftover steam. While a bit costly to install, it was dirt cheap to run. Those homes lost all that when the power plant was shut down and they had to switch to either natural gas, fuel oil, LP, or electricity.

So don't get hung up on just the power generation. Think what could be beyond that point.

Low key this is a great way to convince people to switch away from fossil fuels.

Most people seemingly don't know that coal/gas stations work by essentially boiling water. Most are horrified at how trashy and underdeveloped the concept is compared to high tech alternatives like solar, wind, or hydro.

Hydrohomies!

We live in a Steampunk world without Steampunk aesthetics. 😩

It's always been about finding new ways to spin a turbine

"Dyson Spheres? Look, playing with sunlight and mirrors was a fun side project, but you want to know a much more advanced method of generating power?"

"Please dont...."

"Thats right! By hurling entire water worlds into a star, we then capture the released steam which powers our gravitationally locked dynamo network."

There's only 3 major ways to transform different forms of energy into electricity, which are:

• solar panels (light -> electricity)
• mechanical engines/generators (mechanical movement -> electricity)
• electrochemical battery (chemical dipole -> electricity)

there's a whole lot more, such as thermoelectric generator and piezoelectricity but these are the three significant ones.

note that i distinguish these categories by their core essence, such as whether they're using changes in magnetic flux (like a mechanical generator) or transferring 1 photon on each electron (like solar panels), instead of looking at what source type of energy they transform.

because there's many ways to transform e.g. light energy into electricity. you could also heat water with the sunlight and then drive a steam engine with it. but that's not what i care about. i care about the fundamental connection between different types of energy, and how they can be directly transformed to one another.

Living somewhere that makes 90+% of its electricity from hydro, I am slightly confused.

use cherenkov radiation to power photovoltaic array.

Well, you can apparently also use supercritical carbon dioxide.

That might be fun.

But you're basically still boiling something to make it spin a magnet.

There are actually versions of fusion reactors that use the magnetic fields generated by the plasma in order to make electricity directly.

Just pipe the electroplasma directly into the workstations. Sure, sometimes this results in dangerous overloads during adverse conditions, but that's what the Cordry rocks are for.

Wasn't there one concept too with catching neutrons directly to ...generate heat, ah right.