Realta Fusion lights bulbs straight from its reactor, a commercial first
Fusion’s hard problem was making more energy than you put in. The next one is turning that energy into cheap electricity. A Wisconsin startup says it has taken a first step, by lighting a few bulbs straight from its reactor.
The company is Realta Fusion. On 30 June it announced the first demonstration of direct energy conversion by a commercial fusion firm. In an experiment on 19 June, its device drew several amps of current at around 100 volts. That was enough to power a handful of light bulbs, the company said.
Direct energy conversion, or DEC, is the appealing shortcut of fusion. Most reactors, like today’s fission plants, plan to make electricity the old-fashioned way. They use the heat to boil water, spin a turbine, and drive a generator. That process is lossy. DEC skips it and harvests electricity straight from the charged particles that stream out of...
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