dennisp wrote:
I’m not sure you guys are talking about the same thing on FF efficiency either. Eg., laser fusion requires a steam cycle, so call it 50% efficient at recovering the output. But there’s also the power required to fire the laser. FF has a substantial power input as well.
50% system efficiency was the figure Eric gave.
it should be reasonable to expect conversion efficiency of the exit beam to be similar to a high-voltage transformer. Those are usually >90%. even if you consume all of that for FF’s power input, you can recover a substantial amount of heat for running a steam cycle.
