this post was submitted on 30 Nov 2025
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[–] Devial@discuss.online 8 points 7 hours ago

Most common fission reactions today release most of their energy in the form of neutrons. The only way to extract energy from neutrons is heat. But there are fission reactions which release a large portion of their energy in the form protons. And since protons are charged, their energy can be electromagnetically converted directly into electricity, with no need for intermediate process steps.

There's already at least one company building prototypes like this, Helion, using D+He3 fusion, rather than the more common D+T fusion in other reactortypes like Tokamaks.

Real engineering has a video on Helion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bDXXWQxK38