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boiling water again
(quokk.au)
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this post was submitted on 26 Mar 2026
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i mean, they can run the plasma through some magnetic fields...
But it's less efficient that boiling water.
why not do both? get both efficiencies
[note: this is an example of why i am not currently working in nuclear physics]
That's the most common proposal for MHD generators - once it goes thru the MHD proper you use the waste heat to drive a conventional powerplant. Unfortunately MHD requires the production of plasma to be effective, and plasma just does not like to exist, so the engineering practicalities make it... unlikely to ever be even remotely viable outside of incredibly niche applications (although non-plasma MHD has been studied, and I believe there are even some human trials, to power implants in the body like pacemakers and I remember reading about nervous-interface devices in mice that used arterial MHD on to generate the microcurrent needed)
ooo, i'm trying to keep up on Deep Brain Stimulation research (i want one for reasons. they aren't doing what i want yet, but in about 5 years they should be there) and that sounds like related research
I'll admit I've been out of the field for a couple years so my information is going to be outdated, but I believe the issue with using MHD for continuous stimulation is that it generates tiny amounts of power - enough to trickle-charge a pacemaker, but not enough to keep tickling the brainstem with the frequency needed in DBS. Hopefully there have been/will be improvements to the tech that I am unaware of!
huh, so you wouldn't have to plug in and recharge your pace?
I think the idea was to provide a redundant method of charging in case you're unable or forget to recharge it externally. But ideally yes, it would be entirely internally powered so you wouldn't be tethered to the grid.
edit:
A more promising approach is this which is, ~~somewhat unglamorously, just a small turbine implanted into the heart that is spun by bloodflow.~~ oh, no, this is a different study than the one I was thinking of! This uses a flexible generator that generates power from the deformation of the Vena Cava. Fascinating, I'll have to dig thru it.
now that is a novel use of piezoelectricity. whoever thought of that needs many sloppy kisses from many cats
personally i think they just need to design for the battery run at 80% capacity and let it wear down. although i can see why they might need to periodically replace a foreign object implanted in the body. i had to get all the titanium plates and screws removed eventually because ow.
Yeah. Unfortunately even rechargeable pacemakers are extremely rare - almost all of them just expect that you'll have to replace the battery every several years (I think the average is 5?), which in the long run isn't terrible but still. Rechargeable batteries self-discharge far too much and as a result require quite frequent recharging so are far from ideal for implantation, although not having to undergo regular surgery to replace the battery is obviously a highly desirable outcome. The idea with internal power generation is to bridge the gap between the two and allow a person to go for far longer without the need for invasive surgery (there's a whole sidebar here about rechargeable battery chemistry not being ideal for implantation) but without the drawbacks inherent to rechargeable chemistries.
our experience was 7, but that was probably more because it was powering a DBS and not an actual pacemaker (i'm guessing lower charge draw over longer period of time) and it was time to implant a probe on the other side of the brain.
Well, not an engineer myself, either, but generally speaking that would greatly increase the systems complexity, which generally increases maintenance costs, down time, and the initial cost of the system.
You might be able to eke out a bit more power, but there’s more to the decision than total output and how efficient it is.
What I would imagine were a fusion-powered MHD being useful would be as a front end to fusion-based plasma propulsion. (Basically something like the VSIMR, Hall effect or whatever plasma thruster, where the fusion reaction generates both some power to create the thrust and its exhaust plasma is also the reaction mass.(I mentioned I’m not an engineer… right? Just an incorrigible nerd who likes sci-fi.)
There's a few things (I am an engineer, though not nuclear):