4 ms·
Because a star like ours has a power density of a compost pile. You can run a generator from one, but you need a LOT of it to get any appreciable power. Ludicro
by DuskStar 5y ago
Because a star like ours has a power density of a compost pile. You can run a generator from one, but you need a LOT of it to get any appreciable power. Ludicrous amounts, really.
Thankfully for the viability of fusion, reactions scale with temperature to the 4th power (iirc), so you get 10000x higher power density by running things at 10x the temperature. Since the containment difficulty goes up at a far slower rate than this, it makes higher temperatures both more space efficient and power efficient, and eventually lets you extract more energy from the fusion reactions than you're spending on magnetic containment.
- throwawayzRUU6f 5y agoOr, to put it to intuitive human scale - a cubic meter from the very core of the Sun outputs 270W - about the consumption of a single gaming console, not enough to power even a vacuum cleaner. Coincidentally, it's roughly the power output of a square meter solar panel.
- Kliment 5y ago4th power of magnetic field strength, not temperature. Increasing magnetic field strength increases your density and your temperature, and that compounding is what gets you 4th power scaling.