The flywheel is doing a lot of heavy lifting in an ICE. But sure, Freeman Dyson would agree with "Orion" the case in point.
Gas turbine always excited me as a propulsion unit for trains and cars. Never quite got traction, great shame. Certainly, from Ferranti/Parsons onwards, it has been a stalwart of highly efficient electric generation. Diesel backup has the advantage of speed, but I think most standby power now which can't be done as hydro or battery is gas-turbine, with Diesel as an alternate fuel: not bang-bang-go. I'm talking at scale. Sure, a honda jennie is a good thing to have when the power is out.
OK. I'm kind of there: How about we fire off a classic fission device every 5 years, and power the electricity supply off the heat we soak into the surrounding rocks?
Jokes aside, what is the future power take-off from fusion expected to be? If its not consumption of the neutrons, directly, in some electro-magnetic pathway to usable power, its almost certainly conversion of heat energy into another form.
Not-a-barrier aside Do you think they're -> aiming <- for pulses of that energy? If not, what is the plan?
> OK. I'm kind of there: How about we fire off a classic fission device every 5 years, and power the electricity supply off the heat we soak into the surrounding rocks?
That actually was the original plan, although you needed to detonate one every few days instead of every few years. The initial experiments detonated them in salt mines but the explosions did too much damage and couldn't be reliably contained, so the plan switched to a large steel cavity partially filled with water. Unfortunately the cost of nuclear weapons was far too high to produce power competitively and you'd get a substantial buildup of fission waste. This led to the idea of using lasers instead of fission to initiate the fusion reaction, which in turn developed into modern inertial confinement fusion (ICF).
And yes, for tokamaks they are aiming for pulsed energy.
Gas turbine always excited me as a propulsion unit for trains and cars. Never quite got traction, great shame. Certainly, from Ferranti/Parsons onwards, it has been a stalwart of highly efficient electric generation. Diesel backup has the advantage of speed, but I think most standby power now which can't be done as hydro or battery is gas-turbine, with Diesel as an alternate fuel: not bang-bang-go. I'm talking at scale. Sure, a honda jennie is a good thing to have when the power is out.
OK. I'm kind of there: How about we fire off a classic fission device every 5 years, and power the electricity supply off the heat we soak into the surrounding rocks?
Jokes aside, what is the future power take-off from fusion expected to be? If its not consumption of the neutrons, directly, in some electro-magnetic pathway to usable power, its almost certainly conversion of heat energy into another form.
Not-a-barrier aside Do you think they're -> aiming <- for pulses of that energy? If not, what is the plan?