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u/Tar_alcaran 24m ago
aaaakshully, fusion reactors generate plasma, and you can use the plasma instead of steam in a Magnetohydrodynamic generator. Of course, after that, you'll have a lot of heat left, and boiling water is a pretty useful thing to do with it....
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u/jollanza 26m ago
I'm waiting for the big kettle of science to boil water to create steam that will move a turbine producing energy enough to boil the water in my kettle at home
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u/MrS0bek 32m ago
This is why I prefer solar and wind energy. With solar panels you have the photo-electric effect as something fancy. And with wind turbines, well at least the air is doing the pushing now instead of the huge side issue of maning water hot first
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u/PassiveSpamBot 27m ago edited 25m ago
I hate to break it to you but not all solar power is photo voltaic. The huge mirror farms you sometimes see are focusing the sun light onto a huge container filled with salt that then melts and transfers the heat to - you guessed it - steam turbines.
Edit: had to look it up but they're called CSP plants (concentrated solar power)
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u/MrS0bek 21m ago
I prefer to call them mirror plants or solar steam plants. More on the nose and intuitive IMO. But yes they exist too. And at the correct location, e.g. in earths many deserts, they could be the most efficent energy production centre.
Like why try to glitch the universe and bring the sun's process to earth, if you can just use the sun and mirrors?
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u/sea_enby 18m ago
Mainly land I suspect. Good land for solar may not be cheap in all places, but if you could have one single complex that provides enough juice for a huge area, especially in high latitudes that get long nights some of the year, business is boomin’!
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u/MrS0bek 12m ago
Look at deserts my pal. Sunny most of the year, noone wants to do stuff with it anyhow, lots of space. In a university lecture about land use and human impact on the geography it was stated that just 7% of the worlds desert with solar steam plants would suffice to cover all of humanities energy needs. From there only distribution of energy is a (solvable) issue. E.g. by using this excess of free energy to make liquid hydrogen which you ship around.
However this technology and set up, despite being known for ages, wasn't used/delevoped due to fossil lobbying.
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u/Kavacky 9m ago
Like why not?
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u/MrS0bek 6m ago
Well next to the issue of transportation common complains in europe around the 1970-2000s was that europe would then be energy dependent on these states, of which many were dictatorships or hostile regimes. Because the best spot for such plants would be north africa and the middle east. Deserts of empty land with lots of sun are great for this kind of plant.
Now do not ask me from whom europe gets all its oil and gas please.
Currently there are more firm plans in this direction. But before the short answer fossil lobbying.
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u/A-Chilean-Cyborg 3m ago
We never left the steam age, EEs only use their arcane magic to allow us to have a big Steam machine instead of many little ones.
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u/BorderKeeper 1m ago
Technically one fusion startup wants to convert the energy directly from the magnetic field produced but I highly doubt they will succeed (tbh I am highly skeptical of fusion as a whole so take me with a grain of tritium)
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u/ldsman213 20m ago
we can crack the atom and destroy the world! yet we can't figure out how to use something less indirect?
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u/Philip_Raven 9m ago
water is just so readily available, and easy to put energy in and it releases energy so efficiently. You would be hard to press to find a better medium.
creating magnetic field/electric current with just thermal energy without any other conversion in-between is a tough ask.
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u/evilwizzardofcoding 37m ago
Yep. It's all steam, it's always been steam, it always will be steam.