Reply To: turn heat into electricity

[vansig]

Maya wrote:
The Coulomb barrier guarantees that in order to get _that many_ reactions in, say, one cubic meter of space, you have to compress that fuel somehow. The forces required to compress that fuel that much are either:
1.) too great to achieve with any known materials science in higher power outputs
2.) too great to make it economically viable in lower power outputs

point 1.) is correct. and that’s why focus fusion does not use a solid material to achieve the extremely strong magnetic field. yet the fields already obtained with the device, ie: in the gigagauss range, are much stronger than the inter-atomic forces in any known materials. and instead of one cubic meter, you have volumes on the order of the head of a pin.